9 ms·

I hope this isn't a precursor to removing support for other AdBlock addons(MV2) citing native availability of an AdBlock engine and then gradually shift to acce

by devsda 5mo ago

I hope this isn't a precursor to removing support for other AdBlock addons(MV2) citing native availability of an AdBlock engine and then gradually shift to acceptable ads etc.

zephyreon 5mo ago
Could definitely be writing on the wall that MV2 support will be deprecated in the future but imo not necessarily a bad thing if it’s not actively developed anyways. Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers. I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
- charleslmunger 5mo ago
  >Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
  - zephyreon 5mo ago
    I’d like to see more investment in their new profile manager. It feels pretty barebones at the moment. Arc had the ability to link profiles to “spaces” and you could easily switch between them without opening a new window. It was very nice to so easily swap between personal, work, & side business.
    - collabs 5mo ago
      The multi user containers are also very nice.
      - gawa 5mo ago
        And to go one step further, for achieving a profile-per-firefox-window workflow, I suggest to have a look at the underrated extension Sticky Window Containers [0] While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...) Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1] It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai https://claude.ai'` It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams). [O] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window... [1] https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks
  - lxgr 5mo ago
    And there's nothing in MV2 that uBlock Origin needs that doesn't exist in MV3 on Firefox, unlike Chrome. This issue is completely overblown.
    - curt15 5mo ago
      Are you disputing uBlock Origin's list of MV3-incompatible capabilities [1]? [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#filtering-capabilities-which-cant-be-ported-to-mv3 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
      - andrewaylett 5mo ago
        That list contains issues with the APIs that Chrome exposes via MV3. Firefox still supports APIs that Chrome removed.
      - lxgr 5mo ago
        Not really, but this FAQ, like almost all articles published on MV3, conflates MV3 the specification with Chrome's MV3 implementation. (FWIW, I'm almost certain that this is either due to sloppy/imprecise writing or intentional, with the authors not wanting to confuse users already appropriately riled up by equally imprecise reporting on MV3. They definitely know the difference.) In any case, for better or worse, when people say MV3, they now usually mean "Chrome's MV3 implementation", which obviously never applies to Firefox.
    - ragall 5mo ago
      That's utter bullshit. The author of uBlock Origin has posted a long list of capabilities that declarativeNetRequest does not support.
      - tyushk 5mo ago
        Unlike Chrome, Firefox did not remove the older API.
        5mo ago
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  > Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
- striking 5mo ago
  Try Zen! Firefox fork with Arc-like UX.
  - pjjpo 5mo ago
    Zen is great and still mostly Firefox. I use standard Firefox on Android and everything syncs without hassle. The experience is so much better that personally cannot imagine using Chromium anymore. Of course I do wonder if the entire Firefox ecosystem is sustainable long-term funding wise.
- tosti 5mo ago
  Why does everything have to be "actively developed"? Sometimes a program is just done. Better not touch it. I actually do downgrade packages when "actively developing" causes regressions. Not curl or anything sensitive like that, but local programs definately yes. In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
OsrsNeedsf2P 5mo ago
The day Firefox drops MV2 is the day I find a new browser. We're already at <1% usershare, it's not like there's safety in numbers here
- pogue 5mo ago
  I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout. Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those. Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
  - cookiengineer 5mo ago
    > I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout. My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
    - pogue 5mo ago
      You use ladybird as your primary web browser? And it works?
      - cookiengineer 5mo ago
        For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase. I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env. I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it. Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June). [1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp [2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex
userbinator 5mo ago
As long as MITM proxies still work (which is something that Enterprise customers demand --- even the notoriously-closed Chrome needs to), it will always be possible to filter pages outside of any browser. I've been using one for over 2 decades and it works in any browser. However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
- 6ak74rfy 5mo ago
  Tell me more, what's your setup. I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
  - spockz 5mo ago
    In general, install a proxy which has its own certificate, resign every tls session with those keys, add the certificate of the proxy as a trusted certificate on your device. I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that. More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
    - kotaKat 5mo ago
      ZScaler Internet Access will do it with the right blocking configurations (eg, blocking "Advertising" groups). But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
    - Bender 5mo ago
      The open source solution is to configure the latest Squid proxy as a Squid SSL Bump proxy. There are a handful of sites it will not work with due to them still using public key pinning but its a tiny list. I do not have it handy at the moment. Squid supports ACL's that can block URL patterns, domains, IP addresses, file extensions, mime types and much more. Here [1] is an out of date example. There are probably better and more up to date examples. Some examples are based off Squid V3 as some distros still ship with that but Squid 6 added more flexibility around chaining options SOCKS options and such. [1] - https://github.com/alatas/squid-alpine-ssl https://github.com/alatas/squid-alpine-ssl

by devsda 5mo ago

I hope this isn't a precursor to removing support for other AdBlock addons(MV2) citing native availability of an AdBlock engine and then gradually shift to acceptable ads etc.

