I wish someone could explain to me how it is firefox, which is not chromium based but larely dependent on google for funding, has the ability and manpower to maintain not just the manifest v2+all the other stuff, while every single chromium fork has no choice but to use v3. Why can’t they just fork the last usable version of chromium and go from there as an independent fork? Is it just that no one wants to?
Like firefox has lots of ports, some of the follow the main branch but then others like waterfox forked off older versions at some point and just kept going, why can’t chrome based browsers do a fork like that? How is it there are people making new browsers from scratch like ladybird, but this manifest stuff is just out of reach for everyone, except mozilla (and i guess other firefox forks).
Not having control of the core codebase, and branching/tracking based on 1 (declared) legacy feature could lead to huge amounts of work and issue in the future.
Manifest V2 spec is defined, manifest V3 spec is defined… They can be developed against.
JS-whatever-spec is defined, CSS-whatever-spec is defined, HTML-whatever-spec is defined… They have industry standard approved specs (even if they can be vague in areas). They can be developed against.
They have defined spec documents that can be developed against.Firefox has control and experience of how they implement those specs.
Chrome forks do not have control of how those specs are implemented.
So if chrome changes how things are implemented, forks might not be able to “backport” for manifest V2 compatibility, and might find themselves implementing more and more of the core browser functionality. Browsers are NOT easy to develop for the modern fuckery of the web.
Firefox hopefully does have that knowledge and ability to include V2 manifest backwards compatibility in future development without impacting further spec implementations… It seems like Google is depreciating V2 to combat ad-blockers (ads being their major funding revenue)There are already very slight differences how Firefox and Chrome interpret all these specs. I’ve noticed a few sites & plugins that just work better (or just work) in Chrome. Which is why I still have (unfortunately) an install of Chrome.
You could also just stop using sites that don’t work in Firefox. Also https://webcompat.com/
Absolutely.
And casually, that’s exactly what I do. To be honest, casually I haven’t encountered any (I don’t think…).But for work stuff, sometimes I don’t have a choice. I guess I’m just thankful it doesn’t require edge IE compat mode, or even IE itself
A port of a browser is relatively minimal effort. Typically, the changes are largely cosmetic, and occasionally skin deep.
Developing a browser, Firefox or Chrome, takes a huge amount of effort, and are on a similar scale to both Windows and Linux. It’s a lot. There are a lot of places to hide things. Taking all of that, and making V2 continue to work… well it’ll be alright to start with. It’s probably a flag somewhere currently. But in 2 years time? 5 years time? It will take a lot to keep V2 working, let alone back porting V3 features that people may actually want.
Just use Firefox instead.
But firefox is funded by google and has been making questionable decisions for years, LibreWolf is the only fork I would use at this point but I think waterfox really proves my point though that its not really the impossible undertaking people seem to be making it out to be. Waterfox even support BOTH chrome and firefox addons somehow and they have no where near the amount of funding or manpower Mozilla does.
Wait, librewolf isn’t the only fork you would use?
Are you still using Chrome?
You’d rather use the browser that has been shown to actively fuck you over, than the browser he “fund” that makes “questionable decisions” trying to get away from said funding?
You’ve got some marbles loose up there.
No LibreWolf IS the only fork of Firefox I’ll use (meaning i dont use mozilla’s branded firefox). Although I guess there is one other firefox fork i use now that i think about it: Tor Browser.
I also use Vivaldi, which doesn’t depend on Google for funding and has its own built in adblock that isn’t based on either manifest version. In terms of UI vivaldi is completly unmatched, There’s a japanese firefox fork that attempts to copy it, but its nowhere near as good.
Why can’t they just fork the last usable version of chromium and go from there as an independent fork? Is it just that no one wants to?
Creating or even just maintaining a web browser is an insurmountable amount of work. With constantly changing and new specs coming out all the time, it’s an unwinnable amount of work. Not to mention, browsers and the Internet in general is so complex it’s like web browsers are an operating system themselves.
A web browser is likely the most complex software on your PC outside of the operating system itself.
