I am angry on Firefox developers!

Add-ons Development
#1

Hi, Since Firefox 57, the developer of Thumbzilla enlarger called David, is forced to give up his
great best photo enlarger the internet has. This because YOU developers of Firefox 57 has not installed the necessary functions for making his great enlarger working. He would be obliged to rewrite the entire extension, which is to him feasible, this all because of Firefox developers lacked of installing the same necessary functions!! The available enlargers are even no way as good as his (David), they are giving poor possibilities of enlarging! I also regularly must go to Microsoft Edge because I get some things not done on Firefox.

Regards,
Chris.

1 Like
#2

You must know that your and David’s frustration is largely shared amongst add-on developers.

BUT

Once you are done being angry and want to move on, you should also know that there is nothing you cannot do if the add-on allows working with a native app to provide the removed services. One could expect users to be reluctant installing an extra application, but from my experience, explaining to the users that for technical reasons, there is no other options, things go rather smoothly.

1 Like
#3

Can you enlighten me on this option? Do you mean e.g. installing a window application that the add-on can communicate with?

I suffer from the unfinished / will not happen APIs in WebExtensions and are unable to port several add-ons. Could this be a solution?

#4

This is the solution i used (and the only one i could think of) to make Video DownloadHelper work correctly with WebExtensions. Basically, a RPC system is implemented between the add-on and the native app, so that when the add-on needs a service implemented in the app, it’s just a matter of calling a function returning a promise. That mechanic is easy to use and works very well.

I plan to release a clean open-source reference generic code to get to speed with native-app supported add-ons, but i am kind of busy right. However all the code that will go there is already open-sourced:

  • weh: the add-on side. If you are only interested in the add-on/app interface and don’t want the full weh build system, start looking at file src/weh-natmsg.js
  • vdhcoapp: the app side. Leave alone the ffmpeg part as it is DownloadHelper specific, but you can see how the node.js file API is implemented in app/file.js
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#5

OMG :open_mouth: You are the creator of Video DownloadHelper ! This is incredible ! I have this extension since… I don’t remember, I always had it. This is the most incredible existing addon on Firefox I know. It is really impressing all the work it required to create it and then to port it to WebExtensions. Really good job :+1:
I am sooooo sorry about all the bad reviews you have since 14th November. It is not your fault. The WebExtensions API is still lacking of main features and is not fully supported, containing some bugs, on Firefox 57. I think Firefox Quantum arrived too early. I hope it will get better in next updates…

#6

Interesting story, but back to the topic – so, you do not need to be angry at all. I don’t now the add-on, but if it is just a “Thumbzilla enlarger” working with images on websites, that is pretty easy to implement in a WebExtension.

#7

@Michel Gutierrez

Thanks. I will look into it.

#8