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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!

  • Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
  • The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
  • Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
enbyecho , (edited )

This post reminded me to try out Brave. It’s based on Chromium but purports to block ads and trackers…

Anybody else use it?

Edit: Interesting. Anyone care to explain the downvotes? I know nothing about this browser other than it purportedly blocks Youtube ads, which are driving me nuts.

Edit2: Well shit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

I had no idea about this guy. Ok, so completely not an option.

cyberic ,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

My brother uses it, just remember to look through the ad settings. There was a toggle at one point to allow their approved ads or something like that.

kusivittula ,

i tried brave recently after finding out it’s open source, and that setting is off by default. ended up keeping firefox, because on android somehow the new tab page in brave is even worse than in ff. too tricky to access bookmarks.

ruse8145 ,

I still to this day don’t know how to get back to the tab I was on in firefox-android if I get to the new tab screen. It’s been 2 or 3 years since the redesign.

kusivittula ,

you need to close keyboard, hit the tab icon on the address bar and select the tab. easier way is to open some recent website and either close the current one or swipe from the address bar. it’s stupid.

ruse8145 ,

Sigh, thank you

ruse8145 ,

Iirc there was also some drama about the money they collect not going to the promised destination. Anywhere other than silicon valley this might be called fraud.

astropenguin5 ,

They still might be forced to follow chromium’s manifest v3 ant ad locking stuff though, we’ll just have to see.

ruse8145 ,

No I’m pro lgbtq folks having rights

enbyecho , (edited )

How does this relate to Brave browser?

Edit: I had no idea about the CEO. So yeah, not gonna ever use that.

ruse8145 ,

yep :(

very disappointing all round. on a sliding scale thats not the worst thing brave has done, but given that the entire browser was literally birthed from “we don’t want your hate here” its hard to avoid.

RokAlamSeth ,

Too bad for your little black and white worldview those are the same people against adblockers. The good thing is this world has sensible people like me who could give less of a fuck who’s feeling is getting hurt and only care about our browsing experience. The rest can go die for all I care.

ruse8145 ,

What the actual duck are you talking about? I genuinely can’t figure it out.

RokAlamSeth ,

filtered

majestictechie ,

The silver lining here is that you’d hope that more people will simply adopt Firefox. It’s user share has been too low for too long given how great it is

llama ,
@llama@midwest.social avatar

They messed up 10 years ago when for some reason it took ages for Firefox to load compared to Chrome, and sadly it never really recovered the user base even though the performance is vastly improved.

ruse8145 ,

To be fair, even in 2006 the Mozilla corporation was never going to outspend Firefox

Especially not given how much Mozilla wastes on executive compensation ;)

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Their user share was pretty okay for a while, but bombed when Chrome first released because it was much more performant. Unfortunately, that stigma never quite fell off and they lost a huge opportunity to overtake the market.

InternetPerson ,

How was it more performant? As I remember it, Chrome was loading websites not noticeably faster than Firefox, as website loading speed depended and still depends mainly on your internet connection and hardware anyway.

As I remember it, Chrome exploded because it was pushed onto users at every possible opportunity while Firefox depended (and still depends) on users actively looking for it.

Used Google or Google products? Get ads for Chrome. Wanted to download Google Earth? You had to activly uncheck a box such that Chrome wasn’t going to be installed as well. Meanwhile no ads and not the same amount of exposure for Firefox.

That way they achieved a critical mass and snowballing did the rest. There were so many users using it that it was considered a good choice just because it was used by many people.

Regarding the performance aspect, if there even was a noticeable difference, it was worse than Firefox. Where else did the “Chrome eating RAM” memes come from?

Kiosade ,

I just remember Firefox around that time and for like over a decade just felt bloated and super slow in comparison. No idea if it’s better these days or what.

ruse8145 ,

Its much better, and indistinguishable from a usage standpoint against chrome (I use Google garbage at work and they deliberately hamstring it in Firefox, so I use both browsers side by side)

Biggest Firefox win is containers and privacy. Chrome probably has better absolute security (based purely on the concept that non-private security is Google’s whole schtick, not based on data) and in the last year it’s gotten better memory management (via sleeping tabs) that Firefox just hasn’t caught up with…but there’s an addon for that ;)

InternetPerson ,

I’d say give it a try and see for yourself.