It is not insurmountable, new browsers made by single or small dev teams exist. If there is enough demand and motivated people to make something like ladybird there is people who could handle maintaining a fork that works, Chrome wasn’t always the only game in town and in the IE there was even at least one sort of engine agnostic browser that you could switch between Trident (IE) or Gecko rendering. Its not an easy thing but its very much possible.
Funny you mention Ladybird… It’s a commendable project and I hope they succeed. But until it renders 99% of websites, plays Netflix videos, has all the modern features people expect of a web browser and is an actual viable option for non techies… It is really proving the opposite of your point. The fact that an alpha is still years away speaks to how hard this really is.
How about Konqeror which uses KHTML the engine both Chrome and Apple’s webkit are forked from which has only been getting maintenance updates for a while now, it renders youtube fine, I dont have netflix but i tried Pluto.tv and that also works fine, another browser that works is SeaMonkey, the predecessor to firefox (sort of), if these projects which have both been just maintained for the past decade can keep up with rendering the basics then I see no reason why doing it with a more updated version of Chromium would be any more difficult, but i suppose if it is falling back to KHTML should still work for 99% of websites.
Web browser made by a single or small dev tends to not support nearly as much of the web standards, which are many. Using the web today with partial support for some stuff is the nightmare we escaped when IE got deprecated, and some still have with Safari.
You don’t need extenssions when you have capable inbluit adblockers. Stop fear mongering.
I’ve done tests with the built-in Firefox strict mode vs uBlock and there’s a bit of a difference. Firefox blocks about two thirds, uBlock is almost 100%.
I think they were talking about the built-in ad blocker that certain other (not firefox or chrome) browsers have, instead of UBlock.
Firefox doesn’t have a proper adblocker. It’s just a tracker blocker.
Every thread that mentions Firefox draws hate from you. It’s tiring and your points are never good.
Cool. Just block me and get rid of my not so good posts.
Or you could stop raging about the only choice we have against a browser monopoly. You don’t have to make up excuses to hate it and then broadcast them to an audience who mostly disagrees
Unless by built in, you mean the ublock that comes with librewolf, thats fucking stupid. Adblocking is an armsrace that requires constant up to date collaboration on the adblock developer side. Thats why you need crossplatform plugins like ublock, otherwise you will end up seeing ads.
thats fucking stupid
Thanks, I respect you too.
I’ts been 3 years since I last used uBO and I hace still to see a single ad on my browser. But you do you.
I did not call you stupid, i called the things that you wrote stupid. Those are two very different things. You called the best practices, recommended for any user that wants to safely use a normal web browser, “fear mongering”. That is in fact a very stupid thing to do.
Vivaldi browser also has a built-in ad blocker on all platforms, but the PC/Mac/Linux version also allows you to use uBlock Origin as well (at least until mid-2025).
No, Vivaldi, Brave and Opera have builtin adblockers which don’t depend on the extensions manifest. Plus, one could always rely on AdGuard, which whould block ads system wide.
Average Google employee
Everybody knows that Chrome, the only browser made by Google, has a built-in adblocker. /s
Being called names just for stating the obvious. Typical lemmy.
It’s not my fault if Mozilla won’t bother implementing a decent adblocker and have to rely on an external unpaid developer to keep FF afloat.
But see, you didn’t even read my comment. I made a joke that you were a Google employee and you reply:
Being called names just for stating the obvious
From the bottom of my little perogi heart I issue a deep sorry for hurting your feelings with that. From this moment forward I’ll do better!
Firefox is a browser, not an adblocker. Why would they make their own adblocker when there are already independent adblockers that are very good? I would suggest Firefox just come pre-installed with uBlock Origin
“Firefox is a browser, not an ad measurement tool. What would they sneakily introduce an OPT-OUT ad efficacy measurement tool”?
People would really do anything to justify Mozilla’s bullshit.
