Mozilla's latest Firefox plans may not make developers and users happy
Like Chrome, the new Firefox will use multiple processes to isolate misbehaving content (and, as with Chrome, it’s memory footprint will undoubtedly grow significantly) and it will gain a new API called WebExtensions which will allow “code written for Chrome, Opera, or, possibly in the future, Microsoft Edge [to] run in Firefox with few changes.”
What seems to be really annoying developers is the implications of “signing”:
Developers, commenting on Mozilla’s post, see two problems with signing. The first will be turnaround time which, if it’s too long, will make releasing and updating add-ons more expensive, complex, and time consuming. That said, as potentially problematic as turnaround time might be, developers appear to be far more concerned with Mozilla’s approvals process. An anonymous comment on Mozilla’s blog post summed the problem up:
Another developer, TobiSGD, wrote:
The consequence of these changes are that existing add-ons will have to be re-engineered and some may not make it through the approvals process which will not please users who rely on rejected add-ons.
So, could these changes cause Firefox to fall from it’s current second-place market share of just under 22% Would Chrome (at 63%) or Edge (not on the charts yet) gain from users defecting Would the changes make you, should you be a Firefox devotee, opt for another browser and, if so, which one