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Future of Waterfox (self.waterfox)

submitted by mysterixx

Can someone enlighten me what is going to happen after August 2018? Is Waterfox going to continue to run legacy extensions or have a totally new API based extension system? Is there a guarantee that I will be able to run my old legacy extensions forever with Waterfox? This is crucial for me because I am using website archiving extensions such as Scrapbook and they are not going to be updated so I don't want to lose all my saved pages. Is there a clear roadmap right now or we don't know the future yet?

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[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 12 points13 points  (8 children)

Just letting you know I’ve read this. Will write a reply tomorrow 🙂, but basically Waterfox isn’t going anywhere and I have plans laid out 👍

Edit:

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

Is Waterfox going to continue to run legacy extensions or have a totally new API based extension system?

Mozilla still uses legacy extensions internally (albeit they are developed in tandem with browser updates so they don't have to worry about breakages), so lets say we take ESR 60 as base, it's more of a case of exposing them (and seeing what APIs may be missing, re-implementing the add-on SDK and testing, testing, testing) rather than limiting them internally (unless something has changed compared to 57 for the handling of this). Also, I managed to get this working with 57 as a quick experiment - add-ons would just need to be updated as a lot of them failed due to XUL changes.

Is there a guarantee that I will be able to run my old legacy extensions forever with Waterfox?

Probably not forever, the point is keep things just a customisable so any add-ons long abandoned or out-dated can be updated with the same amount of customisability while still having a modern browser 🙂

Is there a clear roadmap right now or we don't know the future yet?

I'm in the midst of it all, and getting external help etc - I don't want to just throw out random dates. But be aware I use Waterfox all the time, every day so it's not going anywhere. Don't think I'd be happy using something else 😄

[–]dnkndnts 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I'm sure some will disagree, but I'll just throw my opinion out there: legacy extensions aren't important to me; the important thing is removing the various forms of tracking Mozilla perpetually tries to sneak in these days.

[–]MrAlex94Founder 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Well they don’t have to be mutually exclusive of each other 🙂

[–]dnkndnts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure, if it's feasible to support them, more power to you!

[–]--NRG-- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks

[–]mysterixx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for the reply

[–]TripolarKnight 0 points1 point  (2 children)

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

Are you keeping/maintaining an archive or someone else?

[–]MrAlex94Founder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. A few people already have a complete archive copied already.

[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

I have a local copy of the add-on DB. As do a few other people :-)

[–]mzso 1 point2 points  (13 children)

What relevance does August 2018 have? I see nothing at all. XUL extensions were already dumped by mozilla for firefox on stable in v57.

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (12 children)

What relevance does August 2018 have? …

Probably the end of life (EOL) for Firefox ESR 52.9 – please see Future branch dates in RapidRelease/Calendar - MozillaWiki.

In Reddit and elsewhere you'll find a few discussions of a Firefox ESR 60 (again, see Future branch dates) as a basis for Waterfox. From https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/458#issuecomment-370175222 a couple of days ago, in response to a question about Quantum:

… compatibility and XUL/XPCOM support is the big idea so if it doesn’t work then the 56 base will remain.

The issue there is closed, so if you'd like to follow relevant discussions in GitHub I suggest the four that are linked from https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/81y78m/-/dv6v9yx/.

Quantum?

There's frequent ambiguity around uses of the word, in relation to Firefox and Firefox-based browsers.

On one hand:

– on the other hand:

  • web browsers Firefox 57 and 58 are also known as Firefox Quantum, and I expect the same will be true for releases 59 and 60.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (9 children)

Waterfox is not based on FF ESR, but FF56 with security patches uplifted from later versions. So it's of little to no relevance.

I'm expecting this will continue, and hoping that meaningful performance improvements (stylo, webrender, advanced layers) will be patched into WF. (Sadly, at this point even stuff that's in the official FF56 is missing, such as the three I mentioned. Correction: of the three webrender is not built in the official version either.)

