Enable new Firefox Recommended Extensions suggestions in Firefox 68 Nightly
Mozilla announced the launch of the Firefox Recommended Extensions program in April 2019 to increase the visibility of extensions and promote them better.
The program differs from Mozilla's current practice of displaying add-on recommendations to Firefox users. Firefox users may see a list of extensions when they open the Add-ons Manager of the web browser, visit the Mozilla AMO website (official extensions repository), or through the contextual extension recommendations feature of the Firefox browser.
The new program takes the concept a step further. Extensions need to meet certain requirements for inclusion in the program; among them a commitment from the developer, that they pass manual reviews each time they are updated and initially, and that they need to be "really good" at what they do.
Extensions that make it are promoted by Mozilla in various ways. The organization plans them to power the recommendations that Firefox displays on about:addons and contextually, and promote them on Mozilla AMO and through other means.
Tip: we asked you which extensions you'd like to see promoted by Mozilla recently.
Firefox 68: the new recommendations
Mozilla integrated the new recommendations page of about:addons in the latest Firefox 68 Nightly version. The page is not enabled by default at the time, but can be enabled in the following way:
- Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
- Confirm that you are careful if the warning is displayed.
- Search for extensions.htmlaboutaddons.discover.enabled.
- Toggle the value to True (enabled).
Visit about:addons afterwards to see the new page in action. It looks similarly to the old but there are some differences. Technically, the new recommendations page is no longer loaded as an iframe but a native page.
Firefox connects to two Mozilla-owned domains to pull recommendations and images; the browser downloaded a HTML document previously as well as scripts and styles previously.
When you compare the old page to the new, you will notice differences immediately. The general page layout is very similar to the classic page but Mozilla added ratings and user counts to the page.
Add-ons are listed with their name, developer, and description in the current version; the new recommendations page lists ratings and user counts. Both useful to determine the quality of an extension.
Listed add-ons are reviewed manually by Mozilla, another core difference to current recommendations. Mozilla will review each update of extensions that are in the Recommended Extensions Program which improves security significantly.
The new Personalization page listed four browser add-ons and three themes:
- To Google Translate -- Add-on to translate selected text using Google Translate.
- Tree Style Tab -- Sidebar add-on to display open tabs in a tree style.
- Bitwarden -- Free Password Manager
- Feedbro -- A feed aggregator
- Calm Pastel theme
- Simple Space Stars theme
- abstract 60 theme
More extensions will be added to the program in the future so that users may see some variation when opening about:addons.
The feature will land in Firefox Stable eventually; it is unclear if the switch will happen when Firefox Stable reaches version 68.
Now You: What is your take on Firefox's Extensions Recommendation Program? (via Techdows)
why? because this way firefox uses separate processes for gpu, its main process and but not for websites and this way firefox uses about 2 or three processes as a whole.
Bye-bye M0z|lla
Sounds to me like an improved version of something which is already present in the current version of Firefox. I’m looking forward to being able to activate it in a future release version. And if you don’t like it, just don’t click on “Recommendations”. Seems obvious to me.
I think this will be useful for people who are just learning what addons are, and to direct them to more quality extensions. I highly doubt power users use the recommended addons tab anyway.
I personally have no use for it, but I don’t mind it’s existence,
Where is uBlock origin?
Not much, the themes mentioned are awful. I tried them just to see.
Calm Pastel looks like a bag of Laffy Taffy.
Simple Space Stars, gray spatter painting.
Abstract 60 and all of the authors other themes are beautiful but you can barely see text or icons in them.
Another feed aggregator is probably the last thing anyone needs.
Complete mystery as to how these things are chosen. Oh, well, ESR doesn’t have this ‘feature” and that’s OK.
What ever happened to the baby crib mobile FF theme moxilla trotted out last year?
In other words – Ads in your extensions manager. lol
If you don’t like something what… just lie about it? LoL
I have the recommendations enabled in Nightly and there are zero recommendations in my extension manager. The extension manager is on one page and recommendations are on another.
Considering the fact that 65% of all Firefox users aren’t even using add-ons, to have FF provide recommendations is ultimately a good thing. In my install of Nightly, after jumping through hoops to enable it, the “Recommendations” I’m seeing, are a couple themes and:
To Google Translate, Tree Style Tab, Bitwarden – Free Password Manager and Feedbro (I prefer Feedly).
Screenshots:
“https://i.postimg.cc/0NscLdgC/Extension-Manager.png”
“https://i.postimg.cc/Ls3NRY2F/Recommendations.png”
Ads imply they’re getting money out of this. Which they’re not.
Also the recommended addons list in the addon manager has been a thing for quite a long time.
@Hunter: “Ads imply they’re getting money out of this.”
Not to me, it doesn’t. Whether something is an ad or not isn’t really related to whether or not it’s being paid for.
(I’m not casting aspersions on Mozilla doing this, I’m just making a general point about ads.)
More crap to turn off. Thank you, Mozilla. We haven’t had that in a long time.
Let’s not be too negative here people. This is an attempt by Mozilla to upgrade the quality of the extensions system overall which is well overdue.
about:addons already remembers the last ‘tab’ / ‘page’ users were last viewing so that will take care of seasoned users who do not want to be spammed with “Recommendations” as the initial tab / page any more than they wanted to see “Get Add-Ons” by default.
Presumably those same users will be able to opt out of allowing this service to transparently run in the background via via about:config.
For others who may never seek out extensions and have no clue about the whole Firefox extensions API saga, this is a reasonable way to introduce them to extensions that may enhance their Firefox experience.
Cracking the shits at every bit of Mozilla news merely because it’s a change to your experience is kinda ignorant of how software tends to work. Nothing stands still. Whilst it would be great to have a highly-democratic, always-opt-in, streamlined experience handling every significant change, to roll in “they’re upgrading the quality of extension suggestions” into “just another thing to turn off” is pretty piss poor sooking, really.
Have a bit of a think about the bigger picture before you post. If every single decision Mozilla makes is so bad, Firefox would have zero market share. Admittedly they test the patience of dedicated fans all too often with their anarchic organisation style but really, let’s try to be a bit more balanced.
@pd: “This is an attempt by Mozilla to upgrade the quality of the extensions system overall which is well overdue. ”
Wait, what?
I have no problem with them doing this, but how does it affect the quality of the extensions system overall?
It#s falöse by defalt right now, so there is no need to turnn it off. Nevertheless it is useless stuff indeed.
Btw.: The name of the add-on “Reduce Eye Strain” shown in the second screenshot above has been changed to “Dark Reader”: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/darkreader/
And sorry for the typos in my posting earlier. 😊