Add-on (Mozilla)

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Add-on is the Mozilla term for software modules that can be added to the Firefox web browser and related applications. Mozilla hosts them on its official add-on website. [1]

Contents

Browser extensions are the primary type of add-on. In 2017, Mozilla enacted major changes to the application programming interface (API) for extensions in Firefox, replacing the long-standing XUL and XPCOM APIs with the WebExtensions API that is modeled after Google Chrome's API. [2] [3] [4] Thus add-ons that remain compatible with Firefox are now largely compatible with Chrome as well. [5] As of January, 2024, there are more than 36,000 add-ons and over 495,000 themes available for Firefox. [6] [7]

Current add-ons

Extensions

WebExtensions

Starting with Firefox 57, only the new WebExtensions API is supported. [3] [8]

Themes

Early versions of Firefox supported themes that could greatly change the appearance of the browser, but this was scaled back over time. Current themes are limited to changing the background and text color of toolbars. [9] (These lightweight themes were formerly called personas. [10] )

Historical add-ons

Extensions

Legacy extensions

Prior to 2017, Firefox supported extensions developed with different APIs: XUL, XPCOM, and Jetpack. [11] Mozilla now refers to these as legacy extensions. [4]

Plug-ins

Plug-ins are no longer supported in Firefox. In the past, they were used to handle media types for which the application did not have built-in capability. They were deprecated due to security concerns and improvements in Web APIs. [12] The last one that was officially supported was Adobe Flash Player, which Adobe discontinued in 2020. [13] [14]

Restrictions

Mozilla had no mechanism to restrict the privileges of legacy Firefox extensions. This meant that a legacy extension could read or modify the data used by another extension or any file accessible to the user running Mozilla applications. [15] But the current WebExtensions API imposes many restrictions. [16]

Starting with Firefox 40, Mozilla began to roll out a requirement for extension signing. [17] It is now required in all official Firefox releases. [18]

Website

Add-ons for Firefox
Firefox Browser Add-ons logo.svg
Type of site
Hosts add-ons
Owner Mozilla Foundation
URL addons.mozilla.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationFree; only needed for developers or for special features
Current statusActive

The Mozilla add-ons website is the official repository for Firefox add-ons. [1] In contrast to mozdev.org which provides free hosting for Mozilla-related projects, the add-ons site is tailored for users. By default, Firefox automatically checks the site for updates to installed add-ons. [19]

In January 2008, Mozilla announced that the site had accumulated a total of 600 million add-on downloads and that over 100 million installed add-ons automatically check the site for updates every day. [20] In July 2012, the total had increased to 3 billion downloads from the site. [21]

Related Research Articles

Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Component Object Model (COM),Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and system object model (SOM). It features multiple language bindings and interface description language (IDL) descriptions; thus programmers can plug their custom functions into the framework and connect it with other components.

A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the summation of the required components comprise the computing platform.

XUL, which stands for XML User Interface Language, is a user interface markup language developed by Mozilla. XUL is an XML dialect for writing graphical user interfaces, enabling developers to write user interface elements in a manner similar to web pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firefox</span> Free and open-source web browser by Mozilla

Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. Firefox is available for Windows 10 or later versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and other platforms. It is also available for Android and iOS. However, as with all other iOS web browsers, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform requirements. An optimized version is also available on the Amazon Fire TV as one of the two main browsers available with Amazon's Silk Browser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Thunderbird</span> Free and open-source email client by Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client which also functions as a personal information manager with a calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix), and news client. Available cross-platform, it is operated by the Mozilla Foundation's subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird Community. The project strategy was originally modeled after that of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser and is an interface built on top of that Web browser.

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is a deprecated application programming interface (API) for web browser plugins, initially developed for Netscape Navigator 2.0 in 1995 and subsequently adopted by other browsers.

OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow the publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. Introduced in 2005, it is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format.

A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages.

A local shared object (LSO), commonly called a Flash cookie, is a piece of data that websites that use Adobe Flash may store on a user's computer. Local shared objects have been used by all versions of Flash Player since version 6.