I can just recommend using Firefox for a multitude of reasons. However, I am biased as I have been using firefox for almost two decades and did not have many reasons to complain.

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I was a Firefox user at the time, using adblockers, and the swap was a huge improvement to my browsing experience. I can’t even remember all the ways, since this was a decade ago. But at the time, Firefox was in a lul.

Things likely swapped pretty fast, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time because I was already using Chrome.

No ads swayed me, no Google specific sites, it wasn’t side loaded with anything.

The Chrome eating ram memes came much later, after the enshitification process reached the third step. You seem to be compressing the entirety of both browsers into a single moment, and that’s not really how time works.

InternetPerson ,

I understand that you made such an experience, but I can’t share it though. I’ve been a Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox exists, which is almost two decades. (I think I joined somewhere between 2005-2007). I’ve tried other browsers, sometimes I had to. However, I didn’t notice any benefits compared to Firefox. Especially not in performance. Even though benchmarks have always shown clear differences, they weren’t significant enough for me to consider switching, as the difference really didn’t impact my browsing experience.

Regarding the memes: That was just a random annectode which I found suitable here. I don’t claim it has been that way since the beginning. (Can’t relate to that anyway.) But given that it has been around for a while, I don’t see how performance can be an argument in favour of Chrome in this.

ruse8145 ,

I think you are misremembering. Chrome won at the start because it was fast as fuck and Firefox was not. Firefox caught back up in the 2016 time frame iirc and they’ve been back and forth ever since.

Ironically chrome was named so as a goal was to reduce the chrome of the UI and focus on the web content, something recent versions of chrome and Firefox have abandoned in favor of massive swaths of whitespace and giant chrome buttons (on Firefox you can enable “unsupported” compact mode to reclaim some of the space if you’re on a laptop)

thermal_shock ,

agreed. chrome was bare ones and super fast when it was released. over the last two years it’s a fucking monster memory hog

InternetPerson ,

I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox has existed. So I’m probably a bit biased. However, when I used other browsers, and if it wes just to try them out, I didn’t notice any benefits in terms of loading websites and executing their scripts. This includes Chrome. In benchmarks there are obviously differences visible, but to me as a user they didn’t matter. I wasn’t so short on time that I needed those microseconds. So I really don’t get how performance could be an argument in this.

bc93 ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    planish ,

    I remember it as, Firefox was fast enough, but Chrome was shipping a weirdly quick JS engine and trying to convince people to put more stuff into JS because on Chrome that would be feasible. Nowdays if you go out without your turbo-JIT hand-optimized JS engine everyone laughs at you and it’s Chrome’s fault.

    buddascrayon ,

    I think you’re ignoring the functional aspect of the integration of Chrome into the Android platform. A lot of people’s entire online life is stored within the walls of the Chrome ecosystem. And moving all of that to a completely different browser that is not fully integrated with Android is daunting to say the least.

    djsaskdja ,

    The situation is even more dire on iPhone.

    Moorshou ,

    What’s the new chrome integration?

    ruse8145 ,

    Didn’t say new, I’m assuming they refer to the WebView that many apps use which is chromium based. However if you have a calyx- or graphene- compatible phone the WebView will be non-g chromium.

    hogmomma ,

    For work, I use Chrome, but only because Firefox’s profile management is (more or less) nonexistent. Once they have that, which I understand isn’t too far out, I’m ditching Chrome entirely.

    majestictechie ,

    Have you thought about installing a Firefox fork? On my Work PC I use Firefox for work and Floorp for personal browsing.

    hogmomma ,

    What’s this, you say? Floorp? Sounds like you’re setting me up for a Futurama joke, or something.

    hogmomma ,

    I’ll see what’s up, as long as it doesn’t require admin rights.

    VerPoilu ,

    Unfortunately, I think that while ad blockers won’t work as well, they will still work good enough that most won’t bother making the switch.

    blog.getadblock.com/how-adblock-is-getting-ready-…

    github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/

    adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-mv3.html

    www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/…/j3h00xj/

    The main issue I see is the slow update of filters (which require an extension update). This might make YouTube win the cat and mouse game. Where YouTube updates(ed?) their blocking detection multiple time a day.

    tvbusy ,

    I use Firefox everywhere which means I have ads blocking everywhere, including and especially on Android. All my tabs are synced and are easily transferred between devices.

