That’s exactly what it will do. Don’t believe the bullshit in their “non-goals” section, they don’t give a fuck. If accessibility extensions happen to continue working (at least temporarily), it will be by accident, because they for damn sure aren’t going to spend even a second on compatibility.
Such an abstraction, while unnecessary, should be possible, providing that Google doesn’t forcibly prevent access to the final markup that coalesces (ie.: view source and web dev tools)
Web dev here. It enforces the original markup and code from a server to be the markup and code that the browser interprets and executes, preventing any post-loading modifications.
That sounds a bit dry, but the implications are huge. It means:
ad blockers won’t work (the main reason for Google’s ploy)
many, if not most, other browser extensions won’t work (eg.: accessibility, theming, anti-malware)
people are going to start running into a lot of scam ads that ad blockers would otherwise prevent
malicious websites will be able to operate with impunity since you cannot run security extensions to prevent them
web developers are going to be crippled for lack of debugging ability
These are just a few things off the top of my head. There are endless and very dangerous implications to WEI. This is very, very bad for the web and antithesis of how it’s supposed to be.
TBL is probably experiencing a sudden disturbance in the force.
Eh… it’s pretty, I guess, but it’s just too “appified” for power users. My Thunderbird UI is festooned with useful buttons and menus for quick access, and I like the old style of having elements tightly spaced to maximize contextual awareness.
Well whaddaya know, you get what you pay for.
That being said, companies should be legally obligated to provide security patches for a minimum number of years.