I don’t justify Mozilla’s bullshit, and I don’t use upstream Firefox for that reason (I use LibreWolf). Asking Mozilla to implement their own adblocker is asking them to reinvent the wheel. They should ship Firefox with uBlock Origin pre-installed like I said. Asking Mozilla to write their own adblocker which will likely be less effective than a third-party adblocker, is absolutely not the same thing as justifying them sneaking in opt-out PPA. How on earth do you even see those things as remotely comparable
I’m saying that your suggestion is ridiculous, not that what Mozilla is currently doing is correct.
isn’t that worse considering then any filter lists could only be updated when the browser gets updated?
Nope, blocklist can be updates dynamically.
Open up the “Registry Editor” Program
Navigate to: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome
With the Chrome folder on the left highlighted, select Edit/New/DWORD (32-Bit Value)
or, if you prefer, on the right side of the screen in a BLANK SPOT, you can RIGHT CLICK New/DWORD (32-Bit Value).
Name it ExtensionManifestV2Availability and hit enter.
Right click what you just created (ExtensionManifestV2Availability) and click Modify. Set the Hexadecimal value to 2, and click OK.
You’re done, but check your work by opening Chrome, and pasting chrome://policy in the URL Address bar and hit enter. You >
should see the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy, and the value should be set to 2. If you don’t see it, click “Reload Policies” > and/or review your work.
Or just get Firefox
Considering there are businesses with custom chrome extensions this might work for some time…
Easier solution: download Firefox. Install unlock origin
So Lynx is not going to support uBlock?? Outrageous
Browsh does!
holy crap that’s a neat project
But what about links? W3M?
Well, Thorium developer stated he intends to support Mv2 past the 2025 deadline. Whether he’ll make it, we’ll see. It’s a one man show, there was some drama involving it in the past, and there’s the question of what’s the point in maintaining Mv2 extensions support if you won’t be able to install them from the store after they’re cut off?
To clarify for anyone curious about the drama, while it was blown out of proportion, it was absolutly vaild.
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there was a light nsfw furry easter egg, removed once found. Considering the browser was originally a side project by a young guy (teen/early 20?) it’s not really surprising or a big deal. Once the browser gained a sudden boost in users and it was found, the image was removed (once the guy got back from vacation? hospital?, there was a month or two gap)
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this one was a larger problem for sure, and again removed. If I reacll right, he was apparently hosting a website for a friend about supporting the end of a certain procedure done to baby males at birth. There were some graphic images, its not technically CP anymore than the infomus Nirvana cover, but still…not okay.
To make matters worse, the link the site was somewhere browsers home or about page, making it pretty easy for anyone to find.
It’s all old news now. Personally I didn’t really care, but some people might.
I don’t actually care about the drama per se at this point either. I mentioned it because, along with the fact that:
- development is not very open (in that only that one guy commits and releases stuff)
- release cadence is very erratic and often lags behind upstream chromium, which is a direct consequence of the previous point
- you mentioned about the guys absence - the first time was some time ago and he was inpatient in the hospital for (IIRC) alcohol abuse, and this absence actually coincided with the drama over the furry and the other stuff, so it took awhile for it to be addressed, which only added more fuel to the fire. The second was just this last couple of months were he was house sitting for his parents (mentioned on the release notes I linked before)
All of this paints a bleak outlook for the long term health of this project, IMO. Which is too bad , because I still think it’s one of the better forks of chromium.
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i don’t know why people are so allergic to firefox but it is the answer.
its the only halfway decent answer. install firefox and switch to it.
I love Firefox, used to use it all the time. Now it’s slower on Ubuntu than Brave. I mean slow as in irritating to use, click and wait.
thats probably because you are using the snap version of firefox canonical is pushing.
a big reason why i want to ditch ubuntu.
Then something must be wrong with the way you configured your OS.
umbrella at lemmy.ml wrote:
i don’t know why people are so allergic to firefox…
To which I offered a possible answer. Does everyone have misconfigured operating systems?
The Best Web Browsers of 2024 | HighSpeedInternet.com
Mozilla’s Firefox browser isn’t known for speed. It falls into last place in most of our tests for Windows and Mac, and that’s okay. Firefox is more about security features than speed, which is ideal if you’re more concerned about blocking malware than loading pages in a flash.
