The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).

At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.

Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store

  • partial_accumen
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    05 months ago

    Vivaldi still supports V2 Manifest (including ublock Origin) until July, I believe. Brave too, I think.

    • TimeSquirrel
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      05 months ago

      Because we want a more permanent solution than one that’s only going to last until Summer. What’s even the point of switching if you just gotta do it again soon?

      • partial_accumen
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        05 months ago

        Wait, is that all? Because its not a permanent forever fix for Edge users its downvote worthy?

        • Maybe Vivaldi or Brave users are reading this article thinking their Manifest v2 support is ending at the same time as Edge? It isn’t and I’m letting those users know.

        • Maybe there is some critical functionality someone needs in a Chrome based browser and they’ll take Manifest v2 support wherever they can get it for as long as they can?

        Do you think your specific situation, and therefore your specific desired solution, is the only one in the world that exists?

        • @grue@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          Because its not a permanent forever fix for Edge users its downvote worthy?

          Yes.

          • partial_accumen
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            5 months ago

            Yes.

            I really appreciate the honesty, thank you. I now don’t have to care that those downvotes are rational.

            Following this same logic I imagine you downvote news of any treatments that extend the life of cancer patients because the new treatments aren’t full cures.

            • @grue@lemmy.world
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              05 months ago

              Except in this case, the full cure also exists already and you’re trying to push the temporary treatment instead, for no good reason.

              • partial_accumen
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                05 months ago

                There is no full cure. Nothing will offer a Chrome based browser support Manifest v2 after July. Your “cure” is “give up now”. Which, hey, if you want to, go for it. But for those that don’t for their own reasons, why are you so upset about them having the info about other browsers? I’m offering people information on a option that will preserve the functionality of manifest v2 Chrome based browsers or if they’re already using them that are still working meanwhile the article we’re talking about is referencing that functionality being removed early.

                I find it bizarre that these downvoters are so obsessed with people not having this information. How is this information in peoples hands hurting YOU so much? If you don’t want to use Vivaldi? Don’t! I’m not your dad. Move on and the people that want this info have it.

                • @grue@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  There is no full cure. Nothing will offer a Chrome based browser…

                  The full cure is a non-Chrome-based browser, obviously. The notion of “some critical functionality someone needs in a Chrome based browser” would violate web standards and is therefore invalid bullshit and a cynical attempt to move goalposts.

                  Why are you arguing in bad faith?

  • Engywook
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    05 months ago

    It’s nice to use a browser which doesn’t depend of extensions to block ads.

    • @Matriks404@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Why is there a sidebar for tabs? That seems wasteful for all the screen space it takes.

      Edit: From what I see it tries to do everything that is a job of a window manager/desktop environment. There are various solutions to have workspaces, etc. that you can use globally, so I don’t understand why would anyone use this, unless you are on locked system like Windows or Mac.

      • Pumpkin Escobar
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        05 months ago

        It’s desktop-only right now and feels like for the foreseeable future. Firefox sync works between Zen and Firefox so you can just run Firefox or one of the Android-specific versions of Firefox that support the generic/vanilla firefox sync.

        • @pycorax@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          I was thinking of maybe trying it for a few specific websites that I keep persistently on since I think it may work well for that. However, I was a bit concerned that logins and stuff won’t sync which might make it annoying. Having this sync seems pretty cool though, might try it out.

    • Gunpachi
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      05 months ago

      Honestly this has been my daily driver for the past 6 months or so.

      I really like it. The aesthetics are really modern, while still maintaining all the things I like about firefox.

    • @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      05 months ago

      Zen’s glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.

      I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it

      • bitwolf
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        5 months ago

        I was concerned, but it’s not Wiki style.

        It’s just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.

        Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven’t fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven’t looked into disabling it.

      • Krik
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        05 months ago

        Amarok is the other wolf. I know it looks deceptively similar.

      • @dan@upvote.au
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        05 months ago

        They recently started developing it again, after being silent for a long time. They released Amarok 3.0 in April 2024 which migrated it to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5.

  • @Xanza@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Perfect time to check out AdGuard Home. Trivial to install locally. Probably took less than 3 minutes to install and get it operating. Hardest part was updating my router config. (Goddamn Google WiFi!)

    Then you can focus on getting a better browser. Support libre software and check out LibreWolf.

  • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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    05 months ago

    Right, you don’t need extensions, because you don’t need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.

    I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.

    A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.

    BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.

    • drthunder
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      05 months ago

      I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we’re basically running Doom in a word professor. I don’t know what a better system would look like, but I’d draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.

  • @Petter1@lemm.ee
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    05 months ago

    Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?

