Development and Maintenance of TabGroupsManager extension

Add-ons Add-on Support
#1

Dear Mozilla,

My name is Miguel and I would like to talk on behalf of TabGroupsManager extension developer group.

TabGroupsManager is an extension created by Axel Shootingstar, who unnafortunately dissapeared some years ago, probabily as some people said, because of the Fukushima catastrophe.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-manager

We have always loved TabGroupsManager and in all these years we have been maintaining the extension with compatibility fixes for new Firefox versions, in the non official google code site: code.google.com/p/tabgroupsmanager Now that google code is coming to its end, we are migrating all the repositories to a new site: https://bitbucket.org/tabgroupsmanager/tabgroupsmanager

With Firefox v43 and up, all extensions will require to be verified and signed, and since Axel hasnt appeared for years, we would like to ask you how can we maintain the extension and get it verified and signed, since we dont have access to Axel AMO site ( addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-manager ) and we cant upload or offer new versions without being signed.

We have discussed many times the future of TGM, and it will be really helpfull if we could get an official answer from Mozilla. A possible solution would be to temporarily get access to maintain Axel AMO repository (in the hope that Axel could come back in future), or letting us to create a ā€˜new forkā€™ of its extension in AMO with the all the compatibility fixes needed for new Firefox versions.

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,
TabGroupsManager developer extension group.

1 Like
Concern about WebExtensions exclusive strategy from add-on authors and users
Concern about WebExtensions exclusive strategy from add-on authors and users
#2

any change to get an update on this issue?

#3

I saw you emailed amo-admins as well. We are currently at a high load of emails due to the roll-out of signing and are short on staff. Expect a reply next week.

#4

Yes, thank you so much TheOne :slight_smile:

#5

The only reason why i use firefox, I really hope for you guys!

#6

This add-on is absolutely unique and completely essential to a large group of users who depend on it.
I and many others use Firefox solely because of this add-on, and will be forced to an ESR version or even Palemoon if it is not supported in future versions.
It cannot be allowed to die.

I am eternally grateful to Miguel and everyone else who has worked to maintain the add-on after Axel went MIA, and I truly hope Mozilla has the common sense to grant this request.
The large ecosystem of add-ons is by far Firefoxā€™s biggest selling point today, so it would make sense for Mozilla to keep encouraging users and developers rather than setting roadblocks in their way. It really should be a no-brainer.

#8

why donā€™t you just create a new add-on with similar name? like ā€œTabGroupBarā€ etc.

BTW. I am willing to help, e.g. write Wikipages and Documentation. klaus@klausthorn.de

#9

Stop making new things and make the old features work, so your load would lower.
This TGM is the most important thing there is in the development of FireFox. Without it there is no reason, why I shouldnā€™t move to some other browser.

There is some other things I might want to a real profi class browser, but I have kept low profile to keep your workload low. ( I do not mean by ā€˜profiā€™ anything like ā€˜professional tooth pasteā€™ or ā€˜professional toysā€™)

#10

We really need an update on this!
I am still running an old version of FireFox just to use this addon.

#11

The development group received a reply from us weeks ago. I suggest you talk to them.

#12

Can anyone fill in the details here? @TheOne, was the reply to the dev group a secret? iā€™d be hard pressed to use firefox once the tabgroupsmanager extension stopped working. @miguelromero2000 can you shed some light on the reply?

#13

I got a notification now that you replied :s

Sure, now that I know this I will ask them, but Why couldt you state if the reply was positive or negative?

#14

ok, nice, Mozilla must have denied themā€¦ and now they started another addonā€¦
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tabgroups-manager-revived
Which makes me a happy child. But hey, what the shit, even with the new one Mozilla is stopping me from installing/using TGM ā€¦

Caution: This add-on has not been reviewed by Mozilla
and canā€™t be installed on release versions of Firefox 43 and above. Be
careful when installing third-party software that might harm your
computer.

Lucky me I am still on an old versionā€¦

#15

Hi all, sorry for the delay. I prefer to wait some weeks before replying when we had a signed version, but the fork version is still pending of being verified and signed. Our first submitted version couldnt pass the minimum quality valitation process and had some security issues which should be fixed now in the lastest 007 version. However there are still some issues in the 007 version, the most important ones should have been fixed and we hope we could finally get a signed version.

About the posibility to continue with the original source of Axel in his site in AMO, Mozilla was really helpfull in all our questions and told us that unnafortunately it wasnā€™t possible and they only way we had to continue its work, was to fork the extension in a new AMO site.

It has been a long process but now that we have everything setup and centralized in AMO and in BitBucket with all the issues migrated and everything moved to GIT, it should be better for anyone to help us and submit pull requests :smile:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-manager-revived
https://bitbucket.org/tabgroupsmanager/tabgroupsmanager

About the future of TGM, we will try to maintain it and fix critical issues, but we need a faster AMO verification process where small changes shouldnt have to wait a lot of weeks to get a signed version. We hope Mozilla could improve the validation process in a way that it could be quicker without affecting the security of FF extensions. We know its really a hard task and sometimes there arent enough people or time to handle all requests.
About this issue @alle090 , I would like to recommend you to try the Firefox Development version (or even a Nightly one), where you can stay with an updated Firefox version, and still allow to install unsigned Firefox extensions. I have tested TGM with lastest Firefox Development version +46, with electrolisis e10s enabled and +400 tabs and it worked perfectly (Maybe even better than in normal Firefox version +42) :)sunglasses: If you choose to migrate to Firefox DEV +46, remember to make a backup of all your tabs. You may have also some problems trying to import all the tabs in the new FF. I could import all of them after waiting more than +5 minutes. (something we will have to check).

From my point of view, TGM sooner or later will have to be rewritten with the new WebExtensions API which will make it compatible also with Chrome, and guarantee us a lot of years of compatibility and security by using a standard API.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions

1 Like
#16

Ooohh, Didnā€™t know that nightlys/Dev version existed or rather
was available. I will try that this weekend when I got time. Thanks for the heads-up!

Being close to loose TGM I realized what this add-on does
for me, is there any way to support you guys with donations?

#17

Please, do you have a timeline for a rewrite?

https://bitbucket.org/tabgroupsmanager/tabgroupsmanager/issues?q=WebExtensions finds nothing, I can raise an issue there if you like.

Thanks

Postscript: https://bitbucket.org/tabgroupsmanager/tabgroupsmanager/issues/142/tabgroups-manager-revived-rewrite-for

#18

From the proposal:

ā€¦ testing WebExtension API and it is a nightmare. ā€¦ lacks all the things we need to port ā€¦ No toolbar widget ā€¦

More recently, for a different extension:

@miguelromero2000 please, do the future possibilities make the current nightmare more bearable?