Yep, I’d probably be wasting my time going down the uninstall-reinstall rabbit hole and would probably not find speed increases.
i don’t know why people are so allergic to firefox but it is the answer.
Basically because in the later year, the development of firefox took very curious directions, from trying to break some decades old, standard feature (only to revert when gmail users, of all things, complained en masse), to integrating many useless extensions (pocket anyone?) that you can’t remove and that are more and more difficult to disable. To say nothing of the occasional advertisement for irrelevant products. Basically, even if it’s on a smaller scale, using firefox today is starting to look like using windows: you have to fight it on every update to remove something they bork.
And I’m not even talking about the shit that happens at their mother business, Mozilla.
All of this is even more infuriating, because they could very easily not do it and still pursue their venture. Have Firefox, the web browser, be a thing, and have all the shit actually packaged as a separate extension. Heck, even sell or promote it as “Firefox+” or whatever. Just, don’t break the core feature to add “smart bookmarks” or whatever VPN ads.
are ads and 24/7 surveillance not worse than this though? and all of googles questionable business practices they do not only on chrome but all of their products?
“worse” is debatable, but they certainly are an issue.
However, that doesn’t make it ok in Firefox either. Having a good reputation does not mean you can burn it away by trying your best to look the same as the bad guy you’re supposed to fight. Firefox mobile, for a very plain and simple example, have stuff like “future experiment” and telemetry enabled by default. Sure, I can disable them, but they should either be disabled by default, or have a one-time popup that provides the option on the first launch.
My position is that if a piece of software becomes increasingly intrusive and tedious to use with each “update”, it’s time to look somewhere else. Whether it’s Firefox, Chrome, or even OS like Windows. Having to fight back to get to a decent, usable state means that it’s no longer the right tool for you.
Fortunately, some people are doing the heavy lifting by providing what would be considered “vanilla” firefox with some good forks, as far as being a browser goes.
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Vivaldi just has better features than Firefox. I’ll switch to Firefox when Vivaldi is forced to switch to V3 but until then I’m gonna continue to enjoy Vivaldi
Curios, what sets Vivaldi apart so much in features that makes it hard to switch to Firefox?
Tab stacks and mouse gestures are the 2 that I use the most, that don’t exist in Firefox. Tab hibernation is also extremely useful, but I don’t know if that exists in Firefox.
And in general there are so many useful tools, like bookmarking by stack and/or window etc.
Their website lists many of the main features.
They are just giving some time for the waters to calm a bit, and then say that it is taking too much effort.
Yup. And perhaps even hoping they can pick up a few users from Chrome when it drops support.
Hardly surprising considering that Brave, Vivaldi and Edge are all based on Chromium. The Brave and Vivaldi team won’t have the resources to maintain Manifest v2 support for each new Chromium version, and Microsoft doesn’t have any reason to support v2 with Edge outside of goodwill.
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Brave is based on Chromium, so where Chrome goes, Brave is likely to follow.
Routers and VPNs are only able to filter URLs. They have no way of manipulating the browser session, which is the other half of uBlock’s functionality and why it will always be superior to PiHoles or ad-blocking DNS.
Google, for example, smuggles ads through their “good” domains on YouTube that deliver video content; at that point, it’s an endless game of whack-a-mole in the dark to have a list that filters the correct URL without obliterating the ability to watch videos.
URL filtering is better than nothing, but it’s not really a comparable solution.
Brave is based on Chromium, so where Chrome goes, Brave is likely to follow.
To follow what? Brave’s adblocker is not an extension and it is not affected by MV3. And it has most of uBO’s features. More than I have ever used on uBO anyway.
True, uBO doesn’t have a shitty cryptobro component unfortunately. Also I hate that it’s not bankrolled by a conservative sociopath
Yawn… Any technical point?
