What happened 4 years ago with Firefox 57 was different - the old architecture was not sustainable (compatibility / security nightmare) and migration to WebExtension API was a necessary step.
And look where it got us - you have now the same API in Firefox, Chrome and even Safari and Thunderbird - this is amazing for me as a developer because I can release same extension on 4 distinct products with minimum changes ![:slight_smile: :slight_smile:](https://cdn.discourse-prod.itsre-apps.mozit.cloud/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=9)
What we see now with V3 is a “small” evolution step - update - that is suppose to improve things. And many extensions won’t be affected at all.
But I totally agree with you that the persistent background page makes things much easier for developers.
Actually, I’ve been thinking now about my extensions and I have to say that this is gonna make a lot of problems for me
. My in-memory storage with encryption keys won’t work, my canvas probably too, sub-minute timers (since Alarms have minute granularity), and all those cached data… oh man, I hope this will take a few years for them to finish
.
On the other hand I understand that event-based background script is better because it can be killed and will free up memory - since in Chrome each background page is probably in its own process taking who knows how much MB RAM just by running idle javascript.