Google Has Removed Manifest V2 Extensions From the Chrome Web Store, Including uBlock Origin
Web Iterate
Google Has Removed Manifest V2 Extensions From the Chrome Web Store, Including uBlock Origin
Google today reached the final milestone in a browser-extension transition that has been years in the making, all remaining Manifest V2 extensions were removed from the Chrome Web Store.
Big win for Firefox.
Not really. UBlock Origin Lite works really well. They even added content scripts recently. From a technical perspective MV3 offers more security by default.
The following filter options can’t be translated into DNR rules:
aside from that it is somewhat better than default ublock but that’s a pretty big list of issues.
There’s also pretty restrictive length limits on filter lists iirc, so ubo lite would have to select top filters at some point. This getting worse as websites add more ads or obfuscate more requiring more rules.
Like FB putting every character in every [w][o][r][d] on the site into a unique code block
Some of those limitations were never supported in Chrome to begin with. MV3 still supports webRequestBlocking at the engine level but it is gated behind enterprise policy (ExtensionInstallForcelist in the Windows Registry, macOS MDM, or Linux managed policy JSON). If an extension with webRequestBlocking is installed via policy, it restores programmatic interception.
In practice, I found it breaks sites more, lets some things through, triggers more adblock detectors, and doesn’t work as well with the annoyance list.
It doesn’t work on YouTube. And the maximum number of entries to block is limited.
Its not catastrophic though.
So UBO Lite is not wholly ineffective, no. It works great, mostly. Buts its definitely more of a nuisance to use, which is exactly what Google wants.
Thanks for the laugh! Keep telling yourself that.
That’s a whole truckload of copium you’re consuming there, fella. Watch out for the side effects.
Clearly you’re the one struggling with coping.here
Keep telling yourself that.
Firefox is Chrome with extra steps
Care to elaborate? It’s actually not like chrome at all. The engine is different, it’s not Google, they haven’t blocked manifest v2 plugins… Other than being a web browser, how would you classify it as Chrome?
Not only are they different, Gecko is like 12 years older than Chromium.
I guess they could be referring to how much money Google throws at Mozilla to keep Google Search as standard in Firefox? Still, it’s a tenuous link at best
In about:config check with what google services, urls, relays, vpns browser communicates. What organizations donate most money.
Hardly makes it “Chrome with extra steps”.
Did you actually look inside?
I don’t have to. Yea, it shares some backend Google services, but the rest of the browser, like the other 90% isn’t Chrome. It’s like comparing Windows and Mac OS and saying that they’re the same because they both connect to the same Internet and that their operating systems. Just like Chrome v Firefox, they are two distinctly different products.
That doesn’t even make sense. You bots need better prompts
Huh, do we have engagement bots in Lemmy already?
We’re thriving guys!
Probably just young
Maybe used Chrome for years before ever hearing about Firefox
You can say that about almost every browser, but not Firefox.
Still time to delete this
I’ve never seen a more downvoted comment. This is true for every single other mainstream browser except Firefox.
Some forks of Firefox are ok, but if you actually dig and look inside about:config you’ll see with who it communicates, what telemetry it collects. What organisations fund it.
Thanks for the laugh!
Lol no
Ah, the Sam Reich of browsers
Just a crying shame Mozilla has turned into a commercial nightmare making them relatively poor custodians of the only free choice we have left.
Mozilla needs to die so Firefox can live.
The income stream from Firefox is plenty for a highly technical, deeply competent, widely dispersed team could work full time on the product using something like OpenCollective.
Instead what we get is prime SF real estate offices, “competitive” SF salaries and a commercial organisation that seeks weird and increasingly desperate income streams to justify looking like “real company”.
I want an actual non-profit governing Firefox.
It’s called the forks, dude.
Also, hopefully the ladybug thing or whatever gets off the ground someday.
Edit: Servo is the better project to follow.
I think you mean ladybird, right? Just FYI The core maintainer is very close to the alt right open source sphere. Rejecting inclusivity as he deems it as too political and just rubbing shoulders with really weird guys.
https://drewdevault.com/blog/Cloudflare-and-fascists/ https://kvibber.com/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
There is servo though which is picking up speed lately, im following their rss for a while now. https://servo.org/ The money behind is also a lot more public and the project is more open to people. originally developed internally at mozilla it is now in the hands of the linux foundation europe.
