[conspire] (forw) [DNG] Life After Firefox 56

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Don Marti (dmarti at zgp.org):

> The new WebExtension model has a missing feature: a WebExtension can't
> flip a preference.

Along those lines, here's another sign of the times:  Near as I can
tell, WebExtensions cannot modify the 'chrome' (the UI) of Firefox at
all, only alter the HTML and interaction with the rest of the world.
The latter is huge, of course, but so is altering the chrome, which will
be lost when XUL & XDL get shucked.

Example:  In 2014, Mozilla, inc. decided to remove the ability to set 
'Icons and Text' and 'Text only' on the browser chrome (the toolbar
controls), and make them icons-only.  This affected Debian's Iceweasel
unbranded Firefox, too.  I look at the damned icons, and think 'What the
Gehenna does a five-pointed star mean?'  If you haven't memorised an
entire dictionary of little pictures, you have to hover your pointer
device over the pictogram, and a second later hover text explains
'Bookmark this page'.  Of course!  Nothing says Army brass quite like a
bookmark.

There's been since 2014 a standard way to fix this idiocy, which of
course Mozilla, Inc. justifies the same way they do every removal of
functionality, and the same way The GNOME Foundation does when _they_
(/me acknowledges Ruben having pointed to this matter) remove
functionality:  'The average user doesn't need this.'

It's probably not _too_ conspiratorial to parse 'The average user
doesn't need this' as meaning 'We the grand panjandrums are going to
decree the look and feel we think is best, and would rather that
everyone have the same look and feel.'  But, as I said, there's been a
standard way to fix this idiocy concerning Firefox's toolbars:  It's
to install an extension to tweak the chome back to the former feature set.
The best known is called Classic Theme Restorer.  And it's in XUL.

When Mozilla, Inc. announced, late last year, that Firefox will support
_only_ extensions implemented as WebExtensions as of version 57 at the end
of 2017, Aris, developer of Classic Theme Restorer, wrote:

  Now its real, CTR [Classic Theme Restorer] as we know it (and all 
  my other Firefox add-ons), will be discontinued by the end of 2017. 
  We still have no way to change [the] Firefox UI using WebExtensions,
  and all my add-ons are about UI modifications.  Seems like it's 
  almost time to get used to another browser.

By the time this all happens, there _may_ be a substitute method of 
customising the WebUI in future releases of Firefox, but at present
there is not.

> Firefox comes with a bunch of good privacy features that are turned
> off by default, because they break some third-party site features (or,
> in the case of Tracking Protection, because they're falsely detected
> as ad blockers).
> 
> The convenient way to enable the features (especially on small devices
> where dinking with about:config is a pain) is to make an extension
> that just sets the preferences you care about (and restores them to
> the defaults on uninstall if the user didn't change them manually).
> 
> Example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pq/
> 
> That add-on will stop working for ~70 Firefox users when old-school
> add-ons go away.  Happy to move it to the right place to keep it
> working for whatever Firefox derivatives want to keep support for
> old-school add-ons.

Another good point, thanks.

I explained during my SVLUG lecture about Web browser security the utter
absence of pro-privacy defaults in Firefox, much though we love the
browser, as an obvious artifact of who pays for its development.  The
fact is, user are not Mozilla, Inc.'s customers and funders.  A large
fraction of Mozilla, Inc.'s revenue comes through contracts from several
large firms that rely on advertising and user-tracking.

So, zero privacy and poor security by default, and the onus is on users
to overcome those bad defaults through exensions and similar measures -- 
which at least has been possible with user effort, even though
depressingly few users, even Linux users, bother.  And, yeah, XUL going
away will be bad for that, too.

Again, it's possible this might get fixed, but I'm not aware of it being
worked on.

> > But I continue to love my cheap-ass Casio watches.
> 
>   Bonus link: How the Casio F-91W became the world’s most versatile (and dangerous) watch
>   https://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/10/20/how-the-casio-f-91w-became-the-worlds-most-versatile-and-dangerous-watch/

Oh, great.  Note to self:  Do _not_ apply fertiliser in the garden while
wearing my Casio A178W watch, and especially before any trip abroad.