      • @Petter1@lemm.ee
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        05 months ago

        I work in research and development, I have to constantly search the web for stuff

    • @Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      The new manifest v3 version is actually not that bad, though not nearly as good as normal ublock.

      • JackbyDev
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        5 months ago

        So, unironically, I do plan to request Firefox with uBlock Origin as a reasonable accomodation for my ADHD if I’m not able to use it at a job in the future. Banner ads are genuinely distracting and I have a real disability that makes them worse for me.

          • @Petter1@lemm.ee
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            05 months ago

            Of course, but extra work is required for third party browsers vs just using windows built in browser designed to be managed using entraID / intune.

            Companies don’t like to pay extra.

            • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              05 months ago

              It’s no different than controlling add-ons via GPO like we did in the old days of on-prem. No extra cost associated.

                • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  05 months ago

                  Your outsourced IT provider charges for simple configuration changes? That’s a yikes from me. I worked in MSPs for years and those sort of changes were always covered in the standard contract.

      • @Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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        05 months ago

        This might actually reverse firefox’s decline in userbase at least in the business world. Any shop that already has multi-OS management could probably insta-switch to firefox, and i’m sure that MS locked-in places could too given enough of a push by IT.

    • @Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      My work insists on using it too. Fuck knows why, maybe it’s a security thing? And my personal laptop is constantly nagging me to use edge - it could be the best browser ever and I would still avoid it just because of the pushiness.

      • @OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        It’s a good Chromium based Windows native browser that has integration with your Entra ID account so all your bookmarks / history is automatically synced and users have seamless experience when switching devices. No longer seeing tickets like ″My bookmarks are gone after I reinstalled my PC″ is enough to consider Edge as your company main browser. And the fact that it is part of OS, you do not need to worry about install and patching.

        I prefer Firefox, but from Chromium browsers Edge is really good, you cannot expect companies to suggest something like Vivaldi.

        This is for companies being in M365 ecosystem. If you are in Google then I suppose Chrome would make more sense.

        • @Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          Yeah, that’s fair, I thought it would probably be something like that. TBF it’s work, they’re paying me, I’ll use whatever they choose. I won’t have it on my own computer though just because of Microsoft’s hard sell

    • @Kiuyn@lemmy.ml
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      05 months ago

      Did they fix the issue of their license partially closed? Or is it still the same

      • DuskyRo
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        05 months ago

        Yes, actually, they made the source available again.

        • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          Was super easy but my setup is pretty minimal.

          Export bookmarks from Firefox, install favourite addons in the Floorp extension menu and lastly import bookmarks.

          Most of the settings will be familiar and some features will be new like the workspaces and sidebar.

          Hope your transfer goes smoothly!

  • TomMasz
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    05 months ago

    I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.

    Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?

    • Billiam
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      05 months ago

      And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.

      If you’re talking about the most recent news about the Terms of Service, that is a gross misreading of what they said.

    • @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.

      If you’re talking about the recent news, that’s not what the updated privacy notice says.

      Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say “btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party.” I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.

    • bitwolf
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      05 months ago

      I imagine so, but the technical burden is at risk of growing over time as the upstream chromium may significantly deviate from or remove some of the functionality.

  • Read Bio
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    05 months ago

    Microsoft Edge is literally Google Chrome button replaced with Microsoft Features/Spyware

    • RickyWars1
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      05 months ago

      I use it on my laptop because it doesn’t nuke my laptop’s battery like all other browsers. So it’s a bit of a shame.

    • @Symphonic@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      Honestly, it’s pretty easy to dunk on edge. But it’s based on the same chromium browser. They have excellent customer support. I have in the past submitted bug reports and they have followed up. Until now, they had pretty good privacy and options in their settings. With this v2 / v3 situation, I will have to reassess all that.

    • @DV8@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It integrates very well with your M365 you need at work, and it saves a ton of time when people can use SSO to basically get everything up and running immediately on a new laptop. Including bookmarks and passwords.

      By default I install unblock on any user machine I touch because it’s equal parts user experience and security.

      • @Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        5 months ago

        Firefox also has SSO integration with M365! Last I tested it it was less clean than Microsoft’s but it does exist and work the last time I used it

        Edit: just tested on a fresh install of Firefox and it worked perfectly. Checked the checkbox under Settings>Privacy and Security for “Allow Windows single sign-in for Microsoft, work, and school accounts” then navigated to my account.microsoft.com and it immediately signed me in (and appeared to be faster than on Edge‽)

        • @DV8@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          If you think SSO and easy profile migration doesn’t save time, there’s simply no point in discussing it with you. I don’t like MS and their near monopoly position as a company much either. But that doesn’t mean every product they make is utter trash for every situation.

          There are undoubtedly other solutions but to pretend every one is too dumb to use them shows how little actual experience working in a variety of companies is.

