[HN Gopher] Firefox users may import Chrome extensions now
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Firefox users may import Chrome extensions now
Author : goplayoutside
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-08-24 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ghacks.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ghacks.net)
| leonheld wrote:
| From what I understand, most extensions work much better for
| Firefox (uBlock Origin being an example). What do Firefox users
| gain from this?
| jklinger410 wrote:
| There are extensions that Chrome has, which Firefox does not.
| johnfernow wrote:
| It's still using Firefox extensions, this is for people
| switching from Chrome to Firefox (or those who want to use both
| browsers with the same extensions.) From the article:
|
| "Mozilla decided to create a list of extension pairs for
| extensions that are available on the Chrome Web Store and the
| Mozilla Add-ons Store. Instead of importing the Chrome
| extension directly, Firefox is installing the Firefox version
| of the extension from Mozilla's own extension store."
|
| So far they have 73 pairs, but should increase overtime and
| likely cover the most commonly used extensions.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Though this isn't actually about importing extensions that aren't
| already in Firefox, the extension APIs are standardised enough
| that this is actually possible a lot of the time. For example, I
| unpacked the Google Translate extension, made a single change to
| the manifest (I think so Firefox recognises it as supported) and
| loaded it into Firefox and it works perfectly! But it doesn't
| work for everything, Amazon's Send To Kindle extension didn't
| work for me. It would be nice if there was an automated way to do
| this, I think there used to be. Maybe I can try to make something
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Push to Kindle is a pretty nice solution for this
| https://www.pushtokindle.com/
| syncbehind wrote:
| The title is a bit misleading and would be clarified a lot more
| with the inclusion of "New" as in "New Firefox users may import
| Chrome extensions now"
| yurishimo wrote:
| The problem with all of these cross browser extension translation
| layers, is that they only work on the most superficial level for
| ultra simple extensions.
|
| None of these browsers that advertise this work with devtools
| extensions from Chrome. React, Vue, and Alpine devtools are all
| dead in the water. Luckily the big ones have native builds for
| Firefox, but none of the Safari based browsers (like Orion) can
| run Chrome based devtools despite advertising "works with Chrome
| extensions!"
|
| I hope one day they get there, but for now, I need to use a
| Chromium browser to effectively debug some applications, and
| that's a bummer.
|
| (Yes, I know many of these tools offer a standalone build that
| can connect via websockets, but ime, they are unreliable or a
| pain to setup.)
| syncbehind wrote:
| Did you read the article?
| MattSteelblade wrote:
| I was underwhelmed to discover that this is simply a list of
| extensions (currently at 73) that exist in both the Chrome Web
| Store and Firefox Addons and not some sort of cross-platform
| support.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Wasn't the whole purpose of web extensions to make this not a
| problem?
| SoKamil wrote:
| One of the main purposes was to make developers lives easier
| so you can have a single codebase instead of juggling with
| browser specific APIs and configs. Otherwise many developers
| would just go with a market default.
| tracker1 wrote:
| All for this... anything that reduces friction in developing
| extensions.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Awesome feature. If Chrome ever rolls out Web Environment
| Integrity this will really smooth my transition to FF.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Kind of getting off topic here but if Web Environment Integrity
| takes off then the whole issue is that its then up to the
| website if you're even allowed to use Firefox.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Any company in the US that tries that is going to run afoul
| of the ADA.
| [deleted]
| notyourwork wrote:
| I'm not sure... Are you saying Firefox is the only ADA
| compliant browser? Years ago when I dealt with ADA and web
| accessibility I found gaps across all the browsers. There
| wasn't a one-size fits all. Rather mileage varied with each
| website.
|
| Have things changed?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'm saying forcing use of Chrome means specialty user
| agent's with accessibility features won't work any more
| than Firefox.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Title is false. I'm not even going to say misleading. No there
| isn't a compatibility layer for Chrome extensions to run in
| Firefox. There's just a list of extensions that are available in
| both browsers.
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(page generated 2023-08-24 23:01 UTC)