I look forward to them reading the big reply I typed up to their form letter, and probably just approving the update and not giving any further input or contacting me or anything.
Firefox has been terrible to work with and I constantly regret releasing FrankerFaceZ as a Firefox add-on.
This is especially interesting for me, because normally they reject it because they failed to follow the build instructions.
Instead, they're saying I haven't told them how to test it. Which is a hoot because there are no functional changes in this update and my instructions didn't change.
A rejection notice for FrankerFaceZ's Firefox add-on with a template-based rejection message reading: - Sources, specifically Testing information required: Please provide us with detailed information on how to test this add-on. If authentication to a website is necessary, give us a test username and password to facilitate our work. This can be provided in the Whiteboard field, which can be found in the Edit Listing page under the Technical Details section. This information is only available to reviewers. - Development, specifically Not functioning as described: Your add-on does not function as described. Please either update the description to match the add-on's functionality or submit a new version that functions as per the description.
In case any @frankerfacez.com are wondering why it's broken in @firefox.com and has been for eight days now, it's because we're still waiting for Firefox to approve the update. And, after eight days, we finally got... this.
Firefox users, please ensure you're using our user-script and not the addon
There was a breaking change on Twitch and, while FFZ was updated within hours, Firefox usually takes a week or more to approve things.
I sometimes use Google's news feed thing to scroll when I'm bored, and in the past week I've had to block like twelve different Fox News channels. This is obnoxious. It just keeps finding more random Fox YouTube channels it can try directing me too.
Google is absolutely part of the problem.
This is something I've been interested in for years. A lot of it probably comes down to it not being trivial to play two simultaneous audio streams on all their platforms, I'd imagine.
Twitch changed their font stuff again. Hopefully this won't result in too many people complaining that it's different now in the FrankerFaceZ support channels.
If any things look super weird for you, try clearing any custom font size in FrankerFaceZ (Appearance > Theme >> Fonts).
I've spent way too much time looking into why the channel page on Twitch randomly refreshes itself after a bit of time, but I've come to realize that it happens even without any extensions running.
Today's FFZ update doesn't stop the refresh, but does fix it breaking FFZ features, so yay I guess.
An excerpt from page 20 of the Epic v Apple contempt order, with the following statement highlighted: Apple personnel noted, for example, “Steam charges 20-30%, but does not offer platform services”
Been reading over that Epic v. Apple thing people have been talking about, and this part caught my attention.
Just in a "What the fuck is Apple smoking, have they even looked at Steam before?" kind of way.
Steamworks has so many features for developers. Everything a gaming platform should have.
I don't know who needs to read this, but:
Wait for reviews.
The review situation for Firefox add-ons is pretty dumb. There are multiple users leaving 1 star reviews accusing me of deleting their reviews, which I can't do.
One user gave us a 1 star review for being "broken", I explained 7tv is having an outage, and they deleted and re-rated without comment.
A review stating "They delete negative reviews. Trash developers."
A review stating "It's awful and 3 times they have removed my negative review. The positive reviews are fake. How is a developer allowed to delete negative reviews??"
A review stating: It literally does nothing, people defending it are insane. How can you give it a positive review if it LITERALLY HAS NO FUNCTIONAILTY. Like it actually does nothing. You are lying if you give anything more than 1 star. They also delete all negative reviews which means the positive reviews are likely fake.
My favorite part of the whole Firefox situation is this one anonymous user who keeps leaving 1 star reviews claiming we keep deleting their reviews. We don't even have the option to delete reviews. Idiot keeps violating the rules and Mozilla staff is nuking them (as far as I can tell.)
23 days later, Firefox has finally approved an update for FrankerFaceZ. 23 days. 13 days since the latest update was authored. Yeah. Cool. Woo...
I also did a longer write up about this here, for anyone who wants more: github.com/FrankerFaceZ...
Just try removing it and reinstalling it from the store. It's still there.
But it's also still a bit out of date, and I expect it to stay broken for a week or so more. You might want to use the userscript version instead.
I am sorry for being harsh. I know Firefox has funding issues, so getting developers to look at things has to be hard.
I am just so very frustrated after days of constant user complaints due to broken functionality, months of glacial reviews, and a particularly bad night of sleep.
In the interest of openness, this is the GitHub Action that generated the build they rejected. (It even has attestations. They don't use it though.)
github.com/FrankerFaceZ...
And here's my readme, along with their rejection: gist.github.com/SirStendec/3...
The only thing I can tell these users is to switch from using the browser add-on to using a user-script we maintain. I don't want to tell them that. I want them to be able to just... go install FFZ and have it work.
Please do better, Firefox. For our users.
What I do know is that it took them 10 days to review a small update. And every update I've submitted since 2023 has taken at LEAST a week to approve.
Our Firefox users have been stuck with a broken experience on Twitch for 10 days, and counting now, because Firefox is slow.
But they couldn't handle that. They couldn't be bothered to read a logged error message. They just send it off to me saying they rejected the build.
I don't know if they're incompetent or just overworked to the point of uselessness.
I only have three OS-level dependencies, for the record: node, pnpm, and git. These are very common dependencies for a JavaScript project.
The build script handles everything else.
They didn't just fail to install the dependencies and run a script, they failed to read the build output at all. If they did, it's very obvious that they didn't install pnpm.
pnpm is one of the most popular JavaScript tools. This is not some weird obscure dependency I was asking for.
I released a FrankerFaceZ update last week on Tuesday. March 4th. The only finally got around to reviewing it today.
They rejected it, for the record. Why? Because they couldn't reproduce the build. All they have to do is install dependencies, and then run a script.
They fucked it up. Worse.
But that's good, surely? Manual approval means you won't be able to sneak any malicious code out to users, yes?
In a perfect world, it would be. This world isn't perfect. Firefox straight up doesn't have enough staff to do manual approvals. They lack the numbers. They might lack the expertise?
I'm not only a user. I'm a developer. I maintain a browser extension with over a million users. Most of them, fortunately, aren't on Firefox. Why fortunately?
Firefox, as an add-on developer, is terrible. Once you reach a certain user threshold, they require manual approval for every upload.
So. Let's talk about @firefox.com. There are good things about Firefox. It's very good that there's competition with Chrome. It's good that Firefox is standing up for technology that benefits the users, like ad-blockers.
As a user, Firefox is a great thing and I really appreciate what they do. But.
I am going to rant about Firefox later, but I just got up after sleeping terribly so I don't have it in me just yet.
Discord needs pinned messages that stay on screen until they're dismissed for channels.
That would help so much with support channels. Today in the FFZ server there has been a constant stream of people asking the same question and failing to read so much as 3 messages above theirs.
1. Disable the browser add-on.
2. Ensure you have a userscript manager (Violentmonkey, Tampermonkey, etc.) installed.
3. Visit FFZ's website. Under Install click Other Browsers, then Userscript.
4. Install the script when your userscript manager prompts you.
