You cannot create an restricted API for everything, the very point of extensions, plugins, addons is community is always bigger than your developers team, and much, much more diverse. The 'long tail' effect is what extensions community is about, not '90 per cent of users'. 90 per cent of users might need just a couple of the same extensions, the other 10 per cent of users need a thousand of different extensions.
Not really. I stuck to Pale Moon for a while, but it gets untenable: Stuck with dead extensions, or ancient versions of live ones. Left behind with no support for essentials like grid-view display, which the Pale Moon maintainer seems to consider a kind of personal affront. And knowing with close to absolute certainty that you are setting yourself up with a variety of gaping, unpatched security holes.
I haven't found it to be untenable. Then again, it seems that you're worried about maintaining the bleeding edge, and I'm, well, the exact opposite of that. My mantra in terms of technology has been "If it ain't broke, stop trying to fix it" for the last, oh, 4 years or more.
> ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.
If they were actually doing that, I'd be first in line for their defense, but they aren't. Additionally, they keep shoving in features that should be extensions.
...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.