- An actual reading mode: And Pocket integration
- Better PDF handling: Chrome is as basic as it gets
- Better performance: Based on our testing, at least
- Most of your extensions are still available: Firefox uses the same extension platform
- The privacy: Google doesn't care about it
- Protecting an open internet: Mozilla is the last major player standing up to Chromium
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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While Firefox is a completely separate entity from Chrome, Mozilla does recognize that some things are better off standardized. So if you're worried about your extensions not working on Firefox, that shouldn't be a problem.
?!? What does that even mean?
Most people will understand that as 'my chrome extensions will work on FF' or as 'my chrome extensions are also available for FF', which is not true. There are alternatives, yes, but there is real probability they will not find an exact alternative to whatver their most important chrome extension is. Yeah, there are also much better extensions available on FF (looking at you, my dearest and unrivalled uBO) but people usually don't give a crap about that, or they would have ditched Chrome already.
I am all from promoting FF but not by using so large an... approximations. I almost wrote 'lies' but those are not exactly lies, they're just missing the whole point by trying to make things (uselessly) look better than they are.
Edit: clarifications.
Also really confusing when you consider adblock extensions and Firefox continuing to support MANIFEST v2
Well, what they were trying to say, is that Firefox's extension API is essentially a superset of the Chrome extension API. If an extension works with Chrome's limited API, then it should be almost trivial to port it to Firefox.
But yes, this is not a guarantee that the same extensions are available.
Some extension devs might not care to support both browsers, just because it may require more work for testing and releasing.
In particular, Mozilla also does not allow extensions to make web requests, unless this is part of the core functionality, so if extensions finance themselves via ads or tracking, they likely won't make more money from releasing to Firefox.
Wrongest community ever to post this in?
Fair enough. :D