Mozilla sets plan to dump Firefox add-ons, move to Chrome-like extensions

Back in July, Mozilla disclosed plans to modernize its Firefox browser. Today, the organization made those plans more concrete, with a tentative timeline for introducing long-desired improvements such as the creation of a process per tab—and with it, a timeline for the end of support for traditional Firefox add-ons.

Mozilla has been working on a multi-process architecture for years. Called the Electrolysis project, work started in 2009, but was put on hold in 2011. Work was resumed in 2013, and it's finally getting near to a release. Over the next few months, Mozilla plans to flip the switch and enable Electrolysis in its various release channels. Tentatively, it'll be an opt-in feature in the beta channel from September 22nd, on-by-default in the beta channel from November 3rd, and on-by-default in the release channel from December 15th.

While this change is advantageous from a stability and security perspective, it's not without its cost. Current Firefox add-ins can intimately intertwine themselves with the inner workings of the browser using an API called XPCOM. With Electrolysis, that's not easily possible: the add-ins will operate in a separate process from the main Firefox shell, so can no longer wrap themselves around the browser's internals.