1410770 - Approval to begin ESR for Firefox 54.x branch

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Mayur Patil]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160411140819

Steps to reproduce:

Most of the addon developers as well as users are trying hard to shift to newer version but because of dynamic changes in codebase for addons it is becoming painful and most of users are switching back to older versions (From Firefox 54.x and below).


Actual results:

As Mozilla is still doing experiments on addons to make them cross platform oriented, some of the best addons such as Downthemall, Toolbar Buttons etc are suffering from lack of compatible lower level API.
Proof: 
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toolbar-buttons/reviews/
http://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-webextensions-or-why-why-i-am-done-with-mozilla/
This will hurt userbase who loved mozilla and addons for year.


Expected results:

There should annoucement for ESR to Firefox 54.x from 2018-04-30 where we are ending support of ESR 52.8.

This will be a definitely good news to addon developers as well as users who have trusted mozilla for so many years.

Points put forth:
1. Please make lower level API stable asap for making homecoming of Addon 
    Developers.

2. Announcement of ESR for Firefox 54.x branch which is next most workable 
    release for Legacy and Webextensions based addons.

Comment 1

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

(In reply to Mayur Patil from comment #0)
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
> Build ID: 20160411140819
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> Most of the addon developers as well as users are trying hard to shift to
> newer version but because of dynamic changes in codebase for addons it is
> becoming painful and most of users are switching back to older versions
> (From Firefox 54.x and below).
> 
> 
> Actual results:
> 
> As Mozilla is still doing experiments on addons to make them cross platform
> oriented, some of the best addons such as Downthemall, Toolbar Buttons etc
> are suffering from lack of compatible lower level API.

To be clear, they're not experiments. The WebExtensions API was announced in August 2015 as the only way extensions will be supported in Firefox moving forward, and that remains the case. We understand that not all legacy extensions will make the transition in 57, and also understand that some users may lament their loss.

We'll continue to expand the capabilities of the WebExtensions API, but we cannot, and will not, support direct access to lower-level APIs in release and beta versions of Firefox.

> Expected results:
> 
> There should annoucement for ESR to Firefox 54.x from 2018-04-30 where we
> are ending support of ESR 52.8.

Should users continue to need to use legacy add-ons, the ESR will be supported through until June of 2018, when the ESR release based on 52 is end-of-lifed. That is the only supported option, and will likely remain as such.