Netsurf hasn’t seen any love lately. It’s still being developed on git but no releases. Same with Dillo.
Dillo rejects scripting. Makes perfect sense to me. It also rejects automatic redirects, which also makes sense but the web has already been established around that as given so it can’t pass the most passive anti-bot.
The state of scripting support on Netsurf is uhm, quite interesting. Scripts can write to the page parse time (like a snowflake generator) but can’t do ANYTHING after the page loaded, EXCEPT text fields and text areas. And scripts can always read but not write checkbox state. There aren’t any button events, either, but if you check the state of a text field repeatedly you can do interactivity. What is also interesting is that the new way of finding elements (getElementById) is functional, but the old way (document.formName.elementName) ISN’T. So that means that basically nothing existing functions (apart from again, the snowflake generators from geocities). But you can do the old style text animations if you specifically program it to use the new method despite being old style shit. Netsurf also passes “GoAway” and the most basic setting of Anubis (the passive redirects).
Both are good enough to browse “old Lemmy”, although I haven’t tried to login since my instance doesn’t have it and the owner ghosted me (hi @milan@discuss.tchncs.de).
There’s also a half public domain half permissive (BSD) text mode browser, chawan.net . Extraordinarily good concept! However, it avoids some of the bloat by forcing bloat onto your terminal emulator and having it render images, and my terminal emulator does not bother itself with such tasks and emulates a terminal, so image heavy sites like Lemmy fucking suck on it. No, it cannot just weight different characters from some public domain font (spoiler: if converted, all of them by international conventions are public domain) by brightness and by individual pixel similarity to an actual image and then just display those. That would make too much sense. I have high hopes for it, though. Also, I find the keybinds really weird.
I have not tested Chawan’s scripting support much at all, all I can say is that it’s certainly better than Netsurf. And that everything I’ve written in the worst fucking programming language ever for Netsurf (not released yet, very soon I hope) runs on Chawan. However, they are unusable since textboxes open your preferred editor. Makes perfect sense, a browser shouldn’t be a text editor. But like, that breaks my gimmick that makes it work with Netsurf, damn. Checkboxes can be written to, for once, tho no access key support. The JS is still not enough to login to Lemmy (the default bloated frontend).
Let’s use Gemini.
Ah ty. I wasn’t keeping track of either project, but good to know servo’s the one to look out for instead.
But it isn’t really. The forks rely on the majority effort of Mozilla and they would never be able to maintain Firefox on their own.
This this true but if Mozilla closed it doors tomorrow there would be enough support for a team to be built to maintain it. The market share is small compared to chrome but it’s still an enormous user base.
Anyone that uses Chrome doesn’t know what a clean non ad infested website looks like so they won’t notice the difference.
Every time I do IT work, I ask to install Firefox
There are many choices and people still stay on shit browsers because of laziness.
I actually do a pretty good job of selling it. I tell them that I can set up Firefox so using the Internet is easier. I’m 3/5 so far
Firefox on Android has gotten quite shit as well. It just refuses to load sometimes and won’t open pages until you copy and paste the url in a new tab. Extremly annoying, especially for online payments.
E: It’s a known issue for a few months now. Check recent reviews on Google Play if you don’t believe me. Fuck me for complaining about having issues I guess.
I use it extensively, every day, with no problems
I have some problems with sites not loading, but I have 300 tabs open…
Amateur. Try over 1,200 with the option to put those not used in a while into an “inactive” group turned off.
Hmm… Maybe that’s my last phone crashed & burned recently…
But I have the tabs open because I’m going to read them. Do you?
Well, that’s why I left them open - on the off chance I suddenly find myself with the amount of time I used to have in my younger days. But, of course, now that my phone’s crashed… *sigh*
That sounds like maybe you have something else set as default browser and instead of Firefox and that something is messaging it up.
I use Firefox exclusively and it works everywhere.
Unless, URLCheck (highly recommended) is somehow fixing this issue. But I don’t remember having it before either.
