Firefox looking better all the time…
I’ve been using Safari exclusively since 2013, completely sidestepping all of this drama. I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube in several years. I also haven’t seen any hint of YouTube blocking my access to videos.
But for everyone who needs Windows, and the growing number of Linux users, FireFox seems like the only democratic option left.
That’s great, but on the downside you’ve been using the new Internet Explorer.
…howso?
Safari is holding back the web with their old, quirky, outdated engine. However, as Safari’s engine is the only option for iOS, most web developers can’t afford to ignore Safari because they can’t ignore the iPhone. So it’s IE all over again - an old, outdated browser that everyone nevertheless has to support as a significant portion of the users are using it. In some ways it’s even worse, as iPhone users don’t have any choice due to Apple’s restrictions, but even in the darkest days of IE’s stranglehold on the web Microsoft never restricted what browsers you could install on Windows.
Apple is pretty notorious for holding the web back post Steve Jobs. As an example, it took them forever for push notifications for web apps on mobile (like literally years behind their competition)
I’m not disagreeing in general but I’ve literally never wanted to use push notifications from a Web app. All it does is create another thing to decline on shirty websites.
Safari only introduced a date input field like 2 years ago
There are webkit based browsers on Linux as well, GNOME Web being one; but yeah, I prefer Firefox.
always has been
this is when a company needs to be broken into pieces… when instead of providing new benefits, the company seeks to control access to its product, and control the market… i want my government to break Google into bits…
Google already did the hard work, too. Just make each letter within Alphabet its own company.
Do not feed the Chrome.
This tactic seems short-sighted to me. It will force migrate people to firefox.
No one is moving to Firefox, because most people don’t care. Just like people stay on Reddit or X, they are going to stay on chrome. Google will feed them shit and they’ll ask for more.
All we can do is worry about ourselves and keep trying to make alternatives viable.
If people care about using adblock, they will.
Most people don’t. How do you think in 2023 Google is still raking in millions of dollars nonstop?
By cheating, being anticompetitive, and strong arming with legal action.
…And by having millions of people view ads.
The moment adblock stops working I’m out. Haven’t made the move yet because I’m lazy and because none of the stuff people tak about has affected me yet. Even youtube works without having to do anything.
Moving to Firefox is long overdue, though. Kinda waiting for that push now.
Well i’m in the same boat a few weeks ago but my pc can’t start for some reason and have to reinstall windows, and since every app is wiped i just switched to firefox from then on.
Choice of browser is nothing like the choice of social media, the fuck are you talking about??
One of THE biggest reasons Redditors didn’t leave was because there was more content and already established communities niche as well as large.
With a browser change, you still get the exact same content. Worthless comparison
This will make many of them care.
It’s not “no one”, Because I left reddit and I left chrome. Lemmy and Firefox!
But yeah not many people will actually do it.
deleted by creator
I mean, I did. I never thought I would, because I use dev tools all the time and I was worried it would be a problem, but it wasn’t. I don’t miss it. Firefox is fine!
People: If you’re trying to decide whether to switch, just do it! It’s good for the internet and it didn’t even take that long to import my bookmarks, install all the same extensions, and increase the tiny tiny font size of tab names. Like, maybe twenty minutes all tallied up. Worth it!
Bad for Google, good for the world
Nah, it’ll just force an evolution of adblocking methods and tech.
Stop using chrome, let the market share dry up. The only reason they can get away with this is because they have a monopoly and surely its against anti-competition laws. But who is gonna try and take on google in court?
Break up tech giants.
Welcome to our hellish future.
“Manifest V3 will also put roadblocks up before extension updates, which will delay an extension developer’s ability to quickly respond to changes.”
Can’t wait for a day zero exploit to let rip and its impact and exposure increased because of an extension’s developer inability to promptly patch their software. I hope they are considering more than just ad revenue but somehow I doubt it.
They allow extensions to be sold and completely reworked without telling the user jack shit. So I doubt they care about that either.
Can someone clarify why browsers other than the ones that are Chrome based are forced to adopt Manifest v3? What happens if the don’t, are they blocked from the web or something?
They aren’t forced to do anything. Manifest v3 is just a part of the WebExtensions API (which is not a standard and is really just “whatever Chrome does except we find/replace’d the word chrome to browser”) which both Safari and Firefox chose to implement in order to make porting of Chrome extensions easier.
Before that, Firefox had a much more powerful extension system that allowed extensions quite a lot of access to browser internals, but that turned out to be a maintenance nightmare so they walled those APIs off (not a coincidence that Firefox started getting massive performance improvements after that, and extensions stopped breaking every other release) and decided to go the WebExtensions route. I have no clue what Safari was up to but I think they implemented it after.