    Scrollone ,

    If we want to be honest, Firefox on Android has way worse performance than Chrome.

    (But I still use it instead of Chrome)

    Appoxo ,
    @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    I use both on a Pixel 7 Pro.
    Can’t confirm that.

    Macros ,

    I use it on a Pixel 5 and even there it is fluid while browsing. Only on Youtube there is the slightest stutter for HD Videos. Heavy sites like Discourse fora or Cryptpad or such work flawlessly.

    brbposting ,

    TIL Cryptpad.fr is just one instance apparently

    Yeah wow nice that’s fantastic

    sheogorath ,

    I use both on a Galaxy Fold 5 and can confirm Chromium based browsers are smoother. Although I still use Waterfox on my phone. I just keep a Chromium based browsers in case a website doesn’t work when I visited it using Waterfox.

    tvbusy ,

    It depends I think. I found Chrome to be a tiny bit faster but then ads bogged the page down so most of the time, Firefox is faster for me.

    In some very rare cases when I need to disable ads blocking, Chrome is indeed faster but I’d rather abandon websites rather than disable ads blocking.

    So if you love ads, Chrome is better. If you hate ads like I do, Firefox is miles ahead.

    JWBananas ,
    @JWBananas@lemmy.world avatar

    There are other ways to block ads. Adguard does a great job on Android. It establishes a local VPN, so it can do HTTP[S] content filtering in addition to DNS blocking.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Can’t use my VPN and adguard at the same time iirc, unless android has two active VPN “slots” now. Can’t bring a pihole with me 24/7 either as much as I would like to.

    Cyberpunk3000 ,

    There’s always nextdns.io that can be configured to use ad blocking filters on the dns level. You can set it up on your phone as well

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Can I use it in conjunction with my normal VPN? AFAIK android has only one active VPN slot available at a time.

    Cyberpunk3000 ,

    Yes because there is no need to setup another VPN. You only configure the DNS settings (Private DNS). I know that Mullvad on PC has an option to use custom DNS server

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Ok cool thanks, I’ll check it out!

    foggenbooty ,

    Ive been using Firefox on Android for years but it really needs some TLC. It doesn’t support scaling to a tablet/desktop UI at all so it doesn’t work well in DeX or anything larger than a phone. I also recently had to swap to Brave because I noticed Firefox was draining a lot of battery all of a sudden. There’s some kind of leak or running process that isn’t sleeping properly. In a few months I’ll re-install and try again.

    GregorGizeh ,

    While I dont use Firefox itself any more I am using librewolf on my PC, which sadly doesnt exist for phones yet. Also, GOS comes with its own privacy oriented chromium fork called vanadium, so I’m using that in the mean time.

    Nelots , (edited )

    I’ve found the Mull browser (which can be found through the DivestOS repository on F-Droid) works great as a privacy-focused firefox fork, similar to LibreWolf. I hear Fennic F-Droid is also a pretty good but less extreme alternative, but I’d imagine you don’t care much about that if you use LibreWolf.

    a_wild_mimic_appears ,

    I also use librewolf and have settled for iceraven on my phone. the list of installable extensions is much longer (even if not everything is working yet, depending on how far mozilla has come along) and it has about:config support, which gives me a pretty close approximation of my desktop browser.

    egeres ,
    @egeres@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s weird that I’ve been on firefox for the vast majority of my life and I always had this perception that “everyone” was using it. Here in lemmy you hear about it all the time, my friends use it, I see it on my newsfeeds etc

    But when you check the market share it around 2.8% while chrome is 65.1% gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

    Juigi ,

    I guess average user cares mostly about how fast and smooth the browsing is. Chrome definitely has the edge on that over firefox.

    sunbeam60 ,

    I’m forced to use Chrome quite a bit (workplace silliness) and exclusively use Firefox at home. I seriously cannot see this edge that you claim Chrome has. Do you mean in loading speed? Scrolling speed?

    Siegfried ,

    I second you, I don’t see any advantage on using Chrome over Firefox.

    shrugs ,

    same for me. no noticeable difference

    RageAgainstTheRich ,

    I was at my parents house last week because i had to help them with their laptop. I told my mom about firefox and she was very confused because she doesn’t seem to understand that google chrome is a browser and that every browser can access google search or their banking site.