No, that issue definitely occurs in Firefox Android sometimes. The tab just gets stuck and does nothing. Has been happening for years, in fact, so it’s not something new. Might be due to some specific settings, but I like my settings and the problem doesn’t pop up too often, so eh.
Desktop Firefox also gets this sometimes, actually. The tab just doesn’t load until I bash ‘enter’ on the address bar, or create a new tab. Since afaik Firefox uses its Gecko engine on both platforms, the issue could be in the engine rather than the UI.
Honestly I didn’t recall anything where things are stuck.
Are you sure that the issue on Android isn’t caused by closing a link and the app opening Firefox in its context?
If this is such a percentage issue I’d there big open about it?
It happens within Firefox, without rhyme or reason that I could discern. I think it’s more common if I open a link from another app, then switch away from Firefox while the page loads in the background; or when returning to FF and it tries to reload a previously suspended tab. Firefox is allowed to load stuff on my phone in the background even when battery saving is on (which it always is), but I guess FF might get into a fight with the system over available memory, with the system killing one of FF’s processes/threads. Wouldn’t explain it happening on the desktop, though.
It happens pretty rarely for me, and I have no idea how it could be reproduced. So, I already barely ever open issues (by principle), and certainly won’t report this. Idk about others — wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bug about this among the many thousands of issues that Mozilla has.
I was starting to doubt my memory of this happening in Firefox Android, but I’m happy to report that I’ve gotten that issue just now. Opened a pic from a Lemmy comment in FF because it wasn’t showing in the app, and the tab was sitting there doing nothing. Had to close it and open another one. So you can judge how pressing this problem is for me, by it occurring once in 23 days (likely more) — while I was browsing on the phone quite a bit and opening images from Lemmy regularly due to the ISP’s shenanigans. But it does happen.
Firefox is the only browser I have installed and it’s been my default for years.
It’s a known issue. It’s been reported on google play but I guess they haven’t fixed it yet.
I use it everyday with no problems
I run a portable version from an external drive to avoid installing anything.
Well, you don’t need to be a genius to imagine a concrete site without shit. Chrome users apparently love advertisements, trackers, pop-up windows and other similar things. Well, who are we to disagree?
I am Groot
it seems alot of people are using brave as an alternative.
The Brave company is a far right hate group and Brave users are supporters of far right hate.
Fuck Brendan Eich and his henchman and all they stand for.
Vivaldi is quite nice as well
That four seasons is a real banger, unless you’re talking about having a press conference.
Not true. UBlock Origin Lite works just fine. They even recently added the ability to use content scripts so there is almost no difference between it and the original UBlock. Manifest 3 has had and still has some challenges, but you’re being so hyperbolic that I can’t take anything people like you say seriously. Might as well say… “I hate Chrome so much that I’ll make up random lies to prove how bad it is!”
Literally, the creator of UBO Lite disagrees with you.
Why are you like this?
Too much corporate propaganda
First, I don’t care if they agree with me or not. It is an open source project. They said from they never intended to try to make a 1:1 extension with UBO. They clearly lay out the positives of MV3 as well, and the scripts permission feature is a relatively new addition. You or anyone can contribute or fork it you want to add something.
I have spent enough time working on MV3 to know Chromium has solved a lot of the challenges. If you want to have a technical discussion about the APIs and differences or how you might do something with MV3, then let’s have the discussion. I never tried to claim MV3 is perfect.
I just have little patience for essentially non-technical cultists who go around spreading misinformation while acting like they know way more than they do. Prove it then… 99% of people like you never actually want to have a real technical discussion, because you spread your opinions based on feelings and not facts.
I‘m a semi-technical user, I don‘t want a technical discussion, I want facts I‘m able to understand. If you‘d be knowledgeable, you should be able to explain it. You didn‘t, tho. You used a lot of words, but said nothing. Why should your arrogant, but empty yapping do anything for me?
You can’t claim to be “semi-technical” while simultaneously refusing to look at technical facts and dismissing platform mechanics as “empty yapping.” How a browser engine executes extensions is inherently technical. Claiming you want facts while ignoring the architecture just means you’d rather stick with an emotional narrative than understand how the software actually works.
