andrewducker | In which I get to sit in on a Mozilla Firefox meeting

You're viewing

andrewducker's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

Since Tab Mix Plus lost most of its functionality (when Firefox moved to a new WebExtensions model) the main thing I've missed has been "Open URLs in a new tab by default".

And as there are now WebExtension abilities to open search results in a new tab and open bookmarks in a new tab I opened a bug to do likewise for URLs.

And then got invited to dial into the Firefox Addons team's online meeting, which I duly did (using IRC for the first time in about 20 years, and a video-conferencing system I hadn't tried before). It was professionally run, the people were all reasonable, and my bug was approved to be worked on, so I'm hopeful that it'll be available at some point!

Having been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix it was pretty awesome to play even a tiny part in making it better.

Crossposts: https://andrewducker.livejournal.com/3663897.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alithea

That's pretty cool! Out of interest, what video conferencing software do they use?

From:

andrewducker

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Vidyo

From:

i'm still fucking livid at them for breaking all the extensions i use. some must-haves still don't have replacements, because they didn't bother to include the functionality before the cut off.

From:

andrewducker

Yeah, I've been frustrated too. I wish they'd gotten more of the APIs working before the cut-off date.

Apparently not having to support the old system has meant a lot more engineering effort can go elsewhere - like into replacement APIs. So if there's stuff that you want to see improved do log a bug for it.

From:

well, there are some very popular extensions that have a slew of bugs logged, some for quite a while, with no resolution in sight. session manager being one.

and a load of functionality just isn't possible any more, with no way to modify the UI/create dialogs/add menu entries. or ones that have managed to convert now have utterly lobotomised UI because of the limitations, e.g. adblock plus & noscript.

From:

ninetydegrees

Congrats and thank you for submitting the bug. I use the middle click to do exactly this and would have gone bonkers otherwise.

From:

andrewducker

There should be an option for that in FF60, hidden away in about:config.
And via add-ons a version or two after that.

From:

marahmarie

Ugh, if I had known this I would've sent you into IRC with a list (on the shortlist: restore the Add-On bar - a bug's already open for it - and allow Web Dev (the add-on) more privileged access because it's utterly hobbled now, and I think Chris Pederick has been around long enough for them to trust his code, and maybe fork the add-on if he won't maintain it or else let Mozilla offer it as an alternative to their own).

Glad it went well, anyway. :)

Edited (typo) Date: 2018-02-28 07:36 am (UTC)