Firefox 59 will introduce the new WebExtensions APIs

Firefox 57 knocked out the old extensions and officially moved to the WebExtensions extension architecture, but now WebExtensions offer far fewer features than the old extension, making it hard to port many of the popular extensions to the new architecture. Mozilla official blog announced the next version of Firefox 59 will introduce a series of new WebExtensions API and improvements, including:

Image: Mozilla

• Experimental Tab Hiding
• Additional Tab Features

  While tab hiding is the big feature to land in Firefox 59, it isn’t the only thing related to tabs.

  • The new browserSettings.openBookmarksInNewTabs() API was added for controlling the options to open bookmarks in new tabs.
  • The new browserSettings.openSearchResultsInNewTabs() API was added so extensions can open search results in new tabs.
  • Added tabs.captureTab(). This is very similar to tabs.captureVisibleTab(), but allows you to capture any tab (specified by ID) instead of just the active tab.
  • Calling tabs.create() without a windowId will now target only non-popup windows.
  • Tabs.query() now does pattern matching on the title.
• Even More Theme API
• Improvements to the webRequest API
• Register Content Scripts at Runtime
• Support for Decentralization Protocols

  Mozilla has always been a proponent of decentralization, recognizing that it is a key ingredient of a healthy Internet. Starting with Firefox 59, several protocols that support decentralized architectures are available for use by extensions.  The newly approved protocols are:

  • Dat Project (dat://)
  • IPFS (dweb://  ipfs://  ipns://)
  • Secure Scuttlebutt (ssb://)