Google is weakening ad blockers as part of their MV3 extension standard and this will trickle down into all Chromium browsers. Built in ad blockers lack features compared to uBlock Origin as well.
Dammit, Sam. 🤦🏽♂️
Google is not killing uBlock Origin. It’s changing how Chrome works. uBlock Origin will continue to work in my Firefox and other browsers.
This is a shit take. Manifest v3 is like activex. As of right now, it shuts down extensions they don’t want. Going forward, it sets up a system for extensions that are publisher-approved. When internet explorer took over the market I could still use Netscape until I couldn’t. I’m hoping Firefox doesn’t reach the same end
They’re changing how chrome works… …in a way that just coincidentally makes ad blockers a lot less functional.
They’re an advertising company, no conflict of interest there at all
Yes, awful title. I agree.
Who is the Lemmy user not aware of this? Show yourself!
Duh, Firefox. This is not a problem.
I’ve recently switched to FF as my main browser, but I still need Chrome for some work things. And some people will want to stay on Chrome. So for them, this IS a problem.
Just dismissing it because other browsers exist isn’t helpful.
Usually I sympathize with sentiments like this (“people use X because of uncontrolled circumstances”), but browsers are not one of them.
If you have a website that requires the use of Chrome, then just use Chrome for that website! It’s not an either-or thing – you can install both browsers and use Firefox as the primary one.
And some people will want to stay on Chrome.
And that’s what makes this statement so problematic. You don’t earn anything by staying exclusively on Chrome, when both it and Firefox can work alongside each other.
I am under the same predicament, but found that I can still use FF by spoofing the user agent on those “chrome only” websites. I don’t recall ever having an issue, but in case a specific functionality fails for you, all you gotta do is open up a chromium browser to sidestep the problem.
Thanks. My main issue is the lack of progressive web app ability in Firefox. I have my Outlook, Gmail, Keep, Calendar, Netflix and other sites set up that way, but can’t do it with FF.
I did hear that they might be working on adding it though, which would be great.
Adding it back. They pioneered it way back, even before there was a PWA, they had a similar solution. It was not perfect, but scratched many itches and was trending in the right direction. Then they dropped. One of the many casualties of Mozilla’s mismanagement. And this one really tickles the conspiracy theorist in me.
On a more practical note: add shortcuts to these sites in your desktop/start menu/launcher. It’s not the same, but your muscle memory will thank you.
Thanks, yeah, I actually started doing that, but having those sites open as tabs in browser windows just wasn’t working for me. That, and the favicons just being the FF logo instead of the logo for each “app”. I might have another go, but I’ve been busy with work and have just taken the path of least resistance so far.
That’s interesting about FF and PWAs, I didn’t know that it used to do something like that. I guess Google aren’t the only ones who kill useful stuff! 😁
Considering Mozilla owes more that 50% of its funding to Google, I can see their behavior rubbing off on them.
Ah, fair point!
As a person who cares about css , it’s still a problem. There are so many cool features that everyone has implemented Firefox. I still use FF as my daily driver, because, as you said, duh, but every time I see new stuff added to the spec, I check MDN, and it’ll be all green except Firefox.
I mean, maybe if the Firefox/Chrome market share ratio inverts, ff will suddenly have a lot more pressure to keep up?
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even really care about new web features. It’s all come with so much shit that I can’t say the internet today is a better experience than it was back before marketers leaned into it so much and everyone wanting a piece of that data money drowned out much of the rest of it.
I’d take the current feature set with ad blocking and reader mode over any feature set without those. Well, reasonable feature sets. But then again, if I had the option of getting a star trek holodeck but had to let marketers regularly nag me about buying their shit any time I wanted to use it, I’d still be conflicted.
You have to remember that sometimes when that shiny new CSS feature comes out, it is underspecced, with unhandled corner cases – “just do what Chromium does” is not a standard – or is it? Having multiple implementations of a spec prove that it is interoperable - without that, you might have a good spec, or you might have a spec that says “whatever Chrome does is what is expected”. Not sure that is what we want from new CSS (or any) features.
You make a compelling point, for sure. There are definitely features that fall into that category (eg page transitions), there are a lot of other things coming out these days that just make life easier.
For example, in chrome (and in the spec) you can now animate between ‘height: [number]’ and ‘height:auto;’ just the other day, I had to write a python function to estimate the highest of a menu based on its length * the line height of the list items, so I could provide an exact height to animate to. It works, but it’s hacky and gross. It would be nice to have access to the solution.
LMAO welcome to Firefox, the objectively better Browser. Might also use a custom search engine or DDG while at it.
Why the LMAO?
Firefox was and still is recently vulnerable to a massive zero day:
Mozilla is now using users for their new AI focus.
We need to support continuous competition in the browser market through enhanced support and integration of W3C standards. And at the most important, decoupling corporations from the browsers. At the moment, it seems Google is being actively defensive (see manifest v3) against that while Firefox (Mozilla corporate) is just sort of moot on the issue, more concerned with AI.
As soon as you think it’s “us vs them” and your browser is also owned by a for profit company, we’ve lost
Unfortunately, firefox is becoming just as bad as chrome.
What?
Mozilla is now focusing on the advertising business.
To reduce reliance on Google… With the goal to change how advertising works, less annoying, less asshole ads would benefit everyone.
It’s not my browser’s job to report to advertisers, period.
Its not doing that, you can use a fork if you want, or, and that would be the important part, put a condom over your internet cable before it enters the router, safety first.
Its not doing that
It literally is, with an opt-out feature.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct
Your lack of concern is not relevant to the desires of other users.
I switched to Firefox about a month ago for personal use. It’s nearly impossible for me to quit using Chrome, though, due to work.
I don’t hate Firefox, but it does absolutely do some stupid shit that I don’t like.
What kind of stuff?
As someone who uses Vivaldi, which has a significant number of power user and customization features, the fact this is no longer a thing is fucking bonkers to me
I can turn on an unsupported flag to make the UI a little cleaner for me
To me, it’s wild that the browser for the user decided to deprecate an option like that. Since they dropped XUL support I have very few options on customizing my browser outside of a theme or just writing my own CSS
From there, I’d just point to:
Firefox pulls in like 500 million dollars a year from Google. Barely any of those features exist in Firefox
I started with Firefox. I used it from day one, when it was an experiment coming out of the Mozilla suite.
I want to use it day to day so bad
But it’s become “how do we chase chrome”
And occasionally they get wins like this. And it no longer feels like
“How can we be best?”
Have I got a pleasant surprise for you: Zen Browser is to Firefox what Vivaldi is to Chromium: a feature-rich powerhouse.
It looks really good, not quite as good as Vivaldi but hopefully it gets there. One thing that bothers me is the CPU requirement, that is bonkers, you can’t run a browser if you don’t have a decently modern CPU?
I’m laughing at myself right now. I keep wishing people would switch to more progressive politics when people cannot even switch to a free piece of software with zero drawbacks even when their software starts blocking other software they use.
Is safari work ?
Or use UBO-Lite? MV3 has some limitations but I’m tired of people acting like it ruins ad blocking when it doesn’t.
Afaik, UBO lite only updates filter lists when the extension updates, has no element zapper/picker, no per site switches, and no dynamic filtering.
If you can live without these features, then good for you. But there’s no need to get frustrated about our claims just because we need better ad-blocking and privacy functions than you.
Then build them. There is nothing about MV3 that stops you from improving things. I don’t blame you from wanting good ad blocking, as do I. But I also don’t want every MV2 extension being able to read my network traffic.
There is nothing about MV3 that stops you from improving things.
… Yes there is? That’s the point? MV3 doesn’t allow dynamic list filtering, that’s why those features don’t exist on UBO
Dynamic list filtering doesn’t mean what you think it means. You can add and update block lists without having to update the extension.
For situations where you’re forced to use chromium browsers it’s better than nothing, but abandoning chromium browsers is the right thing to do. An example of a situation where you can’t is an IT policy preventing you from using Firefox.
Abandoning Chromium browsers does nothing to improve security or privacy. I certainly encourage people to try Firefox and other browsers as they become available, but it’s mostly just a matter of preference in what features you want. If you want maximum privacy with Chromium or Firefox then you’re going to use policies, flags, etc. Otherwise both are prone to telemetry.
