Firefox uses the Web Extensions standard, just like Chrome. There are minor differences here or there but largely the same, tech wise.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Now this makes me mad, I mean, if it was super complex and you had to start from scratch, I can understand someone not doing the work to create it for firefox, but this doesn't make sense :'(
To doing an fork you have to be ready to answers to issues, users, and you have to maintain it in the time. An fork isnt just an copy pasta dude.
You don't have to bring out a product with customer support just because you've made small changes, everyone is free to not use it.
If there are extensions you use that aren't available on firefox, just contact the developers. Its a bit more complicated if they are still using the mv2 API as that was far more fragmented. with the implementation of mv3, which is required for all new chrome extensions as of january 2023 and will eventually be a mandatory upgrade for older extensions, most extensions going forward will be 90-95% compatible with firefox and safari. Really there are just a few areas the dev would need to do some specific checking/handling for, and then of course getting the builds to the mozilla addons store or safari app store.
A lot of chrome extension devs simply don't realize its much simpler now to support other browsers since that was definitely not the case up until the last year or two. All the browser teams are working with the w3c to have a unified API for extensions and its been a wildly successful effort over the last 5 years.
I build a chrome extension for my job. The only reason we don't have a firefox or safari build yet is purely because none of our customers have asked (its only useful if you pay for our b2b product) but once someone does or we have time to make it happen proactively, its not going to be a big deal.
Waterfox is a version of Firefox that is modified for tighter privacy, with support for Chrome and Opera extensions too.
You used to be able to use the Chrome Store Foxified addon to allow you to install Chrome extensions in regular Firefox, however it looks to be broken now and no longer in the Firefox addon store.
Wow! Thank you! Not going to leave FF but it's good to know there is an alternative if Mozilla Fs up big time
edit: just installed WaterFox and apparently they use bing, very interesting choice. I am not sure if I am for that, but heck I can change the default engine.
also, I like Waterfox already uninstalled Chrome. I can't believe I didn't know this until now. Why can't Firefox do this btw?
It's just a modified version of FF, not a different browser
In this day and age, all browsers (I think) use the WebExtensions standard. So the same extension can be run on both Chrome and Firefox. If anything, it's easier to publish an extension on Firefox because it's free and fast. On Chrome however, you have to pay Google to have a developer account.
Not sure what the question is -- are you looking to port extensions over yourself, or are you just exclaiming, "it can't be so hard, so why won't someone do it!".
There's plenty of documentation over at MDN as to writing extensions, writing cross-browser extensions, porting mv2 firefox extensions over to mv3, the differences between Firefox's mv3 implementation, and that found in Chrome, etc. etc. etc. The following are good starting points: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions & https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Build_a_cross_browser_extension
For ground-level, basic stuff (managing a popup, communicating between popup & a 'background' script, between content loaded on the browser & your scripts, managing a context menu, etc.) writing an extension is straightforward once you develop some degree of understanding of the sometimes convoluted paths the data needs to take, the permissions you need to have in order to pass messages through, etc. Larger extensions are full fledged applications in their own right, though, so tackling them introduces difficulties of a different order of magnitude.
The Falkon browser is extensible (in its own way) through QML; and the Nyxt browser is extensible in common lisp. These aren't 'webextensions' in the precise sense of the term, though they could be just as useful. I wrote a basic bookmark manager that I use mainly on Firefox; but I ported its core functionality (just send the current page's title, url, & selections from the <head> tag over to my database (postgresql via the postgrest http frontend, to which I just make a fetch request)) to QML, and it was pretty straightforward. Falkon is based on Qt's QtWebEngine, which is Chromium-based; Nyxt is based on WebKit.
edit: There's also luakit and qutebrowser . The former is extensible via lua 5.1 scripts, the latter, python; there isn't a wealth of documentation & examples, though (at least there wasn't last time I checked) so the API can be a bit of a mystery. Luakit as webkit as its engine, qutebrowser is built on QtWebEngine just like Falkon.
it's not terribly difficult for a developer of a chrome addon to also support firefox, as they both use webextensions (with a few differences--more once chrome fully drops manifest v2 in their effort to neuter adblockers), so the first step would be simply to ask them to.
I can't help you with your problem, just wanted to note that Firefox is not the only non-chrome browser out there. The big one is Safari, which is it's own thing based on the Webkit rendering engine. But there are others aswell. Iirc the standard browser that comes with GNOME is also based on Webkit, and there are a few Firefox forks (like the previously mentioned Waterfox or the Mullvad Browser) out there.
start with an open source example and continue