zephyreon 5mo ago

Could definitely be writing on the wall that MV2 support will be deprecated in the future but imo not necessarily a bad thing if it’s not actively developed anyways. Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers. I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).

charleslmunger 5mo ago
>Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
- zephyreon 5mo ago
  I’d like to see more investment in their new profile manager. It feels pretty barebones at the moment. Arc had the ability to link profiles to “spaces” and you could easily switch between them without opening a new window. It was very nice to so easily swap between personal, work, & side business.
  - collabs 5mo ago
    The multi user containers are also very nice.
    - gawa 5mo ago
      And to go one step further, for achieving a profile-per-firefox-window workflow, I suggest to have a look at the underrated extension Sticky Window Containers [0] While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...) Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1] It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai https://claude.ai'` It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams). [O] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window... [1] https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks
- lxgr 5mo ago
  And there's nothing in MV2 that uBlock Origin needs that doesn't exist in MV3 on Firefox, unlike Chrome. This issue is completely overblown.
  - curt15 5mo ago
    Are you disputing uBlock Origin's list of MV3-incompatible capabilities [1]? [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#filtering-capabilities-which-cant-be-ported-to-mv3 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
    - andrewaylett 5mo ago
      That list contains issues with the APIs that Chrome exposes via MV3. Firefox still supports APIs that Chrome removed.
    - lxgr 5mo ago
      Not really, but this FAQ, like almost all articles published on MV3, conflates MV3 the specification with Chrome's MV3 implementation. (FWIW, I'm almost certain that this is either due to sloppy/imprecise writing or intentional, with the authors not wanting to confuse users already appropriately riled up by equally imprecise reporting on MV3. They definitely know the difference.) In any case, for better or worse, when people say MV3, they now usually mean "Chrome's MV3 implementation", which obviously never applies to Firefox.
  - ragall 5mo ago
    That's utter bullshit. The author of uBlock Origin has posted a long list of capabilities that declarativeNetRequest does not support.
    - tyushk 5mo ago
      Unlike Chrome, Firefox did not remove the older API.
      - 5mo ago
Dylan16807 5mo ago
> Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features. The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
striking 5mo ago
Try Zen! Firefox fork with Arc-like UX.
- pjjpo 5mo ago
  Zen is great and still mostly Firefox. I use standard Firefox on Android and everything syncs without hassle. The experience is so much better that personally cannot imagine using Chromium anymore. Of course I do wonder if the entire Firefox ecosystem is sustainable long-term funding wise.
tosti 5mo ago
Why does everything have to be "actively developed"? Sometimes a program is just done. Better not touch it. I actually do downgrade packages when "actively developing" causes regressions. Not curl or anything sensitive like that, but local programs definately yes. In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.

OsrsNeedsf2P 5mo ago

The day Firefox drops MV2 is the day I find a new browser. We're already at <1% usershare, it's not like there's safety in numbers here

pogue 5mo ago
I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout. Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those. Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
- cookiengineer 5mo ago
  > I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout. My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
  - pogue 5mo ago
    You use ladybird as your primary web browser? And it works?
    - cookiengineer 5mo ago
      For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase. I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env. I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it. Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June). [1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp [2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex

userbinator 5mo ago

As long as MITM proxies still work (which is something that Enterprise customers demand --- even the notoriously-closed Chrome needs to), it will always be possible to filter pages outside of any browser. I've been using one for over 2 decades and it works in any browser. However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.

6ak74rfy 5mo ago
Tell me more, what's your setup. I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
- spockz 5mo ago
  In general, install a proxy which has its own certificate, resign every tls session with those keys, add the certificate of the proxy as a trusted certificate on your device. I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that. More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
  - kotaKat 5mo ago
    ZScaler Internet Access will do it with the right blocking configurations (eg, blocking "Advertising" groups). But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
  - Bender 5mo ago
    The open source solution is to configure the latest Squid proxy as a Squid SSL Bump proxy. There are a handful of sites it will not work with due to them still using public key pinning but its a tiny list. I do not have it handy at the moment. Squid supports ACL's that can block URL patterns, domains, IP addresses, file extensions, mime types and much more. Here [1] is an out of date example. There are probably better and more up to date examples. Some examples are based off Squid V3 as some distros still ship with that but Squid 6 added more flexibility around chaining options SOCKS options and such. [1] - https://github.com/alatas/squid-alpine-ssl https://github.com/alatas/squid-alpine-ssl