[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 2 points3 points  (6 children)

I'm expecting this will continue, and hoping that meaningful performance improvements (stylo, webrender, advanced layers) will be patched into WF. (Sadly, at this point even stuff that's in the official FF56 is missing, such as the three I mentioned. Correction: of the three webrender is not built in the official version either.)

The best performance improvements weren't done with style/webrender - but yes support is planned.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Well, for me stylo made a significant difference, maybe because my reliance on many stylish CSS scripts, Classic theme restorer and many addons besides.

but yes support is planned

By this you mean at a later time? I imagine stylo should immediately possible, since FF56 has it by default.

[–]MrAlex94Founder 2 points3 points  (4 children)

As in planned for the next release 🙂

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Cool. Do you plan to enable advanced layers also? It might require uplifting some patches. There's a bug I noticed (which I can't reproduce on moz-central) with it enabled when animated gif-s are zoomed: https://abload.de/img/advancedlayersanimategsobm.png (An edge of the images are rendered on the wrong side) Testfile: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TPjZgHGnWH2p0Axk9tLIXaNsW1bTM1bY

[–]MrAlex94Founder 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ll definitely check it out! May be too many changes to patch it easily though, will see.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm. It seems advanced layers noticeably helped responsiveness, since I re-enabled it. (I only disabled because of this animated gif glitch, but now I'm thinking it's worth having anyway)

[–]PadaV4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While Mozilla supports ESR 52, they are making security patches compatible with the Firefox versions before Quantum. And its those patches which are than applied to Waterfox. Once Mozilla drops support for ESR52 it will be solely on the shoulders of Waterfox developers to backport these patches.

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

… stylo …

Stylo – layout.css.servo.enabled – in Waterfox · Issue #332 · MrAlex94/Waterfox – I can use it with Waterfox on FreeBSD-CURRENT, but NB the comment from Jan Beich.

Waterfox is not based on FF ESR …

Understood, thanks. The mention of the future EOL of Firefox ESR 52.9 was not about the current basis. Re: 'Future of Waterfox' the mention was … sort of, to put in context the various discussions about a Firefox ESR 60 as a possible basis for Waterfox.

[–]mornaq -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Quantum is not a new web browser

yup, mostly because you cant that thing a browser anymore, it's just an awful chrome clone

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you haven't already seen it, some of what's coming is in the developer-led discussion that began around three days ago:

Also please subscribe to:

[–]KlaasVaak1 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Hey Alex, I turned Waterfox into my default browser a few weeks ago because I was impressed with it, still am :-)

The only thing that bothers me is its huge memory hog, going well above 1 Gb in a couple of hours. I know: 1. Mozilla is supposed to have worked on this in the course of time, so maybe you cannot change WF, or can you? 2. Sometimes people advise to close & relaunch WF, but that is a workaround I don't like, esp. if I have a number of tabs open. 3. Keep add-ons to a minimum, but I have the same number of add-ons as when I was using Opera, and that did not go beyond a few 100 Mb of memory.

I hope this issue can be fixed.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

There are some ways that allow you to save memory:

1) Disable e10s. Probably the most effective measure.

2) Use add-ons like these two:

3) The first three tips mentioned here: https://www.davidtan.org/tips-reduce-firefox-memory-cache-usage/

4) Check whether or not some add-on might be hogging memory.

[–]KlaasVaak1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply. I implemented some the tips. They are workarounds, and I wonder why the Chrome-based browsers can keep the memory resource use down and Firefox/Waterfox can't.

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this post was submitted on
5 points (78% upvoted)
shortlink:

waterfox

2,442 readers

29 users here now

The official community to discuss Waterfox. Get support, help and anything you need Waterfox related.