Chrome MV2 never supported some features people claim were lost: Features like in-flight response body rewriting and pre-socket IP filtering were Firefox-exclusive APIs (filterResponseData). Chrome MV2 never had them, so MV3 did not take them away.
webRequestBlocking is not dead in MV3. Google did not delete the synchronous blocking engine from Chromium. It requires installing via policy now. If an extension is provisioned via local policy, full programmatic webRequestBlocking runs in MV3 just as it did in MV2.
Everyday ad blocking works normally. For standard Web Store installs, uBlock Origin Lite compiles the standard filter lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, uBO filters) into native browser rules. Banners, trackers, and video ads are blocked.
The original claim was that “Chrome users don’t know what an ad-free web looks like.” That is provably false. If you want to understand the issue as a “semi-technical” user, you have to separate actual browser engine mechanics from internet hyperbole.
This is extremely funny that you’re trying to insult me, based on your feelings and not facts.
My only participation in this thread was that UBO Lite creator disagrees with you, which he publicly stated, but you felt… Offended? (No idea) - and decided to insult me rather than to deal with facts.
There is a word for people like you.
Troll.
Citing gorhill’s disclaimer that uBOL isn’t a 1:1 clone of uBO doesn’t prove Chrome is “ad-infested”—it conflates advanced power-user filtering with everyday ad blocking. Many limitation were Firefox-exclusive APIs that Chrome MV2 never supported in the first place.
Under the hood, standard filter lists compile directly into native C++ evaluation via
declarativeNetRequest, while cosmetic element hiding and anti-adblock defusers run through thescriptinganduserScriptsAPIs. Furthermore, synchronouswebRequestBlockingis still built into the Chromium engine for policy installs. Pointing out the architectural reality of how these APIs actually execute isn’t trolling; it’s addressing technical mechanics rather than hyperbole.Cool. Except that you didn’t do that before. You’re doing that now, after the fact.
This is absolutely correct.
This is gonna be so bad because now there is only uBlock origin lite and “uBlock”, if you couln’t guess: the 2nd one is a scam that google never tried to remove(it’s been up for some years IIRC) and i am sure that everyone will try to install this scam because they can’t find the original uBlock origin (and everyone just refers to uBlock origin as uBlock which makes it worse)
It’s a little more complicated. uBlock was the original name, gorhil handed it off when he felt the maintenance burden became too high. Then he forked it to make his own uBlock Origin version.
At some point later uBlock was bought up by the AdBlock people, who in turn were later bought by the AdBlock Plus people.
So it’s not a scam exactly, more like an inbred sideline of the royal family.
Holy shit, seems to be watching a soap opera tf
It’s a scam because it specifically goes out of its way to not block an ad, as long as that ad pays a bribe to them. It should be called uAd.
1 million users…
“1 million deceived users”.
There, I fixed it for you. You’re welcome.
Given how long ago this was announced, anybody still using Chrome doesn’t care.
Or doesnt know to care
Yeah, pretty much this. In regards to tech, the fediverse often suffers from the average familiarity problem:
The average user barely even knows how to check their email.
My empathy for this view dies on shit that impacts you every single day of your life. At that point it’s not a bit of information you just haven’t needed yet - it’s willful ignorance that I’m not giving you a pass on.
How long do I need to watch people crap themselves before I’m allowed to demand they learn to use a toilet?
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean that you should have empathy. Of course its their own fault for not figuring this shit out, takes 3 minutes to do. In fact, I actively mock people when ever I see them using the internet without a condom. I find thats the easiest way to get them to be interested, any time I have to use someone else machines, I go “hooooly fuck, what is all this shit? Do you have virus or something?! No? What adblocker do you use? YOU DONT?! What the fuck is the matter with you? Install ublock right away, are you insane?!” etc etc. Its quite fun to do.
Oh wait, that’s actually an approach i never thought of, effectively people will do something more willingly if they feel excluded from the circle
That, and people don’t want to be seen as the weird one, doing the “wrong” thing. So if you act like they have leprosy, they will think “huh, maybe I should take some medicine”
Every community on the internet full of computer nerds suffers this problem. It’s not exclusive to here.
