As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.*
I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0].
- Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idiomatic for web developers.
- Forced non-persistent extensions guides developers to a better implementation which relies on less resources.
*The deprecation of webRequest's blocking behavior is what's most concerning. The implementation in Manifest V2 requires sending a message back and forth between processes with JS processing for each network request which seems to be in part why they redesigned it.
However, that optimization costs so much for innovative ad blocking technologies as gorhill of uBlock Origin has mentioned. When ad blocking begins requiring new methods of detection or filtering, it'll now be up to Chromium maintainers to implement support for it in the new declarativeNetRequest API. This is a tradeoff of performance for reduced flexibility where it is absolutely needed.
Are these changes actually needed, though? As much as it makes sense to use service workers, for instance, this seems like a rationalization to shoehorn in Google's anti-features.
It's not like background webpages are broken or even hard to use. It's not like everyone's clamoring for their ad blockers to use less resource or for Chrome to be faster.
There was a time when I switched to Chrome because I believed it to be superior. Now that I find the extensions I use to be nearly as important as the browser itself, I can't imagine why ad-hating privacy-focused individuals would punish themselves by using Chrome. Firefox has a few performance quirks in contrast to Chrome, but overall it's in a state where it competes in most cases. As much as I can complain about Mozilla's organizational issues, I can be far more assured that they aren't going to cause my extensions to become nerfed for A Good Reason (TM).
What's strange is my adblocker makes everything run faster. So making the ad blocker faster at the cost of being less reliable seems like the whole system will be slower in general.
> Does anyone seriously believe that an advertising company wants to improve the performance of ad blockers? It's obvious what Google is doing.
I believe some people at Google want to make plugins more efficient, some want to kill ad blockers and probably a few other reasons. Obviously Google is externally (and probably internally outside of specific teams) playing up the efficiency concerns. And I don't doubt most advocates we hear honestly think primarily about that.
That said, if you claimed they got the clout and priority to do that because of the ad concerns behind the scenes, I would say "duh"
I remember some people saying Safari's extension changes and specific content blocker API would be a good thing because ad blockers would use less resources.
The change happened, uBlock Origin broke for Safari and here we are several years later and the Safari ad blocker ecosystem is an absolute joke and most of it barely works or demands subscription fees (and the ones that do are certainly not worth paying for because they don't even block YT ads)
Enrolled in the Orion browser beta and haven't looked back. I get Safari's engine with all the energy optimziations with the ability to run uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, and they're working on greater WebExtensions API support.
I still use Safari for banking and eCommerce because its beta, but for everything else its wonderful. I even get a quality vertical tabs implementation built into the browser; can also shrink the top bar to pre-14/15 size in combination.
The browser will eventually be behind a paywall once the beta is up, but I'm all onboard for paying for an alternative to both Chromium and non-XUL Gecko.
It's such twisted economics for somebody to make a video, a platform to distribute it and an adblocker company to reap the benefits through its subscription fees.
I'd argue the same folks are ok with looting Neiman Marcus stores during some protests because "they've rigged the system and are all rich anyways"
The one I posted is free, I have no idea why you're answering to me.
I also don't like people doing bad things other people's property. This is why I use AdBlockers: to prevent those platforms from running shit I don't want on my computer.
That’s not true re the Safari ad blocker ecosystem.
We develop a Safari ad blocker [1] that works on iOS and macOS which provides performant and private ad blocking. Unlike previous ad blockers using other extension mechanisms, it also can’t see which web pages you visit. We recently released best in class YouTube ad blocking features too. The mechanisms for doing this is different, but the ad blocking results are as good with better performance.
did you ever notice how the only people who ever say anything positive about Safari's adblock ecosystem are those who literally sell adblocker software?
It is like clockwork.
Despite the fact that most of your posts on HN are ads for magiclasso, the fact remains that even most basic features (like whitelisting or blocking cookie banners) require payment.
Furthermore, you do not even come close to uBlock origin. Of course, we both know this, because it simply is not possible. Apple does not allow it. And yet, you continue to state the opposite even though it simply is not true.
On other platforms, using *entirely free* addons like uBlock, you can zap away annoying elements/bars/overlays... or enable some requests while blocking others selectively. You can block videos on some news websites, but allow javascript galleries, and do the opposite on a video site. You can block that overlay disabling right clicks or hijacking the scroll bar.
Once you know that it is possible, you do this every day.
None of that is possible with your product, magiclasso.co, no matter how much money I pay you or how many ads you write on hackernews.
There's a fine line when shilling your own product here. One should be humble.
If you write: Yes, compared to other platforms, the adblock ecosystem in Safari is absolutely dismal. However, we have this product where we are doing our best...
Okay...
Does uBlock Origin have a lot more customisable power user features? Yes. Are they relevant to the majority of users who want to be able to enable an ad blocker and get great results without a lot of fuss? Probably not.
Does uBlock Origin also use a slow, memory and performance inefficient means of blocking ads? Yes.
Does uBlock Origin also use ad blocking ruleset that have thousands of obsolete rules that are rarely pruned, leading to the complaints that Safari only supported 50,000 rules in a single extension? Yes.
There's a lot of Pros and Cons with different products. uBlock Origin has a lot of Pros for certain types of users and it's a fantastic tool – but it's approach to ad blocking is becoming legacy at this stage. They should be planning to re-architect their approach to suit a more modern, privacy focused API that is supported by the two biggest browser makers.
I am really not breaking new ground when I say that the "modern API" is entirely neutered. It has been discussed here at length. It is so neutered, that literally no one uses it except where it is mandatory.
And here is the real banger: YOU DON'T EVEN USE IT when you try to block ads on youtube.
Let's recap:
You are worse at blocking ads, because you can not block dynamically and the user can not add rules to sites or elements. For example, whenever my favorite news site fixes its ad block blocker, I'd have to wait for you to update the block list instead of just killing the new script. This happens on the reg, and you can't do anything about it.
Or consider websites who hijack right-clicking or scroll bars. Consider people who have to use usability tools to make those sites work for them, like text2speech. Your product doesn't do a single thing there.
Let's recap more:
You have "best in class" ad blocking on youtube? uBlock blocks all ads, period, with 100% success, on any video site. For years now.
Your product? "More or less" perhaps a good description?
And best of all, you have to follow 1Block and inject your own browser addon, literally breaking your privacy promise to the user for EVERY WEBSITE THAT HAS VIDEOS.
This is not even close to being a good option, but you come here and say your ad blocker is more privacy conscious when it just isn't (if it is supposed to block ads). What?
Let's move on:
You can't block trackers because you cannot block fingerprinting. You only have a block list when we now know that's not enough. You can't do things PrivacyBadger does, since the EFF has already determined it doesn't work due to the new and "improved" API.
You are selling snake-oil here.
So. Even without any expert features, your product is simply inferior. You can not even hold the promise of privacy, because you literally need to break it to have any chance of blocking anything on youtube. Well guess what, there are more sites than youtube out there.
None of this is news. We have been through this many times. In every measurable way the "legacy adblockers" are superior.
What IS necessary to discuss is you having the gall to come to this website and market your product with obvious falsities - things like the new API being anything but ineffective, and then going ahead and posting the refutation of exactly that point on your own website [1].
>Does uBlock Origin also use a slow, memory and performance inefficient means of blocking ads? Yes.
Is this true? It's been a little while but last time I looked over things it seemed like gorhill implemented a rather efficient machine. I'd appreciate if you could expand on this.
I mean, it’s anecdotal, but all those features are ones I never knew existed and I’ve used ublock origin for years.
I was always fine with _some_ ads but eventually got ublock when the internet hit this critical mass of being all ads all the time. If safari adblockers can keep the browser experience _mostly_ ad free out of the box then they are equivalent to me as an unsophisticated user at least
For me, once Apple made that decision, I started migrating away from Safari, and I haven't tried your product. I note that it does have a pro subscription option -- which I'm not opposed to -- but I do also note that this seems to be much more common than the "donationware" licensing model of most other browser extensions.
Out of curiosity, can Magic Lassoo present a detailed list of domain connection attempts by category, i.e. do anything like uMatrix does? The thing that keeps me on FF, even on MacOS (aside from warm fuzzy open source feelings) is that I really think the extension ecosystem is the best -- uMatrix, greasemonkey and the ilk are brilliant. I like Safari's isolated private browsing mode most of the time, and I like its dev tools. But the adblock situation is just so much better on FF; it makes the web usable again whilst respecting my privacy ideals. I really like being able to say 'Thou shalt not set thine cookie and contact all of these domains via an XHR request' and the site just...continuing to work.
No matter what all these adblocker advertisements tell you here on HN: Safari only allows these extensions to have a single blocklist and then your choice is whether to enable or disable the adblocker extension, with all its fixed and non-dynamic rules, on the website in question.