Related Subreddits:

/r/Firefox

created by CAP_NAME_NOW_UPVOTEReddit Moderatora community for
message the moderators

MODERATORS

×

4
5

Future of Waterfox (self.waterfox)

submitted by mysterixx

Can someone enlighten me what is going to happen after August 2018? Is Waterfox going to continue to run legacy extensions or have a totally new API based extension system? Is there a guarantee that I will be able to run my old legacy extensions forever with Waterfox? This is crucial for me because I am using website archiving extensions such as Scrapbook and they are not going to be updated so I don't want to lose all my saved pages. Is there a clear roadmap right now or we don't know the future yet?

all 26 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 12 points13 points  (8 children)

Just letting you know I’ve read this. Will write a reply tomorrow 🙂, but basically Waterfox isn’t going anywhere and I have plans laid out 👍

Edit:

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

Is Waterfox going to continue to run legacy extensions or have a totally new API based extension system?

Mozilla still uses legacy extensions internally (albeit they are developed in tandem with browser updates so they don't have to worry about breakages), so lets say we take ESR 60 as base, it's more of a case of exposing them (and seeing what APIs may be missing, re-implementing the add-on SDK and testing, testing, testing) rather than limiting them internally (unless something has changed compared to 57 for the handling of this). Also, I managed to get this working with 57 as a quick experiment - add-ons would just need to be updated as a lot of them failed due to XUL changes.

Is there a guarantee that I will be able to run my old legacy extensions forever with Waterfox?

Probably not forever, the point is keep things just a customisable so any add-ons long abandoned or out-dated can be updated with the same amount of customisability while still having a modern browser 🙂

Is there a clear roadmap right now or we don't know the future yet?

I'm in the midst of it all, and getting external help etc - I don't want to just throw out random dates. But be aware I use Waterfox all the time, every day so it's not going anywhere. Don't think I'd be happy using something else 😄

[–]dnkndnts 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I'm sure some will disagree, but I'll just throw my opinion out there: legacy extensions aren't important to me; the important thing is removing the various forms of tracking Mozilla perpetually tries to sneak in these days.

[–]MrAlex94Founder 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Well they don’t have to be mutually exclusive of each other 🙂

[–]dnkndnts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure, if it's feasible to support them, more power to you!

[–]--NRG-- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks

[–]mysterixx[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for the reply

[–]TripolarKnight 0 points1 point  (2 children)

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

Are you keeping/maintaining an archive or someone else?

[–]MrAlex94Founder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. A few people already have a complete archive copied already.

[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After the add-on store rids the old add-ons, there should be an archive in place where you can access all your favourite classic add-ons.

I have a local copy of the add-on DB. As do a few other people :-)

[–]mzso 1 point2 points  (13 children)

What relevance does August 2018 have? I see nothing at all. XUL extensions were already dumped by mozilla for firefox on stable in v57.

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (12 children)

What relevance does August 2018 have? …

Probably the end of life (EOL) for Firefox ESR 52.9 – please see Future branch dates in RapidRelease/Calendar - MozillaWiki.

In Reddit and elsewhere you'll find a few discussions of a Firefox ESR 60 (again, see Future branch dates) as a basis for Waterfox. From https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/458#issuecomment-370175222 a couple of days ago, in response to a question about Quantum:

… compatibility and XUL/XPCOM support is the big idea so if it doesn’t work then the 56 base will remain.

The issue there is closed, so if you'd like to follow relevant discussions in GitHub I suggest the four that are linked from https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/81y78m/-/dv6v9yx/.

Quantum?

There's frequent ambiguity around uses of the word, in relation to Firefox and Firefox-based browsers.

On one hand:

– on the other hand:

  • web browsers Firefox 57 and 58 are also known as Firefox Quantum, and I expect the same will be true for releases 59 and 60.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (9 children)

Waterfox is not based on FF ESR, but FF56 with security patches uplifted from later versions. So it's of little to no relevance.

I'm expecting this will continue, and hoping that meaningful performance improvements (stylo, webrender, advanced layers) will be patched into WF. (Sadly, at this point even stuff that's in the official FF56 is missing, such as the three I mentioned. Correction: of the three webrender is not built in the official version either.)

