So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

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DeltaRayEdge
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So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by DeltaRayEdge » 2021-08-01, 11:22

first of all, a "press F" for the 3.x-4x-24x-28x-56x era of firefox addons, it was always going to happen sooner or later but anyway, F

title question

i'm interested in maintaining some of the extensions i use, however between licensing drama and the seemingly common web standard of breaking everything every 3months, i'm hesitant to try.

i would like to know how often palemoon intends to force rewrites of addons just to maintain function parity, and that sort of thing. I'm sure you've all heard tales of that that drove many devs away from every browser over the years.

and what the basic rules are on some of the legacy firefox addons and whether u'd just have to recreate them from scratch, but does providing a similar UI count as breaking any common licenses?

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Re: So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-08-01, 11:52

The last time I updated my extensions that are not eMatrix was to increase the maxVersion entry in install.rdf from 28 to 29 (and to update the copyright year to 2021 I guess.)
As for licensing and what changes you are allowed to make, just read the license, with the caveat that when a license is missing or unclear you can't make any change at all, no matter what change it is.

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Re: So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by Falna » 2021-08-01, 13:51

As another new maintainer of several extensions, I'd encourage you to go for it :)

You can read the Pale Moon roadmap and see that no wholesale changes to extension support are planned, other than an eventual move from RDF install manifests (to Json). It's been mentioned elsewhere that, when it happens, extensions on the official site are expected to be converted automatically.

This post is worth a read for some tips: Porting extensions and how to be the very best

Forked extensions :
● Add-ons Inspector ● Auto Text Link ● Copy As Plain Text ● Copy Hyperlink Text ● FireFTP button replacement ● gSearch Bar ● Navigation Bar Enhancer ● New Tab Links ● Number Tabs ● Print Preview Button and Keyboard Shortcut 2 ● Scrollbar Search Marker ● Simple Marker ● Tabs To Portfolio ● Update Alert ● Web Developer's Toolbox ● Zap Anything

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Re: So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by moonbat » 2021-08-02, 03:22

In the 2 years since I started porting and making original extensions, all I can say is 'as often as you want to.' Namely, I have only ever updated my extensions' code to add features or fix bugs. XUL/XPCOM is a stable technology and is not going to change suddenly, and most of the newer web standards are additions, not replacements for working functionality.
The only time in recent memory that extensions broke due to a change was when Pale Moon stopped supporting the non standard watch/unwatch Javascript functions, and during the time everyone chipped in with code fixes for affected extensions.

Other than that, a milestone update such as from 28 to 29 is the only other time you would have to update the max version in install.rdf, and those are also quite rare unlike the competition that updates them every fortnight and is hitting 3 digits shortly.
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Re: So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by RealityRipple » 2021-08-02, 04:04

Full themes tend to need to be updated more frequently than "persona" themes and extensions, just because interface changes tend to happen more often than underlying code updates that are big enough to warrant adding, removing, or break-changing functions or classes. But, of course, it depends on how simple or complicated the add-on is, and how many things it interacts with.
And, of course, if new features you could use are released, such as when async/await came out, then updating for improvement's sake rather than because something broke should also be considered. Though, usually, that facilitates cleaning up what was messy, and you'll likely be happy about making a new release rather than annoyed.

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Re: So how often do pale moon addons needs to be updated?

Unread post by coffeebreak » 2021-08-02, 05:23

DeltaRayEdge wrote:
2021-08-01, 11:22
i would like to know how often palemoon intends to force rewrites of addons just to maintain function parity
Read this post, starting from: "Let me lay out what is coming next for Pale Moon et all:"

(afaik it states in detail what is currently planned for extensions.)

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