Firefox upgrade breaks extensions

I've always thought the standard conventions for software version numbering were such that changing the main version number means that the software is not backwards-compatible; otherwise, the software shall remain backwards-compatible. Thus, isn't 1.5 really a 2.0 if it breaks some of its features, even if they are third-party (how can they so purely call those extensions a feature if it doesn't take responsibility for making sure that they won't break them)? This is disappointing.

Well in all fairness, on the www.mozilla.org web site, version 1.5 is listed as for testing purposes only for web developers and extension makers.

totally agreed. in some cases exts aren't not-compatible but they don't work too.

it's like the car: u can buy cheap one and it'll be ok. u'll be able to drive to work and back, maybe even to pick up some chick on it, but in the end when u go to highway and push the accelerator u'll fell the difference.

Two things:

"I do have Firefox installed. I don't use it often,..."

Right opposite. You're a Opera user trying Firefox out, I'm a Firefox user trying Opera (taking chance of the 10th anniversary free serial number :P).

"If it's always going to be in beta, it's going to have to do a better job of not changing so much that the extensions break."

I disagree with this, actually. For versions before 1.0, there is no alternative stable version available. But for now, you can use 1.06. 1.5 is still in beta, yes, but not the whole Firefox.

I'm enjoying Opera quite a lot, by the way :)

wctaiwan

wctaiwan: that's a fair point about 1.06 being available.

Still, I expect (and I suspect others expect) that if something is 1.0 compatible it will remain compatible until at least 2.0. Minor point revisions should not break existing functionality, especially for a program that depends so heavily on 3rd party extensions.

Imagine this: you write a program for Windows 2000 using the Microsoft APIs. It works perfectly. Windows XP comes out, and your program has to be tweaked a little to work. Ok, you expect that. But then XP SP1 comes out, and the program no longer works. You fix it, and then XP SP2 comes out, and the program no longer works again.

People would be upset, not the least of which are the developers who have to go in and clean up the mess caused by breaking backwards compatibility.

In the same way, I expect that extensions for 1.0 will work for 1.1-9. If they won't, it indicates changes which are significant enough to bump the revision number to 2.0. (IMO, obviously.)

I also expect that this is just a part of Firefox's growing pains. By version 3.0 or 4.0 (hopefully sooner!) I would hope that things have settled down enough that backwards compatibility will be built-in.

Imagine how Windows Firefox users would howl if they needed to make a different version of Firefox for Windows 2000 and XP and Vista because Microsoft broke functionality that it depended on.

Now imagine if they had to write a different version for XP and XP SP1 and XP SP2. There would be widespread outrage.

Yes, I agree with you on that, but have you thought about the possibility of the extensions actually being compatible, just that Firefox doesn't recognize them? If you can remember, there is something similar on Windows XP - When you installed a driver that's not been checked by Microsoft, it warns you that it is unregistered, etc. As an actual fact, the driver will still work. Possibly Firefox has just disabled the extensions because it thinks they will not work, unlike Windows XP, it leaves no option to keep them enabled. This is just a wild guess as I'm not an expert at browsers.

While I try to defend Firefox as much as possible, I have to agree that things like this, being acceptable to me, are not very good. The Firefox community should work harder, to keep their things up-to-date with the latest version of software.

wctaiwan

I hadn't considered that. I seems to specifically check for compatibility with Firefox 1.4 or above. I also ran the "Check for updates" again yesterday and it still didn't show any.

I'll be waiting for full releases in the future.

To be fair: It is not Firefox that breaks the extensions. It is the extensions that has the limit. The extension maker decides wich versions of Firefox it is going to work with. ie they have coded into the extension to tell Firefox that this extension works up to version 1.0x if the version is anything else, the extension reports itself invalid to Firefox and consequently Firefox will not load that extension.

Pentti: Interesting. That seems like a poorly designed way of implementing something to essential to the browser, and if it was simply a matter of telling Firefox that they will work with 1.5, why haven't they been updated?

The point remains: reliance on extensions for browser functionality means that with every upgrade comes a risk that things will stop working. That’s an unacceptable situation for me. Others will no doubt feel differently.

Hi Tim. I am an Opera user and am enjoying your tutorials. A friend (a FireFox (FF) user, who is trying Opera), discussed with me your reaction to FF 1.5 beta breaking extensions.

I offered him this slightly tongue-in-cheek response ( I hope you don't mind ;-):

"Re ... Tim, I can see why he got irritated, but he did spit the dummy a bit and one of his correspondents did point out that Mozilla made it clear that FF 1.5 is a beta. Tim is usually quite reasonable/irenic, and nowhere near as vitriolic as the FireFox CEO ... (who is an added albeit tiny reason I am not a regular FF user).

"Part of the problem is the difference in philosophy between the Opera and FF communities ..

If you liken them to cars, FF will put a beta car onto the open road which is an all-road vehicle which will perform very nicely (but the there will be some small security updates/recalls). HOWEVER...the brakes - designed by a community of designers - are from the previous model, and they are a plug-in. They should work nicely, but they may not - and hey, this is a beta - you have been warned... ;-). The new Opera car is not an all wheel drive and will work very nicely on main roads, but some back roads will break it as they are designed for cars with better clearance and sumpguards (eg FF), as well as cars with clearance and leaky sumps (IE6) (and no locks on the doors).