Or they just installed uBlock Origin Lite, which still works for most things.
it works for youtube too?
I don’t use chrome, but this thread is the first I’m hearing of this.
company which makes most of it’s revenue from advertising fucks with their browser’s ability to remove ads. Go figure!
i am surprised it took this long, but i know that getting everybody using chromium, or at least webextensions, was part of the plan that had to exist first. and the path down mv3 started not long after both mozilla and microsoft were both roped-in.
I have to say I’m not surprised. No one wants to pay for a browser.
The irony is that Chrome’s rendering engine was a fork of WebKit, which was a fork of KHTML, a free and open source rendering engine created by KDE for Konqueror. They basically took something free, used Microsoft’s “embrace, extend, extinguish” tactics on it. Now KHTML is vestigial, only found in the UserAgent string.
But we could have had a truly free open source cross platform browser with Konqueror.
Best we have now is Firefox, but the bulk of Mozilla’s development funding comes from setting Google as the default search. So it is also hijackable.
We could maybe have done that. But Konqueror has never been that good every time I tried it.
In circa 2003-2004, it was as close to on par with browsers at the time as it would get. I think the WebKit fork did damage to the momentum. By 2008 with KDE4, the rework that split it and Dolphin into to products was basically the final nail I think, as development work effectively stopped.
I think it’s the shear cost of operating a browser. I would hope Mozilla are looking to diversity there income but without ads or sales to end users I’m not sure where it can go.
If you pay, do you get a say or is it the same play but you paid?
Chrome? What is that?
A thin layer of chromium on the surface of a metal to make it shiny and protect from corrosion.
Delicious when hexavalent
I used to work in manufacturing and we made a sort of tube socket that was cadmium plated on the outside and chrome plated on the inside.
I wonder how many people got cancer plating those things. Ironically, all of the platers were in California because it was banned for new plating centers in most other states.
A browser forked from KHTML by KDE
Isn’t that the shiny stuff you hang from trees in the winter?
No that’s tinsel
Oh yeah, Gretel’s brother
Nah, you’re thinking of Hansel. It’s actually an online community of people who can’t get laid despite really wanting to.
Chromium is the browser that I open a few times a year for websites that don’t support Firefox. A few may be a gross over estimate.
Fair, I just abandon the site. It’s their problem not mine.
It’s really seldom, but a few years back there was a government website that only worked with chrome or edge that I had to use. I had one the other night and found a work around. It’s a rare occurrence, and usually I can avoid it, but sometimes I have to just suck it up, do the deed, and bail.
I don’t design web apps but I’ve heard from some that do that firefox occasionally has problems with them, because it relies a lot on caching (actually they used the term “aggressive caching”, with a few extra choice words).
Anyway, usually not a problem. I use edge only for work since it’s the default browser and I barely do any actual browsing with it, mostly light app clients. On my own devices, it’s been firefox only for years.
Nowadays, just changing the user agent would be enough to make the site work again.
The data pimp with a loading bar
And i removed Chrome from my devices
I think I’ll be switching to librewolf at home. It can install mozilla extensions and comes with ublock origin baked in. Pulling a stunt like this is just going to drive people away from the Chrome environment. Corpos can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot.
Most people I know simply don’t care. They will use it because it’s convenient and they don’t care about the privacy dangers. I can’t comprehend it myself though. Drives me up the wall.
Using web without ublock is amongst the most inconvenient things I’ve experienced
I think most people who don’t know better just think that’s “the internet” and that it’s the same no matter how you access it. The whole concept of browsers and extensions is just not in the realm of concern.
I’ve seen some shift among the tech illiterate in my immediate vicinity, but most are still in the “I got nothing to hide” category of clueless twits.
Funnily enough my two kids have expressed hatred of AI. It’s mainly people around my age or higher that can’t let any sort of convenience go even if shown the dangers.
Otherwise I’m just “scaremongering”.
The problem is that everyone’s internet experience is very different these days. Your friends might be boring and actually have nothing in their lives that need compartmentalized/obfuscated. It’s unlikely but not impossible.