From that perspective, Safari adblockers are virtually identical, simply because they are all using the same interface and (I would suspect) resell blocklists you get to use for free elsewhere.
It's people selling you a subscription product that is vastly inferior to any free extension on Firefox (not on iOS obv) and the same discussion has been had many times before.
I mean, I don't want to be a negative nancy here, but it does get annoying with these ads that seemingly have lost all perspective of how bad adblocking on Safari truly is.
Not exactly, you can have multiple blocklists limited to 50k entries apiece. Many Safari content blockers support that.
Safari content blocking (and thus Chrome v3 manifest blocking) basically works OK at blocking ads today. The problem is this is an arms race, and as the advertising agencies come up with inventive ways to evade these strictly controlled content blocks, they have no real way to adjust.
At that point we'll need to rely on Apple or Google to add new features specifically to support blocking ads. Google seems particularly unlikely to do that. To say the least.
And even if they do, there will be long periods before new browser releases are available with those features, and then the blocker developers need to support them.
> the ad blocking results are as good with better performance
I invite you to go through all daily commits made in uBlock Origin's specific filter lists to solve reported real-world issues[1], and find out if every single one of these issues can also be solved in a typical Safari content blocker, just as they are immediately solved in uBlock Origin.
For instance, it would be an interesting exercise to find out how many of the fixes committed between Sep. 21 and Sep. 27 inclusively can or cannot be also be fixed in a typical Safari content blocker.
I don't use it, but it seems to be free, with an optional "pro" subscription for some extra features. The subscription pricing is only mentioned on the App Store page, and appears to be $3/month or $30/year.
Your claim that service workers are more idiomatic than background pages ignores months of debate and examples to the contrary collected by the w3c web extensions group. [0]
This could be an area where MV3 walks itself back. One proposal creates an Extension Worker which is a new concept like a Service Worker but better matches the use cases for background scripts. Another simply puts background pages back, but behind a permission.
Thanks for mentioning this. I've been aware of this group since its announcement, but have been ignorant of the ongoing discussions.
Hopefully Google and others are receptive to some of the proposals made in the issues. I recognize the value of reintroducing the persistent capabilities to the SW model.
You think it is a step in the right direction while acknowledging it breaks adblockers. You're going to have to explain why you're cool with that, because as it stands your post just isn't cohesive at all (as far as I can tell).
This isn't a single, monolithic change, there's plenty of changes between manifest V2 and V3. GP said he thought most of these changes are a step in the right direction, while expressing concern about one of the others. That seems like a cohesive and nuanced opinion to me.
It sounds like deflection and rationalization to me.
Not all features are equally important, the one seeing a regression is much more important, it's also the feature with a conflict of interest, and the conflict of interest lies in the direction of Google pushing this through over everyone else's objections.
I was in the process of writing a reply when I realised you presented the same arguments in a much more concise manner. For the record, this is what my problem was with the argumentation presented.
I am an extension developer, but have resigned from engaging with development in the ecosystem. One of my extensions has >300k subscribers on the Chrome Webstore which will be killed by MV3.
Many ongoing changes are being made in extensions and the web in general to improve security while reducing capabilities in existing applications.
At this point, for more complex use cases such as one of my own, the only hope is building your own web browser with complete control over its systems. I've changed focus to improving Electron for this reason.
Ideally, I'd like to see MV3 continue supporting the persistent context use case as well as maintaining webRequest blocking support.
>Ideally, I'd like to see MV3 continue supporting the persistent context use case as well as maintaining webRequest blocking support.
Same, which is why I engage with browser representatives in the W3C WebExtensions Community Group.
Unfortunately, the status quo is grim with Firefox seemingly uninterested in standing up to Chrome and citing compatibility as the main reason for following Chrome into mandatory Service Workers.
I appreciate that yourself and other folks are engaging in the community to request improvements.
Prior to the group being formed, most discussion regarding MV3 occurred on the Chrome Extensions Google Group [0]. While feedback was accepted and open there, I hadn't seen the Chrome team acting on it to make changes. That's where most of my pessimism on the situation comes from.
I believe the Chrome team's main motivation is removing any functionality in MV3 which would have the possibility of reducing performance in normal browsing. I personally don't have much hope that they'll be backpedaling on any changes.
> the changes seem like a step in the right direction [...] However, that optimization costs so much for innovative ad blocking.
This is fair. For an ad-blocker to be effective today it needs to be invasive, and that doesn't apply to most extensions.
It is too easy to grant invasive privileges to v2 extensions for those that do not understand the consequences. Downloading a whole new browser on the other hand is a far more obvious way of implicitly granting that trust... So I wonder if when push comes to shove, a "uBlocked-Chrome" browser might emerge. To be clear, I am suggesting a uBlock integration project, not a preservation of V2 for extensions.
I don't think that will work because Google controls Chromium. They will play a long game to sabotage the abilities of smaller Chromium browsers to block ads. Advertising is their business model and they have a lot of money to spend on crushing smaller browsers that have a different vision of what the Web should be.
Google is full of smart people who get paid to deal with obstacles like that. If your goal is to block ads and tracking, it's extremely unwise to depend on software that is fundamentally controlled by an ad company. If someone threatens their business model, they will throw an overwhelming amount of money at the problem. They are boiling frogs, so most people won't notice. Killing uBlock Origin and disallowing browser extensions on mobile are just small steps in a long-term plan.
Which ones? HN does, but a large part of the other sites I frequent need around a second or more to load. With or without ad-blockers - some load faster with, some faster without, but they never enter the "nearly instantly" range, which (last I checked) was 0-250 ms.
Yes, if you crush your computer into a cube you won't see ads again either. But people want to keep their computers and block content they don't like, so there's "problems to solve" there.
The problem of not disabling JavaScript and not seeing ads. I.e. granting users control over the code their browser runs that's finer-grained than "nuke it from orbit".
I have a stupid idea. But first, a bunch of questions:
- Can you legally advertise a product you're not affiliated with? Is this OK by the ToS of major ad networks?
- Is it possible to target ads by user's browser?
I'm thinking, maybe we should crowdfund a public interest ad, targeted at people browsing from Chrome, with some attention-grabbing art or distracting colors, and a clear message: "Want to stop seeing this ad? Stop using Chrome, install a different browser and an ad blocker. Click here to learn more.", which links to a site directing people to install Firefox and uBlock Origin (and linking to crowdfunding campaign to keep the ad going). Alternative for A/B testing: "Don't click this ad, it costs us money."
Come to think of it, maybe someone like EFF should do that - they're well-known and reputable enough that people wouldn't immediately assume it's some weird Firefox ad, avoiding the effect being the opposite from intended.
Good idea, but don't look to EFF for help. They rely on Google and Co funding to survive.
"Buying Silence
... most of these groups depended on funding from the very same corporations that they should be criticizing. Over the past years, EFF has taken millions in funds from Google and Facebook via straight donations and controversial court payouts that many see as under-the-radar contributions. Hell, Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s foundation gave EFF at least $1.2 million"
Yeah, I guess. But I imagine there's so much volume of ads that they can't all go through human review. Maybe it could sneak in undetected and work for a short while, until the first tweet mentioning it goes viral.
It would probably work, until it really works - when it will be stopped.
But if done right, it has the potential to create lots of attention. An add, that wants you to see less ads, that was finally taken down by the big corporations? Very clickbait article stuff - it is just that (almost) all those news networks live on ads so have no incentive to push up this news.
I can put up a "pretend ad" on my two blogs and maybe I can be a bit creative and get it feqtured elsewhere too if someone provides "artwork" and somewhere to point it too.
Anyone else in?
PS: If you do it later, send me a mail (it is in my profile, click my username to see it.)
I heard a Duck Duck Go ad on the radio over the weekend and I thought it was so odd. But now having read your comment I realize it’s probably one of the most “trusted” ways to advertise privacy software/webapps because it relies on potential new users going to their site whereas online ads would probably (rightly) be looked at with suspicion.
well, at least this one ad would be true, and hopefully, those who would otherwise have clicked on that shady "web-accelerator" ad would've instead been saved by this one!
if there was one Nigerian prince who transferred 1 million dollars to a person's account that would set a bad precedent for all the gullible folks out there.
Duckduckgo had been running similar ads on Texas billboards. Not specifically regarding ads, but about the value of not being tracked. Offline anti-ads may be the means to get around the FAANG wall.
Edit for clarity
DDG is also doing heavy radio advertising. I don't normally listen to commercial radio, but my kids like these morning DJs for the ride to school, so I get to hear it.
Make this happen and I am going to do my best to publicize this.
On the other hand, chrome is making it increasingly tough to use any other browser by sheer intuitive and useful features. Grouping tabs for eg. I know other would do it one day. But there is a lag. I wonder why other browsers (OSS) do not straight up copy any good features and release. Assuming there is good enough dev resources.