"However the brakes in the new Opera car are standard, not a plug-in and they have had a fair bit of testing on the test track. There could be some security updates (eg to the brake pads)...but not as many or as big (eg calipers and rotors) as some of the beta 4WDs out there... ;-)"

Of course, as Opera is my preferred browser, I am slightly biased... ;-)

Keep up the good work, Tim!!

Steve L

Heh “spit the dummy” is the new phrase for me.

I’ll just reiterate what I said before. Before 1.0 I believe they (Firefox developers) had pretty much the freedom to do whatever they wanted.

After 1.0, I believe users have the right to expect that things that work in 1.0 will work at least until 2.0.

A “Beta” of 1.5 does not lead me to expect that 1.0 things would break, only that there are some new features that might not work 100% yet. A beta of 2.0 (codenamed “Deer Park”) does exist, and I would expect that things might not work there, yet. However, in mature software, going from 1.0 to 2.0 should not break everything. It seems (and I could be wrong) like Firefox development still has the sense of “We can always throw this out and start over” quality for it.

With some exceptions, software written for Windows 95 or 98 will still work with Windows XP. Most software written for Mac OS X 10.1 still works with 10.4. These are signs of maturity of design.

Firefox hasn’t gotten there yet. That’s only a minor criticism, but it is true. It’s also not to say there is not innovation or creativity, etc in the Firefox camp. There is. However, a huge part of Firefox’s appeal is the extensions, and it’s a part of Firefox that they ought to treat very carefully. Releasing a public beta, knowing that it will break extensions, is a bad idea. This should have been solved in a nightly build before a public beta.

I checked again and 3 of the 4 extensions have been updated. I don’t know when that happened, but it took well over a week, maybe two. If Firefox was my daily browser, that would be a long time to be without functions I had come to depend on.

There's a way to hack the Firefox extension download (it's just a renamed zip file), update the maximum version number, cross your fingers, and hope that extension still works. But that gets old really fast.

Which is one reason I'm trying out Opera now. I really like the email so far.

Erm... I refuse to use opera until they come up with a simpler mechanism to block adverts. firefox so far is the best to pull this off with the adblock extension. Another problem with opera is lack of control over the UI you can't bend it as far as firefox. I can make firefox do anything I want it to since it uses a standard method to modify it. Yes they did make an upgrade and killed extensions but people like myself know how to open up a zip file ( those xpi files ) and change it to support 1.5 most of the extensions work that claim don't, it's just a way to force developers to make a release for it to ensure it's working correctly with the new version. Anyhow that's my 2 cents.

((TjL adds: Good news, content blocking is available and much easier in Opera 9. You can get preview 2 now from http://snapshot.opera.com))

like Firelode & everyone else says .. without adblock (ff extension) browsers are useless .. that's the bottom of it basically ;)

[TjL adds: if that's the case, then how fortuitous that Opera9 will have ad-blocking built in. Of course there have always been ways of getting this done (see this for example) but now it's officially supported in Opera9 which is currently in beta.

And don't any of those FF folks complain about "Oh it doesn't count, it's in beta" because FF lived in beta for ages.

Oh, and yeah, this will be built-in, so yet again, Opera users will have a feature that they want without worrying that it will break when they upgrade. Firefox users risk their browser becoming "useless" (that's their word for it, not mine! See above!) if an upgrade breaks their beloved ad-blocking extension.

Lastly, if you try to visit "http://nostromo.no.funpic.org" which is the website our anonymous Firefox fanboy put in, it will tell you that you have to use Firefox. It claims that Opera, even Opera when set to ID as Opera, is Internet Explorer. Great. So now we have "This site designed for Firefox" instead of "This site designed for Netscape"? Brilliant. This is what they've come up with? Meanwhile Opera is still working to Open The Web. In their zealotry to block IE users, they have blocked me too. Why do I have to download/use a browser that I don't want to use? Why not just let me in and let me SEE that the site is broken if I use IE? Too subtle, I guess. sigh

Oh, and they don't even give you a direct download link for Firefox. It goes through Google's AdSense program. Nice indeed.]

Hi TjL,

I'm an Opera lover like you! I'm a Web developer, so I keep FF around for testing.

About the website http://nostromo.no.funpic.org, I actually opened it up in Firefox and it showed me the same page.

I'm guessing that the page is only there to try to collect Google Adsense revenues. Oh well, such is life.

Ok here is how the firefox(fx) extension compatibility check mechanism works

Extension writers can specify in their extensions what versions of fx they are targeting, they can give the minimum version required and the maximum version support so say min version 0.9 to max version 1.5 in which case the extension will work with fx versions (0.9 to 1.5). Now the extension writers can be optimistic and say maxVersion as 1.5+ meaning any fx with version 1.5 or above. In which case the extensions would not get disabled when upgrade to 1.6 and on. ..

Firefox doesnt do any kind of compatibility checks besides looking at these numbers given by the extension itself. So the onus is on the extension writers to give appropriate version targets.