Multiprocess - Disabled by accessibility tools. What to do?

Add-ons Development
#1

Multiprocess will be enforced for all add-ons with version 51 that is released January 24.

One thing seriously worries me. With a fresh Firefox profile and a fresh install of Firefox version 51 beta, multiprocess is disabled even with no add-ons installed.

From the about:support page I get the message “0/1 (Disabled by accessibility tools)”. (All accessibility features from about:preferences#advanced are disabled by the way…)

Does this mean that Firefox version 51 will ship without multiprocess support for accessibility tools?

Will my users need to fiddle with about:config settings to enable multiprocess and make my add-on work?

Do anyone know when conflicts between accessibility tools and multiprocess will be resolved?

1 Like
#2

Does your add-on not work without e10s? If so, then you should fix that. Enabling e10s should not be your concern as an add-on developer.

#3

You can find more on the status of e10s and a11y on https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility.

The way you phrase your question, does you add-on depend on electrolysis? Does your addon require accessibility?

Maybe you just misread the “all add-ons” piece? What that sentence means is that we generally have e10s on, but there are a few reasons to switch it off for some of our users.

We’re currently testing if 51 is a good release to stop switching off e10s when add-ons are detected. (There’s already a whitelist where we keep e10s on if you only have add-ons on that list.)

Regardless of add-ons, we switch e10s off if a11y got detected. The details of when and platforms are on the wiki, and also that there might be false positives. That doesn’t mean that we’re switching off add-ons in that case. Add-ons just work, a11y just works, but these users don’t have e10s on.

#4

Maybe I have completely misunderstood something.

I though that multiprocess would be enforced at some point and that add-ons that are not marked as multiprocess ready would be disabled at that point.

Is this a misunderstanding?

Will I need to test my add-on with multiprocess both enabled and disabled. Will my users continue to have both settings in the future? I am confused???

#5

Ah, ok.

I though that multiprocess would be enforced at some point and that add-ons that are not marked as multiprocess ready would be disabled at that point.

Somewhat. Mozilla plans to compleately move to WebExtensions in about one year, since those are e10s compatible by design, everything non-e10s-compatible will be disabled/removed at this point.

Will I need to test my add-on with multiprocess both enabled and disabled.

Probably not. Unless you are doing low-level stuff, everything that works with e10s will also work without.
And if you are only using high-level SDK APIs (or WebExtensions), you add-on will very very likely work with e10s if it does without.

#6

The current plan is to allow add-ons on multiprocess Firefox unless they explicitly say they aren’t compatible (by setting the multiprocess compatible manifest flag to false). However, that plan could change depending the user impact once multiprocess compatibility is turned on for more users. There’s more info in this article.

In parallel to that, we’re discontinuing legacy APIs and switching to WebExtensions only by the end of this year. Here’s the announcement.