    It took a bit of effort to explain that firefox works the exact same but is safer and faster.

    She is now using firefox on her phone because i showed her ublock origin works with it to block ads.

    A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.

    egeres ,
    @egeres@lemmy.world avatar

    I feel like “most people” only learn “one technology per category”. They know of, one operative system, one browser, one app to mindless scroll, one program to edit text. As a developer it shocks me a little because I’m always eager to try new programming languages, technologies and ways to interact with things. I guess most people only know about edge/safari because they come pre-installed

    iopq ,

    How is that shocking?

    I use Linux, Firefox, Lemmy, nano. Why would I change?

    Malfeasant ,

    A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.

    It’s been that way for a lot longer than chrome has been the big one, it used to be the same with internet explorer…

    egeres ,
    @egeres@lemmy.world avatar

    I would even go as far as saying that the left meniscus of the gaussian thinks google chrome is “google” and the “thing that finds webs”

    Kiernian ,

    This is also why there’s such a a prevalence of flashing warning banners, fake pseudobluescreens, and other scary shit disguised in chrome notifications.

    The notifications in chrome are as close to on by default as you can get and with the right code snippets you can make it look like the FBI locked down your workstation and you need to call them.

    Firefox should start hardening against this behavior now because popularity gets targeted even more specifically.

    Make it an end user safety feature.

    Force every notification to have

    “This is a notification from a website that you elected to receive by allowing notifications. You can disable these notifications here”

    with a link to the setting on the frame of of every one, no fullscreen allowed, no flashing, double-check and prohibit the words FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, IRS, Social Security, Microsoft, etc.

    Psythik ,

    Might have to do with the fact that Firefox was the dominant browser for quite awhile until Chrome arrived on the scene.

    ahal ,

    Iirc it peaked at around 30% market share. I think IE was around 60% at the time. So never dominant, but definitely very very widespread.

    nek0d3r ,

    I remember a point around 2015ish where a lot of web apps went from recommending Firefox and Chrome for the best experience to just Chrome. Now I often see “don’t use Firefox” as a support tactic.

    mesamunefire ,

    Yeah I’ve been using it for at least a decade now. It’s great.

    HonorableScythe ,

    I’d be glad to switch back to Firefox, but websites straight up don’t work on it anymore. That was the only reason I went to Chrome.

    fuzzzerd ,

    What websites? I use Firefox as my daily driver on desktop and mobile, and I rarely run into problems. Like so infrequently that I don’t even remember the last time.

    TexasDrunk ,

    Same. My Dark Reader doesn’t always show websites properly but Firefox hasn’t let me down in ages.

    QuestionMark ,

    Some websites display warnings even though everything works fine, like web.skype.com. But that’s the closest thing to doesn’t work I’ve ever seen on Firefox.

    EtherWhack , (edited )
    @EtherWhack@lemmy.world avatar

    They are around… Try this one: (www.starbirdchicken.com/starbird-chicken-menu)

    I was curious of what their menu looked like as I have one by my work. Haven’t checked it on desktop, but on Android, the menu items never get loaded. ($10-12 for an á la carte chicken sandwich from a fast casual place is a ripoff anyway)

    Edit: It looks like it’s the mobile site/formatting that is broken. Using desktop mode lets the menu items come onto screen. (Firefox 126.01 on a pixel8pro with Android 14) The same issue seems to also be present with chrome under my work account.

    I still argue that they are present, as I had to with it doing taxes a couple months ago. (Just not going to give those sites away)

    Metz ,

    works flawless here on Android 14 with Firefox 126.0.1. not tested desktop yet.

    Womble ,

    Works perfectly for me on desktop with firefox

    airglow ,

    No problems loading that page on Firefox for Android or desktop for me. Are you using Firefox or a fork of Firefox? Do you have any extensions or about:config changes that may be affecting the page rendering?

    grue ,

    That’s a reason to insist on Firefox even harder. Fuck those websites!

    viking ,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    I’ve yet to find a single website that doesn’t work in Firefox.

    cmnybo ,

    There are some sites out there that won’t work. ESC Configurator won’t work in Firefox because it needs web serial to program an ESC connected over a serial port. That’s the only site I use that I have to run in chrome. I’m sure there are more out there, but they are not very common.

    brbposting ,

    I encourage those in this situation to do their small, small part in fighting for the future of the open web by only switching to Chrome when necessary.