[–]MrAlex94Founder[M] 2 points3 points  (6 children)

I'm expecting this will continue, and hoping that meaningful performance improvements (stylo, webrender, advanced layers) will be patched into WF. (Sadly, at this point even stuff that's in the official FF56 is missing, such as the three I mentioned. Correction: of the three webrender is not built in the official version either.)

The best performance improvements weren't done with style/webrender - but yes support is planned.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Well, for me stylo made a significant difference, maybe because my reliance on many stylish CSS scripts, Classic theme restorer and many addons besides.

but yes support is planned

By this you mean at a later time? I imagine stylo should immediately possible, since FF56 has it by default.

[–]MrAlex94Founder 2 points3 points  (4 children)

As in planned for the next release 🙂

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Cool. Do you plan to enable advanced layers also? It might require uplifting some patches. There's a bug I noticed (which I can't reproduce on moz-central) with it enabled when animated gif-s are zoomed: https://abload.de/img/advancedlayersanimategsobm.png (An edge of the images are rendered on the wrong side) Testfile: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TPjZgHGnWH2p0Axk9tLIXaNsW1bTM1bY

[–]MrAlex94Founder 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ll definitely check it out! May be too many changes to patch it easily though, will see.

[–]mzso 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm. It seems advanced layers noticeably helped responsiveness, since I re-enabled it. (I only disabled because of this animated gif glitch, but now I'm thinking it's worth having anyway)

[–]PadaV4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While Mozilla supports ESR 52, they are making security patches compatible with the Firefox versions before Quantum. And its those patches which are than applied to Waterfox. Once Mozilla drops support for ESR52 it will be solely on the shoulders of Waterfox developers to backport these patches.

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

… stylo …

Stylo – layout.css.servo.enabled – in Waterfox · Issue #332 · MrAlex94/Waterfox – I can use it with Waterfox on FreeBSD-CURRENT, but NB the comment from Jan Beich.

Waterfox is not based on FF ESR …

Understood, thanks. The mention of the future EOL of Firefox ESR 52.9 was not about the current basis. Re: 'Future of Waterfox' the mention was … sort of, to put in context the various discussions about a Firefox ESR 60 as a possible basis for Waterfox.

[–]mornaq -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Quantum is not a new web browser

yup, mostly because you cant that thing a browser anymore, it's just an awful chrome clone

[–]grahamperrin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you haven't already seen it, some of what's coming is in the developer-led discussion that began around three days ago:

Also please subscribe to:

[–]KlaasVaak1 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Hey Alex, I turned Waterfox into my default browser a few weeks ago because I was impressed with it, still am :-)

The only thing that bothers me is its huge memory hog, going well above 1 Gb in a couple of hours. I know: 1. Mozilla is supposed to have worked on this in the course of time, so maybe you cannot change WF, or can you? 2. Sometimes people advise to close & relaunch WF, but that is a workaround I don't like, esp. if I have a number of tabs open. 3. Keep add-ons to a minimum, but I have the same number of add-ons as when I was using Opera, and that did not go beyond a few 100 Mb of memory.

I hope this issue can be fixed.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

There are some ways that allow you to save memory:

1) Disable e10s. Probably the most effective measure.

2) Use add-ons like these two:

3) The first three tips mentioned here: https://www.davidtan.org/tips-reduce-firefox-memory-cache-usage/

4) Check whether or not some add-on might be hogging memory.

[–]KlaasVaak1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply. I implemented some the tips. They are workarounds, and I wonder why the Chrome-based browsers can keep the memory resource use down and Firefox/Waterfox can't.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. © 2018 reddit inc. All rights reserved.

REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc.

π Rendered by PID 127784 on app-509 at 2018-03-30 22:04:19.162758+00:00 running d701012 country code: JP.