The easiest way to demonstrate the problem would be when they show you something on an unprotected device you note the ads and give them shit for it. Those ads are likely targeted, and so your jabs would be targeted and personal too. Then point out that those ads are tied to THEM. Just ask every time, “have you been looking at X? Gross dude.” It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s the point that they are uncomfortable with your guess and it’s an opening to explain that, yeah it’s not just those ads buddy.
People who share every intimate detail of their life online don’t care about privacy.
Google is all in on evil.
Time to degoogle
Install Firefox with https://adnauseam.io/, it’s basically ublock origin but internally clicks on every add destroying your adds profile and damaging economics of adds and conversion.
Doesn’t this just track the shit out of you? Does it also click malicious ad banners?
Well, it anonymizes you by “faking” the tracking. I would hope it takes steps to sandbox the ads.
What does it fake about the tracking? The tracking is very real and the tool is clicking every tracking link available on the site like its life depends on it
Step 2: install Privacy Badger
And Facebook Container is another useful one.
Don’t, privacy badge and adnauseam will interfere eachothers and as result you will get worst results, you are better off using a DNS level adblocker (eg: Pihole or NextDNS if you don’t/can’t self host) alongside uBlock/adnauseam
Ublock already does the job of privacy badger… Well as far as I know…
They overlap; Ublock does it through lists, and badger does it through heuristics.
Running just badger, it can miss things, if you can use both, you get all the lists and heuristics, but they’re probalby not both necessary
It’s best not to use multiple ad blockers at the same time. They’ll conflict with each other and you’ll be worse off. uBO alone is probably enough.
Conflict with each other how?
I’ve used them both for years and never noticed any sort of conflict, but I’ve heard that potential conflict mentioned several times with no clarification
To be fair, I’ve heard it from somewhere else too. I’ll see if I can find a source.
I’ve heard the same, but have never put too much stock in it. They’ll apply one after the other. Since the only outcome is block, the math on it should be fine.
The serious downsides I’ve even seen are that you have to disable both when you do have a problem.
In theory it could make your browser run a bit slower. In practice, with modern computer/phone hardware, I doubt anyone would notice the fraction of a second “delay.”
Firefox users right now:
Damn it.
Gotta use chrome at work.
Firefox “isn’t secure and isn’t supported” - my it director
isnt secure… tell you dont understand security without telling me you don’t understand security.
They’re probably using google workspace and accounts, you can do a lot of monitoring with that
Work at a larger organization and the only browser we’re allowed is fucking Edge. All other browsers are blocked as malicious processes.
LOL. from one data mining company to another data mining company.
This guy?
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/…/uaswitcher/
Company hardware isn’t checked by user agents but actual running processes
You’re saying they have some sort of app that actively blocks firefox from running on their laptop? I fortunately never worked in a company that did something like this. I would say it’s more likely that the web application simply checks user agent and blocks unsupported browsers.
Yes, companies have software running on company property usually that checks what you’re running and installing. I can’t even get admin perms on my work machine without asking IT with a good reason. They can also see your browser history and what websites you go to, as an fyi to not browse anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to your boss and HR about on a work machine.
I know of people that also had a no activity log, just in case you didint input something on your PC for 2 min
Yeah that is also done in some places but afaik it’s not legal to do so in most places without letting you know what is being monitored. It’s a pain in the ass
I once saw a company block Firefox through its corporately mandated antivirus software.
It’s called Microsoft Company Portal and it’s the worst
Not using firefox should automatically brand you as not knowing what you are talking about in IT. wtf
Then just use vanadium at work
EDIT I no Loguer recommend brave
Fuck Brave. Their CEO is a homophobic transphobe asshole who actively donates money to help take away peoples rights, they are shills for a bunch of AI and crypto BS that is inbuilt in the browser, and they at least used to steal affiliate links.
Prove it
Covid comments get a tech C.E.O. in hot water, again — The New York Times
Stop using Brave Browser — Spacebar News
Brave Browser Caught Redirecting Users Through Affiliate Links — PCMag
Thanks I’m now going to uninstall brave fuck they ceo
Brave has been severely disappointing not because of Brave company or the browser itself, but because it marked a point of tech illiteracy. The affiliate link insertion should have and would have in the past been enough to end them all together.