Right the only thing that matters is technology. That’s why I think Facebook has the right to facilitate genocides any time they want! /s
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Brave is not completely independent of chrome. It’s completely and entirely dependent on it. Brave developers don’t and probably can’t develope a modern web browser. All they do is adapt chromium to have a few extra features.
There is only three major web browsers. Firefox, safari and chrome. Everything else is just a few addons, preconfigured settings and UI changes. Even chrome was largely safari until Google forked their web engine.
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Both Brave and Chrome are built on the open-source Chromium browser engine
That’s from the Brave website: https://brave.com/compare/chrome-vs-brave/
Yes there are plenty of changes, but it’s built on it, and shaped by it, and Chromium is heavily influenced by Google. If chromium doesn’t support v2 manifests it is unlikely that Brave will. In this particular case it may be that Brave’s ad blocking and privacy features are equivalent to uBO, but it’s still underpinned by an engine that Google has strong influence over, so it can’t completely shake their influence.
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Are you not really in the tech industry? Because he’s right. And he’s sticking to facts.
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Adblocking should be accessible to every layperson and not just people who know how to set up a pihole or use a VPN. It’s a basic security feature.
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Vivaldi does a lot of adblocking natively, and they are maintaining V2 as long as they can, which based on info from Google is summer 2025 but might change.
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Could we keep using our ad-blocking extensions in Vivaldi?
But, “Wait”, I hear you say, “Doesn’t that mean that basically, Vivaldi might be able to keep webRequest intact just by bypassing the checks for enterprise environments? Could we keep using our adblocking extensions in Vivaldi?”
This certainly sounds plausible, but it is not something that we can promise without seeing what ends up happening in the code itself. If there is an easy way to keep webRequest functioning as it did for a while longer, we’ll consider doing it.
However, it is important to note that extension ad blockers often depend on other APIs that are removed in Manifest V3 (and probably much harder to bring back), so there is no guarantee that simply keeping the blocking version of webRequest alive is going to be enough, without some work from extension maintainers.
Does Firefox use “manifest v2”? When reading all the frothing news about this stuff, I assumed the “manifest” thing was a Chromium thing.
Firefox will support Manifest v3. However Mozilla will be implementing Manifest 3 differently so the routes Ublock and other extensions use to maintain privacy and block ads will still be available. Firefox will support both the original route and the new limited option Google is forcing on Chromium.
Googles implementation deliberately locks out extensions by removing something called WebRequest, supposedly for security reasons but almost certainly actually for commercial reasons as they are not a neutral party. Google is a major ad and data broker.
Apple will apparently also be adopting the same approach for Safari as Mozilla is for Firefox.
If I remember correctly, yes. There was a pain in the ass a few years ago when Firefox switched from their own add-on system to one that matched Chrome’s, despite Firefox’s being more powerful and mature. The goal was to make it easier to port Chromes (arguably) greater variety of add-ons to Firefox.
It was an unpopular decision and it was the start of a downward decline for Firefox. People that had their browser “just the way I like it” found themselves starting fresh essentially, and without some of their favourite add-ons.
Damn. That means they are once again on a divergent path.
How so? They can support Manifest v2 and v3 simultaneously. It’s a bit harder for their old add-on system since that add-on system had more hooks into the browser, but v3 is largely just a restriction, so there won’t be much conflict there.
Ah, if it’s easy to just maintain both, and v3 is largely backwards compatible then I’m mistaken on how divergent v3 is.
Defanged/declawed v3 is a weird thing to have exist. It’s a bummer that Chrome got to set the standard. And then they took that and restricted things. This isn’t a healthy standard.
If FF ever drops V3, it’ll be because they have extensions to bring parity to V2. There is maintenance overhead, but I doubt it’s anywhere close to the old add-on vs V2 differences.
I came back to Firefox this spring after probably 12 years, or how long is Chrome around and I must say everything works with it, it is snappy, doesn’t bog down my memory and has great extensions even on Android. I don’t look back to Chrome. It was great in the beginning and got more convoluted as the time progressed. With switching to Firefox i feel like when switched to Chrome back in the day.
Firefox
