Opensearch engines could be added to firefox from this page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search-tools/ .This in practice was just an extension but a different schema. They probably just want to consolidate and maintain only one schema for all extensions.
Now, it is still truly surprising to me that it's easier to use third-party search in Chrome than in Firefox, given all of Mozilla's talk about the Google monopoly. In Chrome, adding a search engine is as simple as going to chrome://settings/searchEngines and adding a string like "bing.com?q=%s" while in Firefox the only way I can find out so far is packaging an extension and loading it up.
The "Add a keyword for this search" context menu option automates creation of this bookmark, but you can also do it manually if firefox doesn't recognize a search field or something like that
Firefox definitely has supported OpenSearch. When you arrive at a page that has an OpenSearch description document, there is a button in the address bar triple-dot menu to add the site's search engine to firefox. On mobile, you could long press on an input field to do the same.
Even though I'll miss it myself as a power user I think this is actually fine so long as there's a common standard for integrating third-party engines.
Opensearch came about when search was in its nasency and people envisioned all sorts of complex needs for it. 90%+ of opensearch schemas just end up being something like "searchengine.org/?q=%s" in practice.
The main thing we'll lose out in the simpler pattern is autocomplete, which you could specify via "<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json"
What the article doesn't make clear and I wish it did was what Firefox's future of supporting third party search engines looks like. I just came back to firefox after 8 years away, and it seems from some of the UI changes like the "This time search with" feature that they do want to encourage a diversity of search engines overall.
This may just be confusing/bad comms, I hope.
a. From the Mycroft project page b. From the search engine's own page by right-clicking and selecting "add a keyword for this search".
In any case, it seems [1] the announcement is mostly about the addons.mozilla.org listing than the removal of OpenSearch or other capabilities in Firefox. The wording is confusing and the link doesn't completely clear it up, suggesting it may indeed be on the way out (but not necessarily on the same timeline as the AMO removal announced here).
[1] https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...
It's unclear if the "intent to deprecate OpenSearch" also means removing this functionality.
My biggest concern is the unhealthy dependence on Google. I want a successful Mozilla precisely because I value the free web, not the contorted surveillance monster that Google, Facebook et al seem intent on.
So in the absence of convincing rationale, I assume announcements like this to be nefarious intervention at Google's behest. Return on that $300M "contribution".
Please, Mozilla. Don't give in to the dark side. There is a palpable increase in privacy awareness - you can be at the nexus of growing it, and grow yourself accordingly. Or you can side with the Emperor. Who will crush you once you've served your purpose.
OK, maybe that's dubiously allegorical. Here's the brutal commercial interpretation. The _only_ way for you to reverse your declining market share is to have a differentiator. People need a reason to use Firefox. You can choose that path. Google isn't "supporting" you - it's adopted the "embrace, extend, extinguish" mantra so beloved of 90s/00s era Microsoft. To be clear: you're well into stage 3.
Seems to me you have two choices. Find a differentiator and adopt a growth business plan for independence. Or remain at best Google's sop against anti-competitive accusations, and be fully extinguished when you're not needed any more.
Look back at the initial success when they were up against Internet Explorer 6. They offered users what Microsoft wouldn't. They didn't hamstring themselves with IE6 compatibility, and instead broke the rules of what a browser was supposed to be by only considering what was best for the user, and spurning harmful standards and technologies.
Where Microsoft hid extensions away in the registry, and their extensions had degenerated to the point where most of them were malicious, Firefox did the revolutionary thing of offering direct access to them by users. There's a lot wrong with Chrome, like their draconian and invasive updater that sometimes damages people's computers and can not be easily turned off.[1] Or how Chrome's extensions, while safer, are also crippled and prone to abuse by their forced updates.
Mozilla could easily leverage Google's weaknesses against them, as they did with Microsoft. Mozilla is not a for-profit platform, they can afford to make the things Google can not. They can have a powerful community driven extension architecture that empowers users to do things Google never would. So of course instead of improving and securing their old extension architecture, or replacing it with something just as powerful, they copied Chrome again.
It may be hard to believe, but including a built in popup blocker was revolutionary. It was called "irresponsible" by advertisers, and forced everyone else to change. Could you ever imagine Mozilla undermining the big players like that today? Even though bold moves like that are what got them their success in the first place. It wasn't branding or PR or any of that crap!
I think the only good thing they've done is containers. And containers are such a good thing for users that I am convinced that many in Mozilla were opposed to it and fought against it, and that it will be deprecated with a flimsy UX metrics justification. And toadies on HN will try to justify it because "why are you thinking about this so much? This is fine, stop complaining, jeez."
One of the smartest things Mozilla used to do was not try to implement bad technologies. They didn't try to re-create the quirks of the Trident engine; they didn't let Micosoft dictate the standards, so Javascript could not eject the CD tray, and you could not change the color of the scroll bars! They didn't waste effort trying to copy Microsoft's Windows-first proprietary ActiveX model. A much better compromise was the community created IETab extension, which just ran an instance of Internet Explorer in one of the tabs for when you needed it.[3] Could you imagine the Mozilla of today saying that if you wanted to watch DRM'd Netflix, you should just use Chrome? Is Firefox even technically capable of having something like Chrome tab anymore? Think of the resources that would be freed up if they stopped trying to have feature parity with Microsoft/Apple/Google.