          Back in the nineties you might have had Novell NetWare or just plain old LDAP instead of AD, but unlike those competitors AD kept working and offered upgrade trajectories. And it offered decent integration with a decent mailserver (that ofcourse sucked to set up securely for outside access), and that mailserver was fantastic versus the utterly terror that was Domino combined with Notes. I don’t like MS for basically forcing you to go to their cloud now, but pretending it’s a bad product through and through on a functional level is just being willingly blind.

            • @DV8@lemmy.world
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              05 months ago

              And your arguments have the strength of the hobbyist with the homelab he’s constantly having to reinstall, not understanding why companies are so stupid to not do the same thing as him.

          • @girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
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            05 months ago

            You’re not wrong about it being easy to set up and use, but the reason it’s still the defacto is because of its earlier monopoly. Now, they are slowly killing what made it the best Enterprise option either by its greedy licensing schemes hiding things you used to use behind new and additional licensing or breaking them with untested patches that go straight from dev to production.

        • @muhyb@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          You can think of it as a mobile version of LibreWolf. Strict security settings are default and Mozilla’s telemetry is disabled/removed. Also unlike regular Firefox, you can download it from F-Droid (currently you need their repo but it’ll be added officially soon, probably).

          • @dan@upvote.au
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            05 months ago

            Are they doing their own development or are they still mostly reliant on Mozilla? The thing with all these forks is that I doubt they’d be able to continue development if Mozilla were to disappear, since they still rely heavily on Mozilla.

    • @x00z@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      I don’t suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.

      It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.

      For people in !technology@lemmy.world that’s less of a problem but I wouldn’t suggest it to my family members.

        • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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          05 months ago

          Zen was amazing when they first came to light, but they keep changing how workflows work, and it destroyed the workflow I had.

          For example, I am a browser minimalist. I don’t need workspaces, and I don’t have thousands of tabs open, because that’s insane to me, personally. I now have to see the ugly Default Workspace at the top of my tab bar every time I go to open or switch tabs. This was an option before, so it was perfectly fine. They’ve taken that option away, which is very much not okay. Options are good. They also messed around with the New Tab icon, making it to where I couldn’t move it to the bottom where I prefer it to be, instead putting it at the top, which is extra movement needed to get to the top… They later added that back in, but again, why the fuck are you just willy nilly taking options away from people? It should just be an OPTION.

          Anyway, I’ve had so many headaches with their approach to changing workflows that I don’t even recommend it to anyone any longer. I’m sure I’m just the crazy person who wants some of the offerings, while not being FORCED to use some of the others. :)

          • XNX
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            05 months ago

            You can remove that, i don’t see any workspaces

            • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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              05 months ago

              I have a feeling you might be one of those that turned their automatic updates off after an issue where they really, really fucked the UI up on Macs, or something like that. Or you might be a person who doesn’t like the auto updates anywhere.

              I turned mine off for awhile, but don’t want to catch anything when a new FF release rolls out, so I turned them back on, especially since I rarely use the browser anymore due to said changes with no user options.

              I’m on the latest version on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The option is gone, I’m afraid.

                • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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                  05 months ago

                  While I really appreciate you for helping, the fact that these were part of the core application, then taken away by the developers so that we rely on third parties to bring back, is my biggest gripe with the browser. The options were there, and they took them out. I would rather just go back to Firefox than deal with an always changing UI, and removal of options. :/

          • ben
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            05 months ago

            To be fair it’s still alpha software, things are basically guaranteed to change until they reach a stable state. I’ve enjoyed it so far though

          • warm
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            05 months ago

            Yeah, I hate how projects become allergic to options. If you want to push your own agenda with new defaults, okay fine, but never ever remove options, let people keep it how they liked it.

            • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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              05 months ago

              I saw in their notes for the previous updates about the workspaces, which essentially said “workspaces are a major part of Zen, so you are no longer allowed to NOT use them”. When it was clearly a viable option before. So much for being customizable!

            • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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              05 months ago

              Infinite options is bad design for a number of reasons. One is that when everyone’s experience is unique, troubleshooting is impossible. Two is that when you add an option, you have to support that option forever.

              Options are expensive, at least if you want to keep your software working for a long period of time.

              • warm
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                05 months ago

                Then adding too many options is the problem, not having options in the first place.

    • @Waldschrat@lemmy.world
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      05 months ago

      Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.

      • @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        05 months ago

        For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.

      • @XiberKernel@lemmy.world
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        05 months ago

        Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”

        • @Waldschrat@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.

          For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search.

          Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads.

          There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.

          Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past.

          In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option.

          All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.

    • @intelisense@lemm.ee
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      05 months ago

      I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated… Intel Xe graphics.