    Which is almost never in my daily life!

    Tag365 ,
    @Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

    How do we combat Google Chrome being Internet Explorer 2.0?

    exanime ,

    I have never encountered this… Do you have an example, just curious

    vext01 ,
    @vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Which sites? Been using Firefox since forever and all is well.

    HonorableScythe ,

    Last I tried, I had serious issues using it on Comcast’s billing pages and Quest Diagnostic’s site, among others. The pages would not load at all until I went to Chrome.

    RokAlamSeth ,

    Brave Chads keep on winning

    frostmore , (edited )

    netscape was the standard back then when expolorer was crap…fast forward today,firefox(netscape’s successor) is still the standard when other browsers are still crap.

    edit: spelling firefox and netscape…god damn butter fingers…

    sip ,

    Firefox

    JackbyDev ,

    NetScape!

    COASTER1921 ,

    So maybe my experience is unique but websites don’t always test with Firefox now and some simply don’t work with it. I use it anyway out of principle but occasionally I need to open Chrome.

    On mobile it’s even worse. Firefox is stuttery on my Pixel 8 Pro and doesn’t handle more than ~20 open tabs well. The nightly version fixes the stutter but crashes all the time (it’s a nightly build after all so this is expected).

    iliketurtles ,

    Do you have a lot of add-ons for Firefox mobile? I’m on a pixel 7 and it is smooth with 3ish add-ons, but is slow if I have too many.

    COASTER1921 , (edited )

    Just ublock origin with default configuration. My complaints aren’t for page loading so much as scrolling. Stutter when scrolling is really annoying to me. Interestingly as mentioned the nightly version fixes this, even when ublock is also installed on it.

    My occasional page related complaints are for stuff animating correctly. This is very rare and a minor inconvenience usually, but sometimes stops you from being able to do what you came to accomplish (usually on jank websites, rental car companies for example).

    Pretending Firefox mobile is already great is counterproductive to fixing it’s issues. They don’t have extensive development resources particularly for the mobile version so it makes sense it’s worse. But to a non-techie switching to it isn’t a good experience yet. It definitely can be in the future but without at least acknowledging it’s current flaws why would anyone switch who has previously tried switching?

    Psythik ,

    This is just straight-up slander. I’ve been using Firefox since 1.0PR (so for 20 years now). It was a very rare occasion when a website wouldn’t function properly, and almost never would a website completely break. I haven’t had a single issue with a website in Firefox for over 5 years now. I would appreciate it if you could post some examples of some websites that “simply won’t work with it”, because I simply don’t believe you.

    Mobile is fine too. I have a bad habit of not closing tabs. It’s gotten so bad that the tab count number is just the infinity symbol on my phone. Still don’t have any slowdown issues on a Fold 3. Didn’t have any on my OnePlus 6T, either, nor my LG G2, nor my Galaxy S3. Quit making shit up just to have an excuse to stick with a shitty browser.

    RogueAozame ,

    Not op but moda healths find care page. It has a rapid refresh loop or just doesn’t load at all in Firefox. Chromium it works.

    MentorKitten ,

    I often have to use edge or chrome to do most if anything related to my classes or for pearson. Almost never wants to work on Firefox

    Psythik ,

    Ah yes, anything institutional or governmental tends to behind on the times when it comes to browser compatibility. Good point.

    I remember back when I tried to get assistance from my local government; the application form didn’t work unless you had IE6 (a browser that hasn’t been supported since Windows XP), in 2012.

    mechoman444 ,

    I can’t remember a time when I didn’t use Firefox. Actually back in highschool I used IE around 2002ish but only because I didn’t know any better back then.

    hydrospanner ,

    I went from IE to Firefox back in that same timeframe, then by the time Chrome came out, my Firefox just had too much clutter and Chrome was way faster.

    Within the past year, Chrome managed to enshittify itself enough that I’ve gone back to Firefox on PC (still using chrome on mobile) and it’s the same sort of “lighter, faster” feel that I got years ago when I left it for Chrome.

