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I don't understand the reasoning behind it and I have to agree that, if at all possible, it should stop.
Rey Bango's comments on Twitter do not seem to jive with what Ms. Brady told me: people shouldn't be choosing Firefox as a platform: they should be choosing the web as a platform. Coding specifically for the assumption of a brower plugin is broken, and Mozilla seems to already know that.
Add-ons are applications and you're trying to equate them to web pages or sites when in fact, you should be comparing them to iTunes, Jing or Twhirl. In fact, some of these add-ons/applications are built specifically for various OSes which is analogous to the traditional desktop model of application development.
If you look at add-ons for what they are, applications, you can see that comparing them to what MS did, which was to bastardize established W3C standards for web site development, is comparing apples and oranges.
Think about what we're doing with Glue for a moment -- we allow you to bring your Facebook friends to popular sites across the web (Amazon, Netflix, IMDb, Last.fm, Wikipedia, ...). We then connect you to these friends across the sites, around common objects.
It's taking a website of Facebook's size to even start on this task, via their Facebook connect initiative. Even still they are not integrated into the top sites that we support (Wikipedia, Amazon, ...) and they will not be able to connect across sites. That level of connection will occur back on their site.
Yes, having a FF-only add-on is market limiting, but the potential of the feature-set when in the browser is powerful.
We're working on solutions for this :)
As Edwin from Feedly has commented below, the Firefox community was a natural start for us - good distribution to early-adopters. Our focus on other browsers has grown as our resources have grown.
A comparison of add-ons to web page development is incorrect.
I've noticed a double standard on how quickly people rally to go after Microsoft with pitchforks & torches, yet seem not to notice when Apple or other companies may engage in parallel activities (or activities that at the end of the day, have similar results as Microsoft's offending actions).
Specific to browsers - I love Safari's speed, but hate it's lack of functionality, so you've definitely preaching to one member of the choir with this post!
But, when creating a new service you have to balance the cost of supporting all those platforms from day one. Clikball was just released as "private alpha" a few days ago, and supporting multiple platforms would have meant delays. We are rapidly evolving the user interface, data models and functionality, and having a larger code base for all those vastly different platforms would slow that down.
We are planning to support other browser through web-based interfaces supporting all current A-list browsers.
IE extension development sucks (Microsoft themselves basically said that at the recent add-on-con, recommending 3 books, 2 of which are out of print, saying you should do this because your competition won't). Safari doesn't officially support extension (most ways people find to extend it get closed by later releases). Chrome is planning to support extensions, but it will be mid-year at the earliest.
We are also planning robust APIs to all our interactions in any custom applications.
This is fine for many things, however, Firefox in particular has a very specific security model that affects everything from file uploads to advanced drag and drop -- the latter of which is of significant importance to my projects (www.scrapplet.com, www.xwinlib.com, www.radwebtech.com). While IE, Safari, and even Chrome support a common methodology for drag and drop that does not require plug-ins or Active-X controls, similar functionality in FF is only available through a plug-in. Our implementation for FF is less than 4.5k, put it is a plug-in nevertheless.
What would really be great is if the core requirements solutions that necessitated Firefox plug-ins could be shared amongst developers and therefore minimize the repetitive download requirements for users.
In my opinion, FF 3.x moves the browser in a better position regarding these matters, but we're not there yet. In the mean time, open source, open sharing, and open mind can help mitigate the plug-in-itis than seems all to prevalent.
-- Steve Repetti
www.scrapplet.com
www.radwebtech.com
www.dataportability.org
This story/question wasn't so much about how as a Safari user I don't think I'm getting the full extent of the Web, but instead wondering about how FF extension use not only limits their market, but blocks many people from using what is likely an interesting product. Open source is great and cross-platform is great, but you're still tickling the tech edge and most people couldn't give a rip.
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The question is : does your service requires an heavy client application or not (does it require to have access to private information or device on the user's browser / computer ) ?
Right now I don't see IE nor Safari offering what FF offers in this field.
To me a good way would be :
1 - design a nice and pure HTML website (browser independent)
2 - design a nice API
3 - let the community develop add-ons, adobe air apps, native apps with your API
sounds familiar :) ?
Very interesting article by the way (I must admit that at first I though it was a bit "Trollish")
Maybe being an FF extension will give you guys a great playground for working out all of this semantic / social stuff, but I'd be surprised if it was where you ended up hitting the big time.
That said, it's a tough problem to crack for your kind of service. A bookmarklet is neither rich enough in functionality nor able to deliver the 'push' experience you need. A code snippet for website owners doesn't get you coverage as fast as you'd like (especially on amazon etc).
In the end I suspect you'll use all of these approaches and more, but for now (sadly) I have totake a back seat.
It definitely is a tough problem to crack. At Add-on-Con last December this was a hot topic of discussion. I'd say the group was split between the long-term ability to create a business off of an add-on vs. the eventual need to use the add-on to back-into a web service/site.
The space will be fun to watch in the coming months as mature add-ons start to figure out their business models.
The highlight was the closing keynote - reps from firefox, ie, and chrome debated the future of the browser. I think you would have enjoyed it (I'll be sure to send you an invitation next year).
Note 1: I think that the perception that firefox is a niche market or that only geeks only install extensions is wrong. Just look at the add-ons mozilla site and look at the number of installs of some of the top add-ons.
Rahsheen: you are right. We should probably explain better why we are building feedly as a hybrid (an extension + a set of back end services) instead of a more traditional website.
You're viewing add-ons as web pages which I think is an incorrect comparison. Add-ons are, for all intents, applications, in many ways as capable as desktop apps such as TextMate, Twhirl or iTunes.