Pretty sure Vanadium is mobile only, so unfortunately not really an option.
Vanadium is not just mobile only. I am pretty sure it’s GrapheneOS-only, because it relies on some of the security features that Graphene implements.
My bet is that a company, that doesn’t trust Firefox, probably doesn’t trust Graphene either. So, Vanadium is not an option either.
[deleted]
Don’t blame Firefox, some sites don’t comply with industry standards.
Sing it with me:
ublock origin lite, the natural replacement but not automatically enabled by google or microsoft. you have to go get it. github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
an alternative is adguard’s browser extension. it is free to use and open source (gpl). github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension#in…
No you get Firefox
Ah, thank god I am using Zen (Firefox fork) now for 2 years already. I totally forgot about this manifest bs. Now that Chrome introduced vertical tabs I was thinking to myself “ah, I could give it a try, having less breaking things and so on”. But thanks for this reminder I will gladly stay with Zen.
Switched to Zen as soon as I switched to Linux about a year and a half ago. Love it.
Another Zen user chiming in to say, all the other ones seem confusing and cluttered now.
FWIW I do think you should give it a go.
Firefox is main browser, on desktop and mobile, and I’m not changing that.
Still, I do have Chromium installed for very specific usages, e.g. WebXR tests, WebBT and WebUSB devices, e.g. flashing keyboard firmware, controlling Lego bricks, etc. I’d rather only have Firefox to be clear but some things are not supported, marked as not planned, and I believe using Chromium on specific Websites, not for browsing, is perfectly fine when no alternative is available.
Giving Chrome a go? Why would I? Zen has everything I need, plus Chrome does not have an ad-blocker. I also sometimes need WebUSB and such things, but well, then I’ll use chrome once for that and be done with it.
I strongly suggest you nuke Chrome every time you are done using it.
Well then you are already doing what I suggested.
I’m not saying adopt Chrome as your main browser, I’m saying if Chrome alone has unique feature you think you might need, try it there. For example that allowed me to discover github.com/ArcaneNibble/awawausb
Consequently if you are curious about vertical tabs, do try it, even in a container, e.g. Webtop, if you want to be extra safe. I’m not suggesting to switch.
I switched to Zen a week ago and I haven’t ran into any issues with it, what do you find is broken with it?
I had some websites which didn’t work in some way. Can’t remember, which websites it were, just some big company websites where random buttons would just do nothing or similar. But I think it were only 2 or 3.
Other than that it’s fine. Sometimes it seems like tab management is a bit weird, I once had the browser open with about 100 new tabs besides the other ones I had saved. Just had to close them and done. On my Work-Laptop I have a folder pinned in one space and the popup for it’s contents is shifted down ~200px permanently for some reason. It’s all manageable.
That’s a web site design and architecture issue, not a browser issue. Most web sites are made for Chrome (Chromium-based) browsers, and anything based in Gecko is an afterthought, if anything.
I’d rather just not access a site if Chrome use is mandatory. LibreWolf has been fantastic for me the last 3 years or so. If I really need to access a “Chrome-exclusive” site, I use Brave, and then clear and reset everything in it in case I need it again.
I’d say it’s 50/50… actually 33/33/33.
First, in 2026 I think you need to fuck up pretty bad or use very special stuff in order for your website to only work on Chrome.
But of course Mozilla should behave just like every other browser (well there is basically only chromium right now) and all browsers in general should display websites in the same way. Back in the day you did choose which browser to support when you developed your website, but today you are basically just using browser standards.
Then… there is Google. They are blowing up and poisoning the web standards so much, for their own good and just to bring technology forward. They surely could be more careful and considerate while doing this, so that Mozilla would have a chance to participate.
so it begins continues…
Edge will soon follow. They announced it. Polly will switch to helium or brave
People need to stop using brave
www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
People are not looking this deep into switching browsers lol.
They should tho
Brave is kinda shady with their whole cryptocurrency thing, Helium seems fine but it’s still based on Chromium. I’ve been recommending people check out Librewolf
Simple Firefox is perfectly fine.
Ungoogled Chromium is my standby for the instances when a Blink browser is needed, though it’s not entirely simple to set up.
Librewolf doesn’t do anything that Firefox can’t do with extensions + tweaking settings, but it’s nice to not have to install all the extensions
Yeah that’s why I’m debating brave. Firefox is good to especially after the huge engine overhaul a few years ago.
Yeah, I’ve been on brave for a few years but switched to Firefox because it’s a different base. I don’t think it’s necessary better, but if that’s the way the wind is blowing on chromium browsers the it’s the best option.
Or better yet LibreWolf
I cannot count how many things I had to change in settings to get the browser to just work right, I mean I appreciate them locking everything down to the nth degree but… damn. Finally switched to waterfox, the out of the box experience is a lot friendlier.
I get the frustration. It could have a tutorial / wizard to make it easier to set and understand.
If some parts are not loading, check the top left of the address bar for some icons, by default LibreWolf blocks canvas and anything that can identify you, and you have to press on them to allow them to render the elements.
Security unfortunately implies more inconvenience, which is what companies like Google love, but if it was a lot friendlier it would probably be less safe.
Zen-Browser
I’m using Zen now. it took me a while while to get the hang of the UI. But once I did I found it to be very nice to have those spaces that I can organize for different tasks.
I’ve used Zen for about 9 months, possibly more, and have had a largely positive experience.
It has crashed a few times recently for no obvious reason but not enough to bother me. There’s probably new release version again even though I updated my Linux instance a couple of weeks ago.
First time hearing of Helium, thanks for mentioning. Sounds interesting, will be keeping an eye on it.
When will people switch away from Chrome to other browsers? I get it, Chrome sets the standards and it’s hard to switch away from them, but it’s necessary to ensure the survival of the Internet.
They wouldn’t set the standard anymore if nobody used them.
The W3 spec is dominated by Google’s submissions afaik.
Because everyone uses them.
I doubt most people even know you can change it. Edge is the default browser on windows. Chromium. Chrome is the default browser on android (though I suppose Samsung has a custom browser and they’re the main android device people are buying)
Ugh, any Samsung app is equivalent to internet explorer. Gross
Idk, I think I’d rather use IE than any Samsung app. At least IE tried to do some interesting things and tried to be customer focused…
A lot sooner than you think
Pichai you fucking banchode.
Bloody fuck you bloody!
Google’s going to lengths and bounds to make people leave it.
firefox became bloated so switched to chrome because faster/better. back to firefox last year. too old to keep fighting ads. thinking off button will be next. yeah addons mostly work
Bye Chrome, I hardly knew ya.
I still rock NoScript. It helps avoid drive-bys and other silliness. It does take patience though so I get why not many like it.
The transition away from Manifest V2 is a good example of how changes made by major platforms can have a huge impact on developers and users. I’m curious to see how this affects privacy-focused and specialized browser extensions over the long term.
the real problem isn’t Chrome, it’s Chromium
I disagree. There are decent browsers built on chromium. Chrome insists on being awful
what I meant was, Chromium’s influence and control on the whole web
and deployed manifestEVIL V2 Instead.
Is there a Firefox fork already with mouse gestures built in (working globally)?
Ublock Origin Lite still works on Ungoogled Chromium for me, at least.
Yep, the lite version
The “Lite” version is what gorhill made to at least work with Manifest v3 as well as possible, though he does not like that he is limited to Googles filtering framework with it.
github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/…/en.md
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648131
it seems to function ok. there are some additional filters that can be enabled in its settings, not much control though–just a setting for how ‘aggressive’ you want it to be. you cannot add your own, either.
because filters are now bundled with the extension itself, updates to them are slower as they must be blessed by the addon store (chrome’s, edge’s) as part of an extension update, before being made available. and this does give google and microsoft absolute ‘veto power’ over a filter update.
Lite was made for Manifest V3. They had to drop a bunch of features to get it functioning which is why it’s called “Lite”.
Ublock origin works on ugoogled chromium without any problem actually
It won’t for long. Its only because Ungoogled Chromium is on a stable channel, but this removal will catch up to them soon.
This goes for all Chromium browsers, except those that hack in their own adblock engine like Cromite or Brave.
Wait, type shit? I legit didn’t know.