WebExtensions and native apps

Fellow add-on developers,

I wanted to share with you a discussion related to native applications and associated tools and encourage you to provide your input.

Summary: a new type of add-on is being proposed (in addition to Extensions, Themes and Plugins) that would allow non-reviewed (because the add-ons editors team workforce is not unlimited) applications to be installed in Firefox, with user appropriate warnings. Those applications would be technically similar to extensions, using the WebExtensions API, but also having access to a special native application: a Firefox-embedded node.js instance that would take its modules from within the application package. This would be an alternative solution to NW.js and Electron (both using Chromium) for developing multi-platforms applications based on Web technologies, with the additional benefit to allow some possible interaction with the browser (through the WebExtensions API). To make it short: an extension + native-application that you can install all at once. Security-wise, people would know it is no more secure than if they had installed the application from any web site, except that at least there is a place, amo, where users can share their experience using this application, and potentially the ability to disable remotely the applications that are known to be harmful.

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