Will you be updating FEBE for Firefox 57

[charles_i]

I'm sure you are aware that the 57 upgrade in November 2017 no longer supports FEBE. Are there any plans for a version that will be compatible?

Thanks
Charles
Long time FEBE user

[cbaker_admin]

Unfortunately, no. The WebExtensions APIs are simply not capable of supporting the functions FEBE (and most of my other extensions) require. I doubt Mozilla will ever release APIs that allow access to user's bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc. There is not even a way to write to a users filesystem, so backing up is impossible.

[Sun42]

Unfortunately, no. The WebExtensions APIs are simply not capable of supporting the functions FEBE (and most of my other extensions) require. I doubt Mozilla will ever release APIs that allow access to user's bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc. There is not even a way to write to a users filesystem, so backing up is impossible.

With Mozilla pracitally being in a frenzy to migrare lecacy extensions to we by adding api hooks - did you ask for the changes you require and got a negative answert, or did you simply stop trying after the switch to we was announced ~two years ago?

It would be nice to havve some demonstration of how helpful Mozilla actually are to extension authors that aren't among the top 10 like NoScript

[cbaker_admin]

No, I never have asked Mozilla.

From the very beginning, one of the main philosophies of WebExtensions was to "prevent attack vectors for malware". Reading/writing files to a user's filesystem is an obvious way to introduce malware. FEBE not only requires the ability to write backups to the hard disk, it also needs complete access to the user's bookmarks, cookies, passwords, etc. to do its job.

Asking Mozilla for APIs to perform these actions would be, in my opinion, pointless.

[Sun42]

From the very beginning, one of the main philosophies of WebExtensions was to "prevent attack vectors for malware". Reading/writing files to a user's filesystem is an obvious way to introduce malware.

Interesting, so that would be the same reason why "Mozilla Archive Format" is discontinued as it has to access and save content?

By the way, I asked about FEBE in Mozilla's addon blog and the post wasn't published - q.e.d.

[cbaker_admin]

By the way, I asked about FEBE in Mozilla's addon blog and the post wasn't published - q.e.d.

I guess I've been officially snubbed

Would you supply a link to that blog?

[charles_i]

I posted it here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3036258 and of course they directed me to a discussion about Mozilla's own crummy MozBackup which I abandoned years ago for FEBE because it's so lame (and restoring from it doesn't always work).

Charles