If they don’t implement Manifest v3, extensions that want to work across multiple browsers need to support both the older Manifest v2 and the later Manifest v3, which would be a burden not many extension authors would want to bother with, which would make them just say “yeah we’re not supporting anything outside Chrome”. Firefox avoids this problem by extending the v3 API to allow for the functionality necessary for powerful ad blocking Google removed in v3 (webRequestBlocking) while also implementing the new thing (declarativeNetRequest) side by side, so extensions that want to take advantage of the powerful features on Firefox can do so, while Chrome extensions that are fine with the less powerful alternative can still be ported over relatively easily.
Firefox does have it’s fair share of extensions on top of the WebExtension API already (sidebar support for one), so adding one more isn’t too big of a deal.
Very, very good summary. Thank you.
Can someone clarify why browsers other than the ones that are Chrome based are forced to adopt Manifest v3?
See, that’s the thing: pretty much every browser except Firefox is Chrome-based. When people talk about browsers being forced to accept manifest v3, they’re talking about all the Chrome-based browsers other than Chrome.
Google is the biggest of browser and http/s internet based protocol, so much bigger that everyone plays by googles rules. if they set out manifestv3 the other browsers that are not compatible will not work, and as a result people will abandon them.
Use Firefox or LibreWolf
And Iceraven for Android.
Iceraven is not nearly as good as Mull. Mull is probably the closest thing to LibreWolf on mobile.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
YouTube can instantly switch up its ad delivery system, but once Manifest V3 becomes mandatory, that won’t be true for extension developers.
If ad blocking is a cat-and-mouse game of updates and counter-updates, then Google will force the mouse to slow down.
The current platform, Manifest V2, has been around for over ten years and works just fine, but it’s also quite powerful and allows extensions to have full filtering control over the traffic your web browser sees.
Engadget’s Anthony Ha interviewed some developers in the filtering extension community, and they described a constant cat-and-mouse game with YouTube.
Firefox’s Manifest V3 implementation doesn’t come with the filtering limitations, and parent company Mozilla promises that users can “rest assured that in spite of these changes to Chrome’s new extensions architecture, Firefox’s implementation of Manifest V3 ensures users can access the most effective privacy tools available like uBlock Origin and other content-blocking and privacy-preserving extensions.”
Google claims that Manifest V3 will improve browser “privacy, security, and performance,” but every comment we can find from groups that aren’t giant ad companies disputes this description.
The original article contains 915 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I know this will irk some people but… Do you know why using Gmail or YouTube on Firefox feels slower on an Apple computer?
I use Firefox on Android exclusively, but on Apple computers I still use Chrome more since Firefox seems to either be slow on certain websites or use too much memory (I’m sure it’s not Mozilla’s fault here)
BTW I actually donate to Mozilla because I think it needs to survive (though it must be a drop compared to what Google pays Mozilla and I hope they keep doing it), but I’m not using Firefox all the time as I’d like, since the experience looks a tad worse on Desktop
Doesn’t for me
Firefox on osx and Google meet sucks. But I use it anyways because everything else is better.
BTW I actually donate to Mozilla because I think it needs to survive
Donations to Mozilla go to the Foundation, not to Mozilla Corp., which is the one developing FF. So you aren’t fueling FF development.
Anyway, I’ve read elsewhere that they’re doing fine also without donations: they get 7M$/year in donations and their CEO gets 5M$/year. It doesn’t look like they’re actually starving…
You may want to think twice before wasting your money:
https://old.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/yy986k/can_someone_explain_why_mozillas_ceo_salary/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy
https://techrights.org/o/2022/02/17/mozilla-salaries/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28116853
https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
But it’s your money, in the end. Do whatever makes you feel better.
LOL, here come the downvotes, as usual.
Can anyone point me towards something I wrote which is factually false?
I didn’t touch the comment above (and is at +2 right now but I am downvoting this whining about downvotes. It’s just fake internet points. Crying about being downvotes is bad form, nobody cares.
I’m not crying, I couldn’t care less. It’s actually the opposite, in this case. I find it funny, as it’s just a symptom of how people become defensive about Mozilla.
Boy! Glad i dont use chrome!
I don’t use chrome, so I don’t care until it starts effecting the Fox.
I’m confident that Mozilla will follow suite sooner or later to make it easier for extension developers to make extensions for both browsers. Mozilla did that when manifest v1 came along, removed a bunch of functionality from Jetpack, and aligned with Google.
Edge & Firefox exist.
Edge is the worst recommendation I’ve ever seen in my life
Why?
Are you serious?
Yes it does still exist. It came preinstalled with the ThinkPad I set up for my daughter yesterday. That’s why I immediately installed Firefox and made it the default browser instead.
deleted by creator
I wish I could run Linux on it, but it’s for her online school next semester and they specified either Mac or Windows. I’m guessing there’s a proprietary software situation. Honestly though, she’s so inexperienced with Windows (her previous school notebook was a Chromebook issued by the school) that I don’t think she’s ready for Linux. She screwed things up just playing with system sounds and I had to rescue her.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
