1ec5
commented
9 years ago This may become more important once Firefox and Firefox Beta require extensions to be signed. Updates to AVIM often languish in AMO’s review queue, making it important for users to be able to install unreviewed or beta versions of AVIM. If users of Firefox can no longer install these versions, they’ll be at the mercy of the reviewer team.
Going around AMO in this limited way would be a mixed bag. It would certainly enable better turnaround when a Web application changes and breaks AVIM. From a client-side point of view, subscripts are doubly sandboxed, so there’s little risk to the computer. However, editor subscripts are run in the context of Web applications that typically hold the user’s work, so they should receive the same level of scrutiny as any other part of AVIM. Besides, an AVIM user isn’t necessarily going to have the same level of computer security awareness as a Greasemonkey user.
Every time one of the supported custom editors changes, we have to update the corresponding editor subscript, requiring another update that might take weeks or months for Mozilla Add-ons to approve. Google Docs and iCloud support have been on and off for this reason.
AVIM should be able to download editor subscripts from a public GitHub repository. (Think Homebrew for Vietnamese IME support.) That would cut down on the extension’s size, because the subscript would only get downloaded when necessary. It could also be updated on a regular basis if needed.