A browser toolbar is a toolbar that resides within a browser's window. All major web browsers provide support to browser toolbar development as a way to extend the browser's GUI and functionality. Browser toolbars are considered to be a particular kind of browser extensions that present a toolbar. Browser toolbars are specific to each browser, which means that a toolbar working on a browser does not work on another one. All browser toolbars must be installed in the corresponding browser before they can be used and require updates when new versions are released.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stylish (software)</span> User style manager

Stylish is a user style manager that can change the appearance of web pages in a user's browser without changing their content by including user-supplied CSS style sheets with those supplied by the web site itself. The Stylish browser extension includes tools with which to write user styles, and can install user styles written by other Stylish users from a companion website. These user styles may be more or less selective, targeting just one web page, or all of the pages on a domain, or every page on the web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firebug (software)</span> Web development add-on for Firefox

Firebug is a discontinued free and open-source web browser extension for Mozilla Firefox that facilitated the live debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website's CSS, HTML, DOM, XHR, and JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web development tools</span> Software used to test the UI of a website or web application

Web development tools allow web developers to test, modify and debug their websites. They are different from website builders and integrated development environments (IDEs) in that they do not assist in the direct creation of a webpage, rather they are tools used for testing the user interface of a website or web application.

The Mozilla Archive Format (MAFF) is a legacy Web archive file format that was provided by Firefox through an extension, used to store one or more web pages with their associated audio, video, and other related web resources to a single file. Unlike MHTML, which uses MIME encoding within a single HTML file, MAFF compresses the page into a Zip container file.

Video DownloadHelper is an extension for Firefox and Chrome web browsers. It allows the user to download videos from sites that stream videos through HTTP. The extension was developed by Michel Gutierrez.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pale Moon</span> Free and open-source web browser

Pale Moon is a free and open-source web browser licensed under the MPL-2.0 with an emphasis on customization. Its motto is "Your browser, Your way." There are official releases for Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux.

Content Security Policy (CSP) is a computer security standard introduced to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking and other code injection attacks resulting from execution of malicious content in the trusted web page context. It is a Candidate Recommendation of the W3C working group on Web Application Security, widely supported by modern web browsers. CSP provides a standard method for website owners to declare approved origins of content that browsers should be allowed to load on that website—covered types are JavaScript, CSS, HTML frames, web workers, fonts, images, embeddable objects such as Java applets, ActiveX, audio and video files, and other HTML5 features.

HTML audio is a subject of the HTML specification, incorporating audio input, playback, and synthesis, as well as speech to text, all in the browser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basilisk (web browser)</span> Free and open-source web browser

Basilisk is a free and open-source web browser available for Windows, Linux, and with experimental support for FreeBSD and macOS. Basilisk is an updated fork of Firefox designed to look and feel similar to versions before the underlying backend was changed in version 57.

References

  1. 1 2 "Official Add-on website". Mozilla. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
  2. ↑ "The Future of Developing Firefox Add-ons". Mozilla Add-ons Blog. 21 August 2015. Retrieved 2018-12-15.
  3. 1 2 "Upcoming Changes in Compatibility Features". Mozilla Add-ons Blog. 10 August 2017. Retrieved 2018-12-15.
  4. 1 2 "How to enable legacy extensions in Firefox 57 - gHacks Tech News". www.ghacks.net. 12 August 2017. Retrieved 2018-12-14.
  5. ↑ "Porting a Google Chrome extension". Mozilla. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
  6. ↑ "Search results (Extensions) – Add-ons for Firefox (en-US)". addons.mozilla.org. Mozilla. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  7. ↑ "Search results (Themes) – Add-ons for Firefox (en-US)". addons.mozilla.org. Mozilla. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  8. ↑ "Browser extensions". MDN. Mozilla. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
  9. ↑ "Themes for Firefox".
  10. ↑ "Personas are now Firefox Themes".
  11. ↑ Chapter 2: Technologies used in developing extensions - Firefox addons developer guide | MDN Archived 2016-10-05 at the Wayback Machine . Developer.mozilla.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-21.
  12. ↑ Smedberg, Benjamin (8 October 2015). "NPAPI Plugins in Firefox". Future Releases. Mozilla Foundation.
  13. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (25 July 2017). "Get ready to finally say goodbye to Flash — in 2020". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-07-25.
  14. ↑ "End of support for Adobe Flash". Mozilla. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
  15. ↑ "Abusing, Exploiting and Pwning with Firefox Add-ons" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  16. ↑ "Security Best Practices". MDN. Mozilla. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
  17. ↑ Fisher, Dennis (12 August 2015). "Firefox 40 Begins Warning Users About Unsigned Add-Ons". Threatpost. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  18. ↑ "Extension Signing". Mozilla.org Wiki. Mozilla. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  19. ↑ "Updates". Mozilla Developer Network. Retrieved 2017-10-28.
  20. ↑ Scott, Justin (30 January 2008). "600,000,000 Add-on Downloads". Blog of Metrics. Mozilla Foundation.
  21. ↑ "Firefox Add-ons Cross More Than 3 Billion Downloads!". The Mozilla blog. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
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