    There’s also the whole ad blocker bullshit too, of course. YouTube ads were the last straw for me.

    thermal_shock ,

    if you use Firefox on mobile, you can add plugins like ublock origin.

    wesley ,

    I can’t use the Internet on Mobile without an adblocker. The user experience is totally unbearable

    thermal_shock ,

    fully agree

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Honestly, IE was the best browser around the time IE6 was released (2000/2001). Way better than Netscape. Opera was the other good browser back then. The initial release of Firefox wasn’t quite there yet.

    rottingleaf ,

    Better for MS non-standard things? Or better how? Performance-wise - yes.

    IMHO a web browser has to support HTML 4.* , JS, Netscape plugins (Java, Flash, whatever else) and that’s it.

    That’s what I came to when I started using the Web, but I’m confident it’s not just bias - that was the best combination. I’m not sure on CSS - I hated it, but people have good arguments in favor of it. But hypertext with limited appearance tuning and scripts for the web itself, plus plugins for various content, including applications, - that’s definitely a better idea than the modern approach.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Better for MS non-standard things? Or better how?

    All browsers had non-standard things back then, to the point where many sites had two versions: An IE version and a Netscape version.

    Believe it or not, back then Internet Explorer was the most standards-compliant browser. It was the first browser to implement the DOM and CSS based on relevant W3C specs (Netscape was backing JSSS instead).

    Many features we take for granted these days came from IE. Drag and drop, the JS events system, iframes, rich text editing, clipboard access, AJAX (dynamically loading content on the page without a full page reload), visual effects like transparency and gradients, all originally came from Internet Explorer.

    The CSS box-model in IE6 (including margin, padding and border in the width of elements) was wrong because the CSS spec hadn’t been finalized by the time of its release so Microsoft used a draft, and it changed from publication of the draft to publication of the final version. Many years later, people realised that IE6’s model was actually the better model, which is why every browser supports it now via box-sizing: border-box.

    rottingleaf ,

    Sigh. OK, since I didn’t use Netscape (started around 2002), didn’t know about some of these.

    AsimovsRobot ,

    At some point 15-20 years ago Firefox was becoming a resource hog and I switched to chrome. I switched back a number of years ago and regret not switching back earlier.

    cujo255 ,

    Are you me? Firefox was always an option, but it definitely became slow maybe around 2010? I switched to chrome but came back to Firefox a few years ago also when chroms was first getting enshitified

    ICastFist ,
    @ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

    Back when Chrome was the shiny new thing, Firefox was taking a downturn, I think it was around version 50 or something, as they wanted to update something that would break compatibility with a considerable number of existing themes and plugins, including my then favorite, NoScript.

    For some reason, the UI of Chrome was never my cup of tea, all those round edges and auto-hiding buttons (maybe these were later additions?) annoyed me to no end.

    AsimovsRobot ,

    Yeah, all my bad experiences with Firefox from back in the day were completely gone when I switched back to it a couple of years ago.

    burretploof ,
    @burretploof@lemmy.world avatar

    For a time in the early 2000s I used IE via AvantBrowser. It had some cool features at the time! 😅

    AnUnusualRelic ,
    @AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

    I admit I didn’t always use Firefox. I used netscape navigator.

    UpperBroccoli ,

    I am still using Mosaic because it supports Gopher.

    chiliedogg ,

    When Chrome launched Firefox was in pretty rough shape, and Google wasn’t what they are today.

    Lots of us switched to Chrome then because it simply ran better.

    sip ,

    there was a point between 3x and quantum (47 or 48 I think) that the performance was pretty poor and I briefly switched to chrome. when quantum got released, I switched back instantly

    iopq ,

    When Firefox was just starting to get good I still used Opera with their presto engine

    n3m37h ,

    Laughs in Firefox

    graymess ,

    How long until the majority of the Internet is inaccessible to non-Chromium browsers because the pages “don’t support them”?

    balder1991 ,

    Then I guess people will use the web less and less.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    I don’t think that’s going to be the case. People will find workarounds. The whole point of these alternative browsers is to use the web in whatever way the developers think their user base wants to use it. If the web is inaccessible to non-chromium browsers then people will spoof their browser to the site to look like a chromium browser.

    bc93 ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    If we get to the point where the corporatocracy can force us into a limited set of compliant browsers then the web as we know it has ended. I don’t think they’ll go that far unless they decide to go whole hog. That level of control will likely look to wipe out any useful plugins like ad-blockers or other privacy features. I didn’t want to go down the slippery slope argument, but that’s pretty much what will happen if they go that direction.

