Satisfied users of the Firefox Snap on Ubuntu — hey, if Big Foot can exist, so can they — will be stoked to hear they can FINALLY take advantage of native messaging support without needing to get dicey with dev builds.
Got a sense of deja vu?
Back in July I reported that the Firefox Snap finally “fixed” its extant ability to use this feature, but at the time it was limited to beta builds of the browser (thus meaning users who wanted it us either had to switch Snap channel to enjoy.
However, as of early November the relevant bits and pieces that make it all work HAVE made their way in to stable builds, meaning all users of the Firefox Snap, regardless of channel, benefit.
“Long awaited update: native messaging support is now available in the stable channel. If you find issues with the functionality, feel free to either report them here, or file a bug. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way to get here, the testing and feedback has been very valuable,” writes Canonical’s Olivier Tilloy in the Snapcraft forum.
Although “native messaging support” sounds awfully fancy (and a bit MSN-y, or is that me showing my age?) it’s a feature that allows Firefox add-ons to “exchange messages with a native application, installed on the user’s computer”.
Its arrival in stable builds of means Ubuntu users can (once again) install GNOME Shell extensions from the GNOME Extensions website using Firefox, so long as they have the relevant browser add-on and host connector installed too.
Another key use case of this is integration with third-party password managers, like KeePassXC.
You don’t need to do anything special to “get” the messaging functionality as Snap apps are preconfigured to update automatically, in the background. While GNOME extension installing should now work, you some users continue to hit issues with third-party password managers, so YMMV.
Still, better later than never.