They just need to have the courage to say "that technology is evil, we won't support it. Maybe someone will make an extension to support it". Instead, essential technologies like RSS are deprecated and left to the community to implement, while DRM and proprietary and problematic standards are given first class support.
Mozilla has made all of the wrong moves in the last 10 years. Their priorities are completely misguided. And I am certain that if they just centered the user over the big platforms, they would experience more popularity than a billion dollars in marketing and PR.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663
I mean yeah... they're doing that right now. https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter
Edit: and Tracking Protection already launched https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
Enhanced tracking protection[1] was turned on by default for all users recently. This is a feature that hits at Google and Facebook's bottom line.. so I guess yeah, I can imagine Mozilla undermining the big players today. Not to mention other privacy initiatives like Containers/Facebook Container.
[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
It wouldn't even make sense for this to be part of a conspiracy, since this doesn't affect the list of search engines included by default.
According to the related forum discussion, it sounds like the blog post was imprecise and the change only affects search add-ons, not adding search engines via browser menus: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/settings_override
The fact that it doesn't have "open" in its name doesn't actually make it any less open or interoperable. This is about standardizing on having a single and modern way to define search engines, nothing more and nothing less.
I lump this in with the kinds of decisions like removing RSS support from browsers, browsers (hello Chrome) not supporting MathML[1], and a zillion other "death by a thousand cuts" things that impede the Open Web.
[1]: Yes, I know that there is an initiative underway to re-add MathML support to Chrome. I'll remain somewhat skeptical until it is actually shipping and works.
If they were just removing OpenSearch in xpi on AMO, that'd be fine, but the post says they intend to remove OpenSearch as a whole.
...which have nothing to do with the Open Web, mentioned in the parent reply. Both require participating in, and consequently adhering to the terms of, stores operated by third parties.
If I'm reading that right, they're deprecating support for discoverable browser-independant markup for searches; and replacing it with the requirement that each site actively develop (and maintain!) a software plugin for every browser their users might want to use.
The whole point of a "user agent" was to go out and do things for me on the web; and the idealistic goal was that each person could choose an agent suited for them, which then had tools to programmatically discover and interact with the web in a common manner (reducing engineering load on the webdevs).
And I don't want to try and use a separate search tool (with new flashing graphics and ads!!!!) for every site I go to... I want a single search tool, like FF offers right now. (Aside: not to mention chrome's "auto-discovery of opensearch when you tab after typing a domain" is actually MORE useful than FF's manual mode!).
Taking a step back and removing support for a declarative api seems to me like the really wrong direction for an open web. Instead of sites supporting a single declarative browser-independent markup; they now have to deal with a long tail of (2-3 + who knows how many) browsers; and users with a niche browser have to spend effort convincing every site to support their browser.
Why not try to improve the opensearch markup instead?
For example setting keyword `t` for uri `data:text/plain,%S` and entering `t foo` into location bar will navigate you to `data:text/plain,foo`, i.e. "make document". If Google Docs have GET endpoint for creating documents, it should work. For searching you can apparenly use `https://docs.google.com/document/?q=%s`.
You ask why not improve opensearch markup, just like I have asked why not improve RSS. I am quite convinced that the RSS model has a lot of untapped potential for a distributed internet, but it also thwarts central control, surveillance, tracking etc.
I was preparing to create my top 25 OpenSearch plugins manually (less popular plugins at addons.mozilla.org often lack autocomplete and have other quality issues). Glad I read this before wasting 2 hours of my life.
Now I'm just switching back to Chrome. Does Mozilla actually expect site owners to create search extensions for ~5% Firefox users (of which in turn ~5% will actively install such an extension)? Firefox performance has come a long way, but Chrome is still way more polished. Apparently, Chrome is at the same time more poweruser-friendly, which really irritates me.
As usual, Mozilla just follows Google lead rather than innovating browser features anymore.
How does mandated signed addons get you "offers users more controls for opting into changes"? They offer me less controls, as someone else (AMO) controls what I may opt into.
Firefox will require users to install an extension in order to add search engines instead of just visiting websites.
And developers will have to create extensions that barely anyone knows about let alone bother to install.
Much worse than today's solution of including a little code in your website and have users autodiscover your search engine:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="a9...spec"> <ShortName>Website Title</ShortName> <Description>Search my website</Description> <Url type="application/rss+xml" template="mysite.com/search?q={searchTerms}"/> </OpenSearchDescription>
Do I have to create an extension and sign it for every site I want to search on that doesn't have an extension on their own?
You know, looking more carefully over the question i came to the conclusion that you're probably right!!!
They're probably wishing a hammer this xmas to hammer themselves over and over and over...
just for the fun of it...
Simple enough and it seems OpenSearch will still work embedded on websites for a while. But it's unclear how they plan to get website owners to migrate.
And it's unclear why they should have to. OpenSearch is a standard that all modern browsers currently support. Why should a site author have to support OpenSearch for every browser and build/maintain a WebExtension just for Firefox?
Please restore the title as the linked page has it: "Search Engine add-ons to be removed from addons.mozilla.org".
The first paragraph of the article states "Mozilla intends to deprecate OpenSearch and eventually remove it from Firefox."
There are several extensions that use userscripts, like Greasemonkey and Tampermoney, so loading the search manifest files shouldn't be a problem.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipe...
etc.
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...
Sounds like a nice little side project.