    iopq ,

    But most of those only give you a few bits of data. Like if there’s only one technique that succeeded, you might have the same fingerprint as everyone with your exact phone with the rest randomized

    n3m37h ,

    If it don’t work on Firefox I won’t use it. There are better FOSS options anyways

    BlueMagma ,

    Sure as long as it’s not my bank or my employer or the gov official website for accessing my taxes…

    bc93 ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Kiernian ,

    “WebUSB is a JavaScript application programming interface specification for securely providing access to USB devices from web applications”

    Holy Hannah, NO!!!

    Might as well allow a website to direct write to your hard drive unprompted again.

    Does noone see how BAD this stuff is?

    Stop creating attack vectors with glowing neon signs on them.

    Goodtoknow ,
    @Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca avatar

    Except it’s a very good thing for 2FA USB keys which prevent people from gaining access unless they have physical access to the key. Also useful for USB gamepads etc

    iopq ,

    I would close my bank account and such to a different bank. It takes literally 5 minutes to open one online.

    And yes, I would not work for a company that doesn’t support Firefox

    I would also keep pestering support of the government website, that one I will have to give to you

    InternetUser2012 ,

    They do some now, but user agent switcher gets me to all of those with no problem.

    nomadjoanne ,

    It is not that simple. These are cat and mouse games. Whack a mole. Whatever you’d like to say.

    InternetUser2012 ,

    If I can’t access a site with firefox, i won’t deal with online. I’ll call them and waste an employee’s time, or send payment in the mail. I’m not using chrome or an app and i don’t care.

    nomadjoanne ,

    For this reason, we must still take a stand against this stuff.

    webghost0101 , (edited )

    Honestly the way the internet is going do you need access to the majority of the internet? I feel like its pretty dead as it is now already.

    Lemmy will still work because we mostly use Firefox, and i bet the same will hold true for many others.

    Basically the moment mainstream internet becomes google only you will see nerds build new websites specifiably to cater to the non google crowd and i trust random internet nerds a hack of a lot more than a monopoly corporation.

    BRING IT ON GOOGLE!, YOU CAN INITIATE THE PUSH TO CREATE A NEW BETTER INTERNET. ^Create demand for freedom trough your suppressive enforments^

    prole ,

    Oh yeah nothing bad could ever happen from effectively removing an entire section of the population from certain parts of the Internet completely.

    I can’t imagine that ever going badly.

    freebee ,

    That’s already the case. Facebook etc have been walled gardens (or prisons if you prefer) for decade and a half now.

    CancerMancer ,

    I remember the “works best on IE” warnings of old, looks like we might be heading back there.

    sunbeam60 ,

    This is getting more common. Whatever dev accepted that when sizing the story should hang their head in shame. “No, you don’t size for a poor solution, you size for a good solution and let the PMs chip at the things they understand, keeping some things sacrosanct”.

    BrownianMotion ,
    @BrownianMotion@lemmy.world avatar

    Laughs in Waterfox

    Emerald ,

    Laughs in earthfox

    pycorax ,

    Laughs in airfox

    Gestrid ,

    Laughs in avatarfox

    patak ,
    @patak@lemmy.world avatar

    Laughs in electrofox

    veloxization ,
    @veloxization@yiffit.net avatar

    Laughs in long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony fox

    ICastFist ,
    @ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

    Laughs in Captain Planetfox

    Wait, wrong 5 elements

    enleeten ,

    With your powers combined, I am Internet Explorer 7!

    Emerald ,

    laughs in icefox

    pyre ,

    since people here are more tech savvy than i could ever be if like to ask what you guys think of Vivaldi, because i like it a lot. super customizable, has quick command search, side panel lets me use some websites like extensions, and workspaces help me organize especially with work… has anyone used it and can anyone tell me if waterfox or other forks are better and how?

    PlexSheep ,
    • another chromium
    • GUI looks good
    • Cross platform
    • Highdpi kind of sucks on plasma 5
    • Fast
    • Not Firefox

    I tried it for a week, but eventually left back for Firefox.

    MonkderDritte ,

    Vivaldi is the new Opera, right?

