From ComputerWorld: Mozilla on Friday spelled out major changes to one of Firefox's strengths -- its deep ecosystem of add-ons -- that will make it easier for developers to port Google Chrome extensions to Firefox.
In a long post on a company blog, Kev Needham, product manager for Firefox on the desktop, outlined several moves Mozilla will make in the next 12 months as it overhauls the browser, but most strikingly, the add-ons that run on Firefox.
Add-ons have long been a big part of Firefox's success, especially early in its battle with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). More recently, though, Chrome and its extension model have dominated as Google's browser has grabbed large chunks of user share from both IE and Firefox.
Mozilla's decision to introduce a new add-on API (application programming interface) was a tacit admission of that.
"We would like add-on development to be more like Web development: the same code should run in multiple browsers according to behavior set by standards, with comprehensive documentation available from multiple vendors," wrote Needham about the new WebExtensions API.
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