Or is it really that hard to do it?
Other browsers don't so what you say or are slow to do so for the same reason that the EFF will likely never publicize such an ad campaign against ad-blocking. Not-for-profit organizations of all kinds optimize for either wasting revenue or wasting effort. Just look at where all these organizations are, like Mozilla/Wikimedia/EFF, compared to where they were 15 years ago. They consume more and more money while doing proportionally less with that money. What would have been obvious decisions back then that could be implemented in short order now require bureaucracy that ultimately sidelines what's important for what will inflate the egos of suits. (The same happens to for-profit companies, but that's usually more a function of time and scale rather than time and incentive.)
I suppose there are browsers like Brave that would be in the position to implement Chrome features, which I guess happens by default. But let's just say in the situation where Chrome implements something that doesn't show up downstream in Chromium; Brave's interests might not be in competing directly with Chrome but focusing efforts on BAT/crypto and replacing ads.
Grouping tabs is already possible in Vivaldi. There are also FF extensions, who offer alternative concepts. I think TabTree or something like that it is called.
Firefox has the Simple Tab Groups extension, which works with containers. Chrome not only doesn't have containers, but its tab grouping is clunky and featureless in comparison.
For me (I imagine a lot of others as well), it's simple. If Chrome removes adblock, I'm going back to Firefox.
HN ilk don't represent a good target market. Can't really make money off traditionally tracked ads off of us.
FWIW, I love Chrome, still do. I've been here since those entirely useless but super viral and catchy speed test ad/vids. It worked on me. I love the debugger as a web developer, more so than Firebug.
Overall, will be sad to go. Pour one out for Chrome when the day comes.
> For me (I imagine a lot of others as well), it's simple. If Chrome removes adblock, I'm going back to Firefox.
uBO is already hampered and less powerful on Chromium based browsers right now (CNAME un-cloaking doesn't happen). I imagine this will keep on happening with the advent of Manifest v2.
Not sure if gorhill will choose to maintain different codebases for different browsers.
In Chrome and Safari, Google search injects analytics via the ping attribute on <a> tags. This sends some additional ping-to and ping-from headers. So Google is still collecting data from who use its search, provided they are not on Firefox. I would assume it does the same for its other products, such as Google Analytics, but I haven't checked.
The "ping" attribute is available to all sites and many content blocking extensions (including ad blockers) block these pings. This isn't changing with Manifest V3: extensions will still be able to block them.
Note that on Firefox and other browsers that do not support "ping", Google Search still tracks which links you click on, but it uses URL rewriting. There are also extensions that block this.
Not OP, but the main reason for me to use adblockers is not to prevent tracking, but to block ads. This alone makes websites load significantly faster and it sometimes prevents dozens of annoying ads per webpage.
This is particularly amusing considering Google's extreme lack of v3 documentation. Their samples and examples Github, for example, has only 2 examples, iirc. They also introduce a lot of silliness like the inability to nest content scripts within folders.
Not to mention all the limitations of the Chrome browser. The continuous difference between console.log and console.dir. The former only shows you a very limited view of JS objects while the latter is what Firefox uses as the default for console.log - a full view of the object you want inspected. Then there's the inability to edit and resend network requests. The only workaround is to copy the request as a fetch request, dump it into the console or snippets, re-edit it there, and then send it through the console. Of course you'd have to parse the response in the console too instead of being able to see it in devtools.
And then there's Chrome's complete lack of proper proxy support. You could start the browser with command line flags in order to enable a SOCKS5 proxy, for example, but that requires you to close your existing browser session and open a new one.
Finally, how is it that we have nearly exact dates (2022-01-17 and sometime in January 2023) for V2 sunsetting but the dates for implementation of actual features needed to migrate away from V2 have no solid expectation date? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? From the article:
"In the coming months, we'll also be launching support for dynamically configurable content scripts and an in-memory storage option, among other new capabilities."
"In the coming months"? The v2 sunset date is just a few months away! Why not ensure that the current feature set is fully functional and adequate to replace v2 before blocking v2 extension submissions?
It's interesting that you mention Chrome’s silliness when I find Firefox’ dev tools to be severely lacking, especially for WebExtensions. Examples include:
- complete inability to run code from the console into the content script context
- content script errors are not shown in the console, you have to open a separate Browser Console
- overall buggy dev tools (I don't remember anymore because I stopped using them a long time ago)
I guess every browser lacks something, it's just that we notice when we compare "my browser" to the next one.
Yeah each one has pros and cons. However if your doing POST and GET requests (Or monitoring network traffic in general) Firefox is much much better than Chrome!
This is great news for Firefox. I switched a year ago and was forced to use Chrome once or twice (lack of call support in Teams web app; I'm unwilling to install the native (?) app).
The main difference between Chrome and Firefox is that Chrome feels passively (and sometimes actively) user-hostile with things like not-so-intuitive Chrome-vs-Google login and many other things that may seem trifle details but are in fact well-thought-out features with very specific purposes. In Firefox it's the opposite: I can start with containers right away, for example. Some extensions like Ad Nauseam (and many others) are simply removed from Chrome Store and if you insist on using them with Chrome, you need to re-enable them with the developer mode each time you start the browser. Why torture yourself if you can simply use Firefox?
This will not cause Chrome to lose market share, it is in fact the exact opposite. The move is _required_ for market share. Castrating extensions prevents average Joe from shooting himself in the foot. It is easy for us to forget how bad most non IT people are with these things. It's OK to have browsers aimed at different markets. I will continue to use Firefox but will not push it to my aging parents for example.
I feel the same for Linux on the desktop discussion. I don't want Linux to become another Windows or Mac OS. The DIY always tinkering with it is a feature not a bug. It's like a car you keep for track days. Sure you work on it all the time and would not want your grandma taking it shopping, but that's not it's purpose! Of course family cars will always have a huge market share compared to track day cars. And you would not want to change that because it would mean destroying what a track day car is in the process of making it user friendly, reliable, maintenance free, etc.
Would you like to have random companies tracking your grandma wherever she goes, because of the GPS that's now in every family car?
Would you like supermarkets real-time adjust (=increase by 2ct) the prices on products your grandma usually buys, based on when your grandma's family car is taking the "I'm going shopping" route?
I run a service that lets browser extension developers take payments in their extensions without needing to run their own servers* and it's been frustrating watching the MV3 rollout. The documentation isn't good, there are unresolved issues, and every developer making an extension adopts it because Google says that's the new thing everyone has to use.
And sigh, I hope uBlock Origin continues to work — the web sucks without it. Maybe Mozilla could hire the devs and integrate it into Firefox.
If you don't want to use Firefox (why not?) just use Brave or Edge. Each has its own quirks of course, but it's better than the google cage chrome is. (Undeleteable google cookies? Come on)
The only thing preventing a Blink monoculture is Safari, thanks to iOS platform lock-in. Firefox has negligible market share, if that was all that was left, Gecko would have to become a Blink clone to survive, nobody would code exceptions for it.
IMO the Web was better in the Trident days, when IE6's dominance allowed a single defacto web-wide standard (vs today's WHATWG clusterfsk) but alternative browsers like NetCaptor could still provide all the shiny UI chrome, from tabs to integrated popup blocking.
Having a single renderer but multiple browsers on top of it would vastly simplify the web for users & developers, resulting in one consistent engine to develop, test, and fuzz against.
Rather than being the irrelevance it is today, Mozilla focusing on Blink development & governance would have way more impact for billions of users, rather than some obsolete and forgotten build of Firefox.
Then all it'd take is for something like the E.U. to cripple Apple's Webkit-on-iOS monopoly for Blink to take over there too.
Having multiple renderers is just a waste of everyone's time...
> Having multiple renderers is just a waste of everyone's time...
Unfortunately, Blink isn't openly governed. It's governed by Google, and if Google decides that they won't implement complex feature, maintaining that feature will be logistical nightmare. Imagine writing drivers for some exotic kernel, but kernel API or even very architecture isn't stable.
Edge's browser session ID is hardware-based and their sync doesn't offer end-to-end encryption for all categories, only a few. The browser itself is probably the best modern browser at least on desktop, but it's sadly not ideal for privacy, to say the least.
Brave and Vivaldi would be the Chromium forks of choice. Both implement a zero knowledge sync system of their own, for example, default to privacy friendly search engines etc.
I've been working on a lightweight Chrome Extension and it's been really, really frustrating. The documentation is all over the place and it's sometimes unclear what's for v2 vs v3, and there aren't any deep-dive guides for solving non-trivial problems. There also isn't really any tooling for development besides "reload the extension in Chrome and see if it works."
So, if I read this correctly, there's no way to modify the results of a request anymore? I can just redirect to a new URL, block or allow? I' m not even sure, upon reading that, if I can use JS to redirect based on the full URL not just the matching snippet to a new URL.
Anyway, the whole point is to allow people to get out of addictive loops, to take control of how they use the web, and most people aren't that tech savvy — they deserve to not be addicted to facebook too.
"New and existing technologies could affect our ability to customize ads and/or could block ads online, which would harm our business.
Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results."
Chrome really needs to be divested from Google, even if it dies as a result. Pretty much the only two still-extant cross-platform browsers (Chromium and Firefox) are funded by ad company money. In a lot of ways, this is worse than the Microsoft/Internet Explorer situation.
I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?
Mozilla's main source of revenue has always been the money Google gives them to have Google as the default search engine. They could stop this at any time to effectively kill Mozilla. So, why haven't they? Because there's this case called United States v. Microsoft Corporation that deals with this very issue of browser monopolies. Now usually a lawsuit wouldn't mean dick to Google because they already have a litany of lawsuits against them that their star legal team is hired to handle. But in this one narrow instance a precedent case is massive, and were Google to kill Mozilla, there would be a league of lawyers jumping over themselves to sue Google on this. Why? Because it's a slam dunk, and would at best force Google to say "hey, you can download Chrome, or you can use these alternative browsers" everywhere there's a Chrome download prompt, or at worst force them to split up. They don't want that.
Regarding Mozilla's direction, we already have years of evidence. It all starts with Brendan Eich's resigning. Whether you agree the reasoning is immaterial; that decision lead him to start a direct competitor that is now fighting them for the ever-shrinking demographic of people that don't use Chrome. And then there's stuff like acquiring Pocket, something completely antithetical to Firefox's core values. Money-wasters like FoxOS (or whatever that mobile OS was called) that distracted from Firefox. And then lots of tick-tacky stuff like FF devtools being inferior to Chrome for years (people say it's better now, but I don't care to check it out, I've been using Chrome's for years), over-focusing on frivolous things like social justice issues. It will be death by 1000 cuts that kills Mozilla from the inside.
"Money-wasters" like FirefoxOS were a gamble to get onto the mobile phone bandwagon, to reduce Google's Android/Chrome moat. If they had worked, it'd have been a huge gain both for Firefox and for users.
> And then there's stuff like acquiring Pocket, something completely antithetical to Firefox's core values.
Pocket itself isn't antithetical to Firefox's values. It not being open source is, but from what I understand they're still working on making the server open source, though at disappointingly low priority.
pocket is mainly an article reader and not really a bookmark service. the whole point is you don't have to send tab of some js heavy news website, you can just have the clean reader view from pocket.
If you bookmark articles, they'll likely eventually go offline or your links will break because websites change and die. This is known as link rot.
There are services, of which Pocket is not the only one, that save you personal hard copies of content so you can have it available offline and keep things even if they're gone. Like a personal Wayback Machine. It's a very sensible thing to integrate into a browser in my opinion, although a lot of the Firefox fanbase, being idiots in love with the idea of FOSS donationware, are hostile to. I used to be one of those idiots.
Simply put it combines "article view" with pinterest style saving. Find an article online, save it to pocket, revisit it later and read it in an "article view".
There's a possibility that they're going to Bing, in which case they'd truly be a non-Google player. Not a non-Big Tech one, but a real anti-Google system.
If this breaks or degrades uBlock Origin it's a day one move to Firefox for me. That's a non-negotiable. I'm waiting until it stops working because I like Chrome's translation functionality.
Probably because v2 extensions haven't been switched off yet. It might be different in January 2023; or maybe the limited adblocking of v3 will be enough for most people. Time will tell.
Ad providers are obfuscating domains to bypass blocks. Currently only ublock origin deobfuscate and block based on the original domain.(It is supported on firefox only anyway) But after the change... I guess no one on chrome can do. And ad blocking will be totally useless at that point.
If you mean ublock origin cosmetic filters, yeah facebook is really putting up a fight. The status quo has been randomized css classes, identical html structure, interspersing hidden junk characters in between the "Sponsored" text, and the latest I've noticed, anchors that link to # until you hover over, preventing blocking href=^/ads. That and turning on or off or changing behavior between users and regions makes collaborating on rules really difficult.
This has me surprised because most of these changes are not very complicated and I have always wondered why these methods weren't more widespread. To me defeating ad blockers seems easy as long as you're willing to play cat and mouse (and if your income depends on it I guess you are)
Around which time Firefox is intending to make the same changes, having deprecated v2 manifests (this post seems to use that term to mean the actual removal) and doing all the API swaps to service workers and the such. Firefox just makes all the same decisions Chrome does, the good and the bad.
Mozilla does plan to support the old request-blocking APIs indefinitely, though, even after the Manifest v3 switch, until an alternative that meets the needs of extension developers is developed.
I never left. But then I again, I replaced everything Google with paid or self-hosted alternatives about 10 years ago. From what I hear, the Google ecosystem itself can be pain on Firefox. Although I check my old Gmail once every couple of weeks and I find it to work well enough. Maybe if you live in things like Google Docs, you start getting annoyed by accumulating papercuts? No idea..
The nuisances are minor. They're enough that if you're just thinking of switching, you might notice them and not do it. But after a while, you forget about them. I couldn't tell you what they were anymore.
And there are advantages as well, such as better autoplay avoidance.
As I understand it, the autoplay avoidance is the same but Chrome has a list of sites that they allow to bypass the policy. YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, etc.
about://media-engagement according to the docs (which implies engaging with the site is required, but I don’t think it is for YouTube).
Youtube is where I notice it, and where I want it to stop autoplaying the most. "It doesn't autoplay, except all the places you want it to not autoplay" isn't what I'd call "The same"
I moved from Safari to Firefox a year ago (never used Chrome as my primary browser.) The reason I moved may sound really really dated, but I discovered that I can configure Firefox with separate search and URL fields. I //HATE// that UI and wanted my separate boxes back.
I wish I could find a extension that removes all motion on a page (video, js animated stuff) but I suspect that would be too difficult to do. I do use a extension that removes all color, but it doesn't work terribly well, and some UIs on websites are too dependant on color as differentiators.
That may be a deal breaker for you. But for others it's a necessary feature! Firefox added it as a feature and I love it! And I say that as a person with a very anti-Google stance. Perhaps it's an area that is ripe for disruption but without using the browser or Javascript.
I use Firefox on all devices since sometime around 2002 or 2003. Never been upset with it and usually my friends throughout that time all slowly go to Firefox.
Firefox mobile did the same kind of stuff... They disabled most extensions, there is only about 15 left... I still have Firefox Mobile v68 installed for this reason.
Because they themselves don't deserve it. I need a browser company to focus on making a good application, not focus on telling me what I should see on the web. Mozilla's definitely interested in the latter, but I don't remember the last time they actually introduced something that made me go "huh, that's good". The company are activists hostile to me and mine, seem to build a worse and worse product in and of itself (discounting devs not building for Firefox) and are funded by Google. What's there to like?
The privacy disaster that's new Edge is constantly doing really good UI innovation with powerful but simple features like collapsible sidebars while retaining native UI.
Vivaldi, well, the whole point of the browser is features, and they deliver. They have three different ways to use tab stacks, for heaven's sake. And they do privacy, and aren't interested in telling me what I should see.
Brave, same. Privacy focus, try to build standalone revenue streams. They actually ship new things, if less aggressively in the UI department than Edge or Vivaldi. And they're not interested in telling me what I should see on the web.
I'd gladly use Mozilla, but they have to deserve it first by being genuinely good in terms of attitude and/or product, preferably both, not just being "not Google". By my count, product's getting worse and the attitude is complete garbage.
Google, Microsoft and Apple all push their browsers forward by their external footprint - Google and Microsoft cloud platforms, and all three by being the default.
Brave's building their own platform, Vivaldi a bit of the same, but also just built-in tools in the browser like a simple notetaker and mail/calendar/RSS apps.
Firefox has Pocket, which is good and a good idea, but their userbase is stupidly hostile to ventures like that, the only thing they accept is a pristine FOSS project funded by donations.
I have attempted to move to Firefox twice: once 12 years ago and once 8 years ago (probably, I don't really remember exact time). I know, Firefox has come a long, long, long way since then, but the same were also promised 8 years ago, and it turn out Firefox cannot handle my use case well to the point of almost being unusable. (That said, my use case are definitely not normal)
It's a lot of effort to move everything: current session, bookmarks, extensions, sync (which mean I need to move on my 5+ devices at once). I have been bitten twice -- not sure if I want to risk it again. No matter how much people are saying how good it is now, it's hard to muster up the effort to move again.
EDIT: Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Back when Firefox was saying it's as fast as Chrome without being multi-process. They were saying that it's better. I tried. I moved. I got f*cked up. I move back. Twice. You'd excuse me if I no longer believe what the Firefox dev were saying about their browser.
8 years ago, Firefox 25 was released. I don't know your needs but a lot as changed underneath. Notably, Firefox is now using multiple processes, the Javascript engine is probably a lot faster, the web engine too. I don't like every change, especially the latest revamp of the UI, but it is still the best browser for me.
You could try, and them move if conclusive? If you consider switching anyway.
Moving everything before being sure seems expensive.
As I said, I was bitten twice. It's hard to even try now. Back then I try for a few week before committing, but when I move my session (of 200+ tabs) onto Firefox, it's dead.
And back then I was told the exact same thing I was told this time, too.
FWIW, I have 3668 tabs open in Firefox right now. Looks like it's using about 1.6GB of RAM. (Notes: most of those thousands of tabs are unloaded, I block JavaScript rather aggressively, and yes I do recognize the absurdity but I confess my sins here to illustrate my point!)
I have no experience migrating from Chrome to Firefox, but FF can certainly handle lots of tabs. Vertical tab layouts are very helpful for navigating them.
My limited experience using Chrome says that Firefox requires vastly less RAM to handle multiple tabs (anything more than a dozen!).
Re: Conspicuous tab consumption: If I pared down, I'd be more like 50-100 active tabs. I appreciate that Firefox remains completely usable even when I do not pare down. Chrome fails for me at about 20 tabs due to lack of usable vertical tabs layout, even before RAM becomes an issue on this machine.
If you do ever want to try to make the switch again, you might try the 'Auto Tab Discard' extension. It lets you customize how tab unloading works. I had 2755 tabs open without breaking a sweat (down to 1093, woo!). Starting the browser will only load the last active tab and, as you continue to work, your older tabs (depending on your setting) will start to get unloaded.
I want to say this is a feature of the browser itself, but the extension (add-on, whatever we call them now) gives you a lot more control.
As for session migration, maybe an extension like 'Tab Session Manager' will help? It supports several different formats, so surely one of those formats is something that Chrome can export. That would let you move everything in one fell swoop, at least.
I've always used Chrome but recently I've been trying out Brave and its been quite interesting. I still use chrome, but if they were to remove adblock i'd move for good.
Haven't used Firefox in years, would need to check what's new.
But I've been enjoying Brave. Built in blockers for ads and trackers, built in tor, and a very interesting rewards system to help content creators and honestly, so far I recommend it.
We have been down this road before in 2000, so we know it leads to the total opposite of "make development simpler".
When IE6 became the engine mono culture, it was the best.
But then it stopped innovating, because it didn't need to. It also pushed moves that were only for the good of Micorosoft, since they had monopoly, trying to make the web a less open place.
It was a pain to develop for, a pain to debug, and a capricious master.
Google has shown they can be very naughty as soon as they got power over something.
Nice to see some advocacy for brave here. With the built-in crypto turned off (not for me), it’s a really nice browsing experience that has done a good job keeping up with upstream improvements in chromium. I’ve used the developer tools in brave at work for years now and have no issue seeing things at parity with developers on my team using chrome.
I personally as an end user can not tell the difference. I have both installed and use firefox almost all the time for home usage. For work I use chrome. Day to day usage is nearly identical. There are a few bits here and there on some pages where someone did something chrome specific. But that is rarely an issue. If I switched it out either way on all of my families computers I doubt they would notice. Never once have I got a call from a family member saying "I need browser X". For dev usage chrome is slightly better, but that is just an opinion. Even that is not that big of deal anymore as many people are just using transpilers and their JS is some sort of mangled form out of that. Also they should peal off a few bucks and donate to Mozilla or Mozilla will always be bound to google.
if you haven't already use Firefox and recognize that this is a fundamental question of freedom and whether you want the internet to be controlled by dystopian corporate advertisement monoliths or institutions that care about your rights.
Every time this comes up and 80% of discussions is about whether the tab bar in firefox is flat or three pixels wide instead of five makes me more depressed
Fair criticism of Firefox is that it is dependent on Mozilla 'the org' which is a pretty shaky foundation to base such a critical component on. Witness the exodus of even die hard supporters over the last couple of years. That has nothing to do with minor UI details.
Firefox open source. If the Mozilla foundation is as questionable as some like to claim then why isn't there any effort to fork Gecko. We have more than enough Blink/Chromium based browsers already.
Wasn't aware of Waterfox and I mistakenly thought Pale Moon was just a de-branding. Looking at Pale Moon's site, it's clear that it's a whole other branch now (like Blink/WebKit/kHTML).
I'm happy with Firefox (and Mozilla) personally but I'll be sure to recommend these if/when I hear people asking for an alternative to Google and Mozilla in the future.
For literally the reasons we're already discussing: to offer an alternative to Chrome.
If every browser is based on Chromium then you're not really offering an alternative to Google Chrome because Google still own the supply chain. Not only in terms of your new browser's rendering engine but also in terms of website owners being vindicated in targeting Chrome.
The only way to offer a legitimate counterargument to Chrome is not to use Blink.
I think that's backwards. Gecko requires constant and expensive work to keep up with Blink. And it has been falling behind.
Whereas Blink gets that work for free from Google.
If you want to offer a legitimate counter argument to Chrome by using Gecko then you have to find some way to bring in the hundreds of millions of dollars of necessary funding to bring Gecko up to Blink's quality.
If you want to create a counter argument to Chrome using Blink, then you have everything you need already.
I do appreciate the difficulty of maintaining a rendering engine (I wrote my own browser in the late 90s) but let's not over dramatise Gecko's position, I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years and almost never find a website that couldn't work in it (the only instances when it doesn't work is when someone throws up a demo of some unstandardised and bleeding edge Chrome API). Plus lets not forget that Mozilla are still actively working on Gecko so it's not like all responsibility falls on us tomorrow.
The bigger issue for me isn't the maintenance of Gecko; I just can't see how extending Blinks market share really hurts Google in any way. Ultimately Blink-based browsers are still tied into Google's supply chain so even if you did displace Chrome with a Blink-based competitor, Google still win.
unilaterally implementing unstable APIs and telling people on web.dev that "it's safe you can use it it's totally production ready" isn't exactly quality, but you do you.
I’d prefer Firefox, but some functionality works inarguably better in chrome. One example is YouTube, which slams my processor due to the lack of hardware decoding.
The h264ify add-on will let your computer load YouTube videos more efficiently on Firefox, if it supports hardware acceleration for H.264 but not VP8/VP9.
You can compile/package the h264ify source code with only FOSS products, which can themselves be inspected and compiled from source. Your reasoning could be used to distrust any software, open source or not.
I’m not suggesting that you can’t trust any software, but the Mozilla App Store has proven to not be trustworthy. I avoid installing software from pip and npm also.
But you’re still missing the point, this should be compiled into Firefox core, if it’s a licensing thing badge it as Firefox-non free. Not everybody cares about altruistic goals, I just want a browser that works so I can do my job, securely.
Edit: but if you don’t already see a future where ultimately open source cannot be trusted unless it comes from a trusted repo (yum, apt) then you should start preparing for that.
In practice I've found that people claiming site X works in chrome but not in Firefox is usually incorrect, and unless you actually try it you won't know. I use Firefox and have done for 15+ years, and I genuinely can't remember the last time I had to switch browser to use a page or webapp.
Yes, but some of us are forced to. As long as Mozilla claims that implementing WebMIDI is impossible that's how it will remain. It's technically in there somewhere but it just doesn't work or requires all kinds of unstable trickery, not good enough for a normal user.
Firefox is very actively of the opinion that politically motivated people should decide what I see on the web. When that is their stance, I kindly nope the fuck out.
They are a browser maker, and I don't remember the last time they came out with anything really exciting. Vivaldi and Brave both have, and even Brave's stock Chrome UI has good stuff like a solid tab groups implementation that Firefox just doesn't have. There are extensions, but they just don't work the same.
I don't really find Google to be that dystopian. Chrome, gmail and google photos and search are all quite nice. Sure I can change if they get annoying.
I sort of agree. I use Firefox because ublock origin works best on it.
I still use gmail and youtube.
Search I switched to duckduckgo, no profiled results and the ! bangs is great. The google search popup when using incognito gets real annoying fast too.
Didn't Mozilla fire their devtools team ? FF devtools weren't up to Chrome as-is, and doesn't sound like they ever will be. FF seems like a sinking ship, not worth investing time in.
TBH I'm perfectly happy with Chrome and using Google accounts. The benefits of my data following me around seamlessly far outweighs the downsides of Google having access to it.
(I am a former Mozilla employee who was there when the layoffs happened)
This is what I know about what happened there:
There were two enterprise IT teams with similar duties but different purviews. When management was deciding on layoffs, they decided to unify those two teams. Unfortunately that meant that there were redundancies.
My heart goes out to those who lost their jobs, and they have every right to be upset.
But the inferences being made as a result of the resulting tweets just weren't true: this notion that all security teams were wiped out is false. And there are now others assigned to threat management.
Furthermore, the security teams that work on Gecko and Firefox were left mostly if not entirely intact.
I was put off by Firefox by some questionable opinionated decisions they made. I don't want a browser with a political agenda, just want one that that follows the specs and performs well.
Isn't Chrome making opinionated decisions (like this one), pushing a political agenda (anti-privacy, pro-corporatism, pro-monopoly etc) and abusing the standardisation process?
Brave is just crypto adware, they even went so far as to automatically append crypto exchange referral codes to urls [0]
Funded by Palantir Technologies by the way [1]
Their ad rewards system analyses and modifies the original webcontent, replacing existing ads with their own (and who knows what other code they inject) [2]
Then there's their hidden tracker URL whitelist [3]
Don't enable ads if you do not want them. Personally I think avoiding ads is important so I don't enable them. Thus Brave acts like what Firefox should be had its organization not become so broken.
Many years ago I published a small extension for common functions I use on daily basis(hashing, url encoding and decoding) for quick access as opposed to either opening a random site or some scripting language. If my memory is correct, I can kiss it goodbye(no idea where or even if I have a copy of the source code). Oh well... As for ad-blockers, funny enough I used to be firmly against them until not that long ago - many sites and blogs rely on ads as a source of revenue so in order to support them I was putting up with them. But then youtube pushed me waaaaaay too far and I started using Brave so... It's your fault Google,
Considering all the shady practices that online ad companies engage in, there is zero moral responsibility for users to support it. As an example of such shady practice, here's an instance of the biggest ad company in the world caught exploiting browser bugs in order to circumvent privacy protections:
Totally agree on that, I used the web without an ad blocker for years before going back due to having too many ads on YouTube, Google is slowly closing their walls and I may end up on Firefox at this rate
Firefox has always felt a bit clunky to me hence the reason why I went with brave: it's built on top of chromium but with a built-in adblocker, also some crypto rewards if you are into that(I'm not). Give it a go if you ask me.
The only browser that's been losing users for years is Firefox. That already tells Google all they need to know. (It also tells Mozilla what they need to know; pity they are deaf.)
Mozilla annoys me. Truly it does. However, it's the organisation.
Firefox as a browser, especially dev tools, seems better in every day use than Chrome does. I am really not sure why they keep losing users. I do remember being massive performance issues in the past, but that's really not the case today (at least in my experience)
Because, number one, they keep constantly making radical UI/UX changes that frustrate and alienate their long term users who would rather they keep the "older look" which they got used to and works just fine for them, and number two, most websites are lazy so their devs only optimize for Chrome, even going the extra mile to explicitly state that "For best experience use Chrome" <face_palm>
Edit: changes in tone and corrections after getting off the bus
> Because they keep making stupid UI)UX choices than alienate their users
Cannot overstate this enough. They keep randomly changing their UI constantly, and it's especially frustrating when you have a bunch of custom CSS. I'm a bunch of versions behind & dreading updating because I don't want to spend the hours it'll take to fix my shit for their new version. I honestly hate this browser so much at this point, but everything else (i.e. Chrome) is so much worse that I'm stuck....
I don't want to update, when the update is to something that looks horrible. (Last update I spent hours googling for scripts to reverse the appearance changes. Seems there were 1000s of people looking for the same thing!) But in FF preferences there are only 2 choices.
1. Automatically install updates (recommended)
2. Check for updates but let you choose to install them
You would think I'd choose option 2, since I don't want updates, but I tried that, and I got a popup several times a day saying INSTALL UPDATE NOW OR LATER—no way to say "No I don't !%$@ want to update!" ... so after putting up with that for a while I changed to option 1 to avoid the neverending update popups. Not at all what I want though. Talk about a dark pattern. "let you choose to install them" indeed! Not "choose whether to install" but "bombard you with update popups until you crack and choose to install".
Not wanting to install browser updates is no different to asking "how do I turn this yellow light in my car's dashboard? I know! I'll put tape over it!". Granted, the update might come with UI changes. Changing oil in your car won't do that. That can be annoying, but whether something looks "horrible" is completely subjective. That's fine. You can rely on userChrome.css[1] to customize things more in Firefox than in any other browser.
Personally, I've gone from "customize every last pixel" to just using things the way the designers wanted me to use things. I like having flexibility and configuration toggles, that I use often, but I'm much happier now without trying to customize things for customization's sake.
I take issue with almost everything you said. Sorry my reply is too brief. It's "no different to"..what?! I don't agree that whether something looks "horrible" is completely subjective. I've never tried to customize things for customization's sake, if you're implying I do? Not sure. I used userChrome.css once I think, and as I didn't know about its existence beforehand, it took me hours to fix FF.
Having an out of date browser is as "dangerous" to you and those around you as driving in a car with flat tires. Declining to upgrade software because of aesthetic changes seems shortsighted to me.
> I don't agree that whether something looks "horrible" is completely subjective.
Let's agree to disagree.
> I've never tried to customize things for customization's sake, if you're implying I do?
I'm not saying you have, I'm saying I have customized things for change's sake, and since I stopped doing that and being overly annoyed and fighting changes "forced" on me, I adapted to most of those changes. I dislike when customization options are taken away. But I also understand that customization comes at the bottom of priorities of developers, and that is likely the right call to make for most applications.
It is a problem that upgrades aren't always an improvement on every axis, but staying on old network connected applications is manifestly not a reasonable solution.
> Having an out of date browser is as "dangerous" to you and those around you as driving in a car with flat tires. Declining to upgrade software because of aesthetic changes seems shortsighted to me.
If the browser designers think it's so important for people to update, then perhaps they should stop driving people away with relentless, needless, irritating aesthetic changes! They're the short-sighted ones here.
I have also given up tweaking the interface, long ago. I wish Mozilla's devs could learn the same lesson.
You might tape over the warning light on your car's dash too, if you knew there was a good chance it would come back from the shop painted a different color and having had a racing spoiler bolted onto the trunk.
I had exact same experience. changed the registry settings in windows and am fine. Didn't have the nerves to find how to do on my mac and am just clicking discard every time. Annoying indeed. i wonder most of this shit is probably from the mozilla funding requirements to nerf the browser.
For eg. why tf would you put a separate scroll menu on tab right click to close tabs on left or right, it saves literally 1 row. and increases every single tab change to two clicks. UI disaster!!
i hope some group forks firefox and i will happily donate. But, due to current mozilla ceo siphoning money, not gonna donate a penny.
Sniff your browser traffic to figure out which url they use to poll for updates and block that on your router or firewall. If that doesn't work, maybe you can redirect it in hosts file, and spoof the response to say there's no new updates.
FWIW forums like reddit's r/FirefoxCSS usually have solutions as soon as changes roll out on Developer Edition, which is months ahead of the release. It was like that for the ugly new tabs, for instance, which I never had to deal with.
Have you considered their extended support release (ESR)?
> Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) is an official version of Firefox developed for large organizations like universities and businesses that need to set up and maintain Firefox on a large scale. Firefox ESR does not come with the latest features but it has the latest security and stability fixes.
You can create a policies.json file with these contents:
{
"policies": {
"DisableAppUpdate": true
}
}
Place it in the platform specific place:
"On Windows, create a directory called distribution where the EXE is located and place the file there. On Mac, the file goes into Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/distribution. On Linux, the file goes into firefox/distribution, where firefox is the installation directory for firefox, which varies by distribution or you can specify system-wide policy by placing the file in /etc/firefox/policies."
EDIT: alternatively, you can install the ESR version for 91, use the userchrome link in the sibling comment, and forget about it for 18 months, wich is what I'm currently doing. And good thing too, apparently 92 broke some UI again, because of course it did.
> but you recognise you are in likely a sub 0.5% of users with custom css?
People don't want to do custom CSS, they have to in order to get the workflow back that they had last week. It's annoying and a lot of work. Firefox changes probably cause >3% user attrition every single release.
Not anymore. There are github lists documenting everything you can do with css in firefox these days. And I don't think the answer to your workflow being disturbed is to nuke the entire thing from orbit and built it back up on another platform, that sounds a lot harder than skimming these github pages.
I've heard this justification numerous times. Yes, there might be only 0.1%-5% users relying on any given UI feature, but with a constant stream of poorly thought out changes and feature cuts Mozilla will keeps pissing off more and more users until none are left.
Honestly at this point I just miss the api that let you get tab-specific history which enabled MouseGestures to show a context menu on right-click scroll-up/down to go forward-back in current tab. It seems like such a minor thing that there's no reason not to support, and such a huge QOL to keep around. I feel the lack of it on a weekly basis like a decade (?) after it was removed, I'm never gonna get used to not having it.
Sure! I use a single toolbar at the top that contains back/forward, refresh/stop, menu dropdowns (which are all hidden except for History/Bookmarks/Tools), the address bar, my bookmarks toolbar buttons, and all addon buttons. Below that is my tab toolbar. This setup is accomplished by CSS with a bunch of position:absolute; and negative margins and stuff, because it's impossible to truly have all of these things in the same toolbar physically. Every single time they change stuff, it gets screwed up.
Prior to their rewrite of everything in version fifty-whatever, I could just drag-and-drop all this stuff into a single toolbar, but when they decided they knew better than me how I want my browser to look it all got 100x harder to get the layout I want.
In addition to this single-toolbar layout I have some easy stuff like highlighting the background color of "View background image" and "Copy link location" and I think 2-3 other things in the context menu a dark purple so that I misclick less often (this particular change is actually amazing and I highly recommend it!).
And I make the URL dropdown suggestions constrained to the width of the URL bar, not 100%, because I find the context switching of hiding the entire webpage too jarring when they're that wide. And I also hide a bunch of random buttons here and there that I find useless; I'm not sure what they are at this point because they've been hidden for so long...
Oh! And my highlight color (in URL bar, etc) is bright magenta (otherwise my theme is dark mode). Just because I like it. :) I use that in Sublimetext too, though I don't do that in every text editor/IDE.
From the description, it looks like they unfucked the layout, then firefox refucked it.
A decade ago it was very easy to make Firefox look like you wanted, even without extensions (if you weren't opinionated about aesthetics, just position and functionality.) Every UI change since Chrome was released has been a regression, and more obnoxiously, each change has been locked in with user adjustment actively prevented or made prohibitively difficult, even for programmers.
They could at least offer a consistent interface to change the UI. Instead they demand the flexibility to make UI changes without having to maintain an interface, while using that flexibility to claw back more and more flexibility from their users.
People like you editing their userChrome.css should never be taken into account when it comes to UI changes. It comes with dozens of warnings that it is not an officially supported thing to do so, it's just left accessible should you want to at your own risk, and when said risks happen, you blame Mozilla for it? Get real.
I have come to dread that little firefox update notification because of the relentless, pointless UI churn. I wish they would just leave well enough alone. There's no way I would use Chrome, though, so I'm stuck with it.
i dont think it's merely marketing budget, thought that helps.
People who got marketed to convert, and hence, the product is indeed good based on this metric.
Firefox does seem to lag behind in terms of performance, esp. on mobile. Firefox also has poorer video rendering speed i think - i get more skipped frames than chrome. I tolerate it, but many users don't.
Firefox has some difficulty being deployed in an enterprise environment (aka, an organizationally managed profile, which chrome has). This has led to enterprises adopting chrome as a primary browser (over firefox), and this may lead to familiarity which causes them to also use chrome at home.
There's a myriad of issues with firefox, and it is rooted at the organizational level, rather than the technical level, but these issues bleed down into the technical level.
>Firefox also has poorer video rendering speed i think - i get more skipped frames than chrome. I tolerate it, but many users don't.
I do not have this problem in Firefox anymore. I used to but i updates fixed it.
>Firefox has some difficulty being deployed in an enterprise environment (aka, an organizationally managed profile, which chrome has). This has led to enterprises adopting chrome as a primary browser (over firefox), and this may lead to familiarity which causes them to also use chrome at home.
GPO exists for Firefox now and works great, I have implemented it.
But what I actually see for enterprise customers is a move to MS Edge. The Windows account integration, control and the fact that on Windows 10 it has really good performance means there is no need for Chrome or FF unless Edge breaks (have had some issues with antivirus breaking it)
On Android Chrome has to be installed as preferred browser or the phone manufacturers get blocked from Googles other services. As much as I like to bash Mozillas leadership, Google has taken every shady (and sometimes illegal) shit 90s era Microsoft pulled and turned it up to eleven.
One thing where I've used Firefox devtools instead of Chrome is when debugging font usage (which is not very often).
Chrome tells you the used font for a single element on a pretty generic level, e.g. "Lato — Local file" or "Lato — Network resource".
Firefox Inspector has a Fonts tab that lets you list all the fonts used on a page. It tells you a more specific font name, e.g. "Lato Regular", the relevant @font-face rule and also the font URL if it's a network resource.
> Mainly: editing and saving directly in the debugger!
Hum... Firefox does that. I know because every time I mistakenly start saving I ask what is the point of it. But well, looks like it's useful for somebody.
The Firefox developer version¹ has a full file menu on its code viewer, with save, open, refresh, etc.
I believe you can activate it on the main build too, but I don't know how. Anyway, if you are debugging code, I highly recommend the developer version.
1 - That is a different configuration of the same code as the main build, for web developers. It's not for developing Firefox itself.
Chrome's devtools have been superior (faster, more reliable, more featureful) for years near as I can tell (and everyone I work with). I am curious what makes you feel firefox's devtools are better.
Alternative take: [dev]tools are only as powerful as how well you know them. I'd like to think both firefox devtools and chrome devtools as highly capable, but you'll get way more out of the one you're used to, whichever it is.
The two devtools purport to do almost the exact same things, with a practically identical interface. The details are where the usability differences lie, such as chrome's vastly superior formatting/debugging story. I only moved to Chrome after working with firebug (!) for years and then working with firefox's builtin devtools. If anything, I should hate Chrome's devtools the most because I know them least well.
compared to chrome, firefox no longer has an edge. Chrome's restrictive addons is what made firefox stronger.
But ever since firefox removed the old XUL style addons, their utility has drastically dropped against chrome. I was very angry at their poor choice, as some really excellent, but unmaintained addons no longer work.
I put up with firefox, just so i can give them some boost (whatever that might amount to), but obviously not that many users would sacrifice their browsing experience for such purposes.
Firefox should be the premier customizable browser, with more addons than chrome. Instead, firefox chose to copy chrome. Thus, it is forever relegated to being second.
Those aren't good reasons from the user's perspective. Those reasons were good reasons from a technical, and maintenance perspective (which, as a software engineer, i understand). Those reasons are what engineers give to product management in order to get a green-field rewrite.
But firefox's value add is their addon system - even if it is old, and difficult to use. It enabled some really great addons that weren't possible in the new replacement (as a simple example, the DownThemAll was rewritten using this new api, and it's shadow of their former self).
Firefox should have paid the cost to maintain the old legacy system, and replace it only when the webextensions api is sufficient to replace _all_ functionality (which, of course, won't because webextensions evolved from google trying to kill off addons https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ ).
Not to mention XULRunner/XPCOM was Electron before Electron. I remember using the Songbird app, as well as an IM client whose name I can't recall now, across Windows and Linux back in the 00s. So They literally decided to cede the cross-platform browser-based desktop software framework du jour to Chromium.
On Android it's freaking fantastic. Everything feels snappier and I can utilise uBlock Origin to block all of the BS. I've set this up for family, friends etc and none have gone back to Chrome. I think the biggest issue is marketing.
The total rewrite might have given some performance boost and if that's worth it for you then I'm glad for you, but unfortunately it also caused loads of bugs and features that have gone missing, and now that the big push for the rewrite is over, tackling those remaining bug fixes and missing features is again happening at a rather glacial rate.
And the frustrating thing is that this used to be a problem even with the previous iteration of Firefox on Android, i.e. it seemed somewhat understaffed and had some surprising bugs (e.g. under memory pressure it would suddenly and silently stop remembering your current tabs) and missing functionality (it didn't remember your scroll position if the app was killed, you couldn't reorder tabs in the tab list) that were only fixed after years, and even then quite a few times only through outside contributions.
And now the rewrite means that all of this has been thrown away and judging from the current development speed it'll take once more years until we sort of get back to where we used to be.
Also, Firefox 79+ on Android (August 2020) performs significantly better than older versions, despite having lost many features in the rewrite. The current version might meet your expectations.
Yes. They did a rewrite of the android UI layer that released last year, and since then the scrolling is on par with chrome. If you install ublock origin then Firefox now has the best android browser experience by some way.
Not only is it not bad, it’s pretty good. I have been using it for a decade and its fast, superior privacy above Chrome, devtools do everything I need.
I test on Chrome, and I personally don’t think switching is that big a deal that some commenters make it out to be. It’s just as fast as Chrome or faster, the UX is similar enough not be stalled for long if you need to switch. It’s really worth a shot!
What does it tell Mozilla that they need to know? Because I certainly don't understand, but I'm a happy Firefox user so obviously I'm not part of any exodus.
They don't have any coherent marketing strategy, most people still think that Firefox is this sluggish browser that don't support anything.
Also, most non-technical people use the default browser that's installed on the OS whether that's Safari or Edge.
When manifest v3 kicks in and we'll see the true ad horror that's the Internet today without ad blockers, maybe then we'll jump to a more privacy first browser. Until then nothing will happen.
Is v3 an horrible solution or the deprecation of v2 in 2023?
I ported one of my extensions to v3 and while the process was not completely trivial it did not took more than a few hours, in my opinion the change is worth it this makes extensions more secure.
As far as I know Firefox is also moving to v3, maybe not enforcing it for now, but they will probably deprecate v2 at some point.
The new declarative APIs are great. They will protect user data from potentially malicious extensions.
The thing is uBlock Origin is just so important and trusted that these restrictions shouldn't apply to it. The functionality of uBlock Origin is just so fundamental and unambiguously pro-user it should be integrated into the browsers themselves. Conflicts of interest prevent that unfortunately but the fact remains that browsers without uBlock Origin installed cannot call themselves user agents.
uBlock Origin should just get access to everything so it can do its job as well as it possibly can. For everyone else, there's the standard APIs.
How so? From what I've read, the whole point of the declarative API is to tell the browser what you want done so that it can do it without letting the extension actually touch any data.
If this doesn't work, then there's no point to the new API.
The webrequest api didn't got removed completely, only the part for modify/block request.
Only ad blockers will stole your data and others that logs them however they want will log them nicely? What world are Google's team lives in? Are we even on the same time line?
I see. I agree, that's pure bullshit. Google's intentions are transparent.
Can you confirm the new declarative APIs work as intended? Maybe they do restrict extensions. I agree that it's pointless if they don't remove the older APIs.
Google is first and foremost an advertising company, it's in their interest to hobble ad blockers as much as possible. Personally I'm hoping that they do, because it'll drive people away from Chrome and nip what's looking increasingly like a monopoly in the bud by driving users to browsers that do support ad blocking.
> it'll drive people away from Chrome and nip what's looking increasingly like a monopoly in the bud by driving users to browsers that do support ad blocking
I certainly hope so. I showed Firefox and uBlock Origin to all my friends and they loved it, especially the fact it blocks YouTube ads. Lots of people simply don't know about this.
Yeah, I don't really do "tech support" for family members any more because I've not used Windows in such a long time I'm pretty useless at troubleshooting it, but I do take the time to install Firefox and ad blockers on it which is worthwhile even if you don't have an issue with the adtech industry because it reduces the attack surface for malware.
Similar experiences here. I don't know anything about Windows anymore but I'll still install Firerox with uBlock Origin on every computer I come across. People notice that the web is just so much nicer. Most don't understand why, they just know. Malware also stopped being an issue: no more malicious ads for them to click.
While they're interested in maintaining compatibility with Chrome's v3, there's no standard that forces them to make every single v3 change Chrome does.
v2 also already differs in some ways in which Firefox thinks it makes sense. I'm not scared at all that they're gonna deprecate webRequest.BlockingResponse in favour of declarativeNetRequest, which is the specific API function that adblockers rely on. After all, that function has nothing to do with security, best you could argue is that it's related to performance due to filter lists becoming absurdly long.
In the context of `webRequest.BlockingResponse` being a performance bottleneck due to filter lists becoming absurdly long, it does in fact become a security issue.
Filter lists are as long as they are because that is the amount of domains that have demonstrated an interest in harming our security (and for many people, online privacy _is_ physical security). Filterlists are blacklists, not whitelists, so they only grow when well-known entities play foul.
It's not only a simple Manifest version change. They have also deprecated the webRequest API, which is essential to implement any type of content filter or an ad blocker.
People already use Chrome on mobile for the most part, and it has no adblockers whatsoever.
A depressing number of users use the web via the Chrome search bar on their phone, and even if they use a browser they go even to familiar sites by googing them.
The only reason I don't use Firefox is mozilla. I will never use it as long as it's under mozilla. I use Vivaldi, choosing to support a smaller, genuine business with no bullshit. I hope they'll eventually to develop their own engine.
What... Is the appeal of brave ? I hear it has crypto and shit but why not install Firefox with ubo and be done with it?
I feel the "cool" factor of brave is silly as they are just fueling chromium. Why don't these chromium forks base on Firefox instead and do some leg work with the benefit of helping the internet as a whole ? I hear someone said on hn a long time ago, building on ff is a pita. Well guess what, Firefox folk do nightly builds of a boat load of versions and flavours and shit. Why can't you change a theme and call it a day?
1) There is an integrated ad blocker. It's very convenient because I don't have to worry about adblocking plugin is bought out and is compromised, I don't have to figure out if my uBlock is supposed to be "origin" or not, or if I should go for adGuard or something else. There is no risk of adblocking breaking because of the changes in plugin API.
2) Integrated optional ad network that by default distributes money based on your web usage, but gives you control over spending your ad income. This is the coolest thing about Brave and I really wish it would succeed, but, unfortunately, it's very unlikely without very wide adoption and I just don't see that happening
3) Not developed by Mozilla. That's nice since I can't ethically support them.
1) uBlock Origin has been around and without selling out for 6-7 years now. You don't have to worry that the plugin is bought out but you do have to worry that the browser is. You don't have to figure out which adblocker to use, because there is only one right answer. And it takes barely thirty seconds of effort.
I have no opinion about 2.
3 is fair, but I have similar objections about Brendan Eich.
1. Actual features like tab groups which Firefox killed.
2. Likelihood to actually add features. Firefox used to have unique features I liked a lot, like keyword searches synced via bookmarks, but this is set for deprecation and was removed from mobile. I don't remember when Firefox last gave me a new feature.
3. Adblocking on mobile while not being Firefox, which is interestingly rare.
4. Not being developed by Mozilla. Mozilla's increasingly vehement about woke political activism, and after the tech companies booted Orange Man out of the Internet, Mozilla came out in no uncertain terms saying that they'd like politically partisan platforms to decide what I see on the net. I'd used them for years and promptly noped the fuck out. The organization may be for privacy, but they don't seem to care about other important things, or rather care about them the wrong way. I want my browser maker to make a good tool, not to tell me what to think. Mozilla feels more interested in the latter than the former.
5. Brave focuses on building an alternative foothold on the web, not just providing a browser. A lot of the other browsers' footprint comes from associated web and hardware platforms and the resulting integration conveniences. Brave has a big focus on independent revenue streams, which I like a lot even if I'm not really a fan of the crypto stuff.
Firefox lacks that to a large degree. They do have Pocket, which is good, but their userbase is essentially hostile to Pocket because they have some idiotic pipe dream about a donation-funded, pure and moral FOSS project. Meanwhile Firefox the company is moralistic, not moral, and funded by Google.
It's definitely better privacy wise than Edge. Edge is really good, but sadly uses hardware based browser IDs and doesn't offer end to end encryption for all categories of synced data, and their start page is very chatty. Plus I think they default to having search suggestions on and sending the strokes to Bing.
Brave's browser ID is more ephemeral, it's not hardware based and doesn't persist across restarts, search suggestions are off by default and the default engine is DDG/Brave, and their sync service is end to end encrypted.
Edge is a good product, but not if you like wearing tinfoil hats. If privacy is no object, Edge is probably the best.
You use brave on mobile for background playing YouTube? If you are on android, do you know newpipe exists? Or for vanilla youtuber users, there is vanced.
About mobile adblocking, doesn't Firefox android have ubo and a few more addons?
As someone who wouldn't mind if Mozilla post Eich can die under a metadata drone strike (doubly so for google) and will still use my FF fork and avoid chrome/chromium based browsers like the plague, brave, seems like they are willing to build in support for decentralized (to me at least) and p2p web directly into the browser (rather than leave it up to potentially less performant 3rd party extensions which may be ok, but not ideal in ff) than all the crap I have to compile out of ff occasionally.
See Brendan's response to me last week[0], which I think comes down to feature set they want to support rather than do all the work it would require to build that in servo now (they went from gecko [no public info on this] -> electron -> and now chromium. they would have to migrate from chromium -> servo).
I wish they did, and just cared less about all the other features that were missing from gecko (but that's just be being selfish and not wanting to build out native stuff myself lol)
cool. so an excel sheet decided google to be the clear winner in present feature comparison set and instead of helping the community in bridging the gap, they decide to go with the flow. cool. i am fine with my ff
America's top search engine and America's top internet ads company has the America's top browser and pays to be the default search engine for America's top cell phone?
I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0].
- Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idiomatic for web developers.
- Forced non-persistent extensions guides developers to a better implementation which relies on less resources.
*The deprecation of webRequest's blocking behavior is what's most concerning. The implementation in Manifest V2 requires sending a message back and forth between processes with JS processing for each network request which seems to be in part why they redesigned it.
However, that optimization costs so much for innovative ad blocking technologies as gorhill of uBlock Origin has mentioned. When ad blocking begins requiring new methods of detection or filtering, it'll now be up to Chromium maintainers to implement support for it in the new declarativeNetRequest API. This is a tradeoff of performance for reduced flexibility where it is absolutely needed.
[0] https://github.com/samuelmaddock/electron-browser-shell