    Murdoc ,

    If by Opera you mean as it was back in version 12 before it got sold to some chinese company and completely changed, then yes. Nothing to do with what opera is now.

    m_hrstv ,

    Vivaldi is cool af and I used it for a few years but ditched it for firefox the minute i read about manifest v3(2 years ago? don’t remember). Not the devs’ fault but I’ll be damned if i allow ads on my devices.

    pyre ,

    is that guaranteed to force all chromium browsers regardless? like, does that ban the ublock origin extension (or something to the effect of rendering it useless)?

    NatoBoram ,
    @NatoBoram@mastodon.social avatar

    It does! However, uBlock Origin has a "Lite" version that works with Manifest v3.

    https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home

    pyre ,

    wow. ok. time to experiment with Firefox forks.

    m_hrstv ,

    Yeah, all chromium-based browsers will be affected, sadly.

    airglow ,

    If Vivaldi were free and open source, it would make an interesting alternative to Ungoogled Chromium. But it’s not, so I’ll stick with extensions on Firefox (and Ungoogled Chromium as a backup).

    Murdoc ,

    It is source-available though, so that’s a plus.

    airglow ,

    According to Vivaldi’s blog post “Why isn’t Vivaldi’s browser open-source?”, all of Vivaldi’s UI is closed source and not source-available:

    Note that, of the three layers above, only the UI layer is closed-source. Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code.

    Keeping Vivaldi’s UI layer closed-source and obfuscated allows us to set these worries aside, so we can focus on the job at hand. It may not be a perfect solution, but as a business, we have to make decisions that minimize uncertainty, if only for our self respect as employees – and employee-owners.

    The UI is the main thing that differentiates Vivaldi from Chromium, and Vivaldi chose to keep it closed source and obfuscated for business reasons. That’s a negative compared to Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium.

    Murdoc ,

    Huh, hadn’t seen that bit before, thanks for that. Ok, well that is disappointing. I did notice this bit in there too though:

    What about security benefits? Even though most of the security-relevant code for Vivaldi browser is in Chromium, there is also some security-relevant code in the UI. If you think that specific security-relevant parts of the UI should be open-sourced to make Vivaldi more trustworthy, let us know, and we’ll consider putting it out as part of our code bundles, so you can check it for yourselves.

    It not much consolation, but it’s better than nothing. As it stands though, FF still has too many problems for me. I’ll have to see how this ad blocking thing shakes out though, might have to revisit my decision then.

    kamen ,

    As a long time user of Opera (from before they went with Chromium), I’ve been using Vivaldi as my primary browser since they first released a public preview. It has its downsides (i.e. the UI is slightly slower than that of Chrome), but at the same time it’s the thing that feels most “at home” for me after migrating away from the joke Opera has become. The developers seem to hold a strong anti-manifest-v3 stance, but unfortunately at one point they might have to comply. I just tried the built-in blocker instead of uBlock Origin I normally use and it seems to do a pretty good job.

    I get the whole “switch to Firefox” thing; for me the major blocker is that it doesn’t have global mouse gestures and this messes up with my muscle memory. If they add that, I might give Firefox another chance.

    nutsack ,

    it’s all inevitable. client signatures, the end of privacy, jerking off on my way home from the office. there is no God

    meep_launcher ,

    We killed god and replaced it with Google.

    billwashere ,

    How does this affect browsers like Brave?

    JackbyDev ,

    Brave’s ad blocker is not an extension so it’s unaffected.

    sebinspace ,

    Same with Opera / Opera GX

    BaardFigur ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    sebinspace ,

    I’m not recommending it. I’m saying that’s how its Adblock works.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    I miss the old Opera, back when it had its own engine. It was a really good browser. I used it from 2002 until 2012.

    TWeaK ,

    I remember it also let you spoof your user agent, and had a built in email client. It was just generally feature rich.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Later versions had a built-in BitTorrent client too. It let you not only spoof the user agent, but it let you disable images, disable JS, block content, and a bunch of other settings per site.

    It showed a loading progress bar indicating how much of the page content had loaded.

    It had an option to only show images that were already cached - useful on very slow connections and better than just turning off all images.

    It had mouse gestures for going back/forward, opening new tabs, etc. Oh yeah, it was the first browser to ever implement tabbed browsing.

    They had an experiment where you could run decentralized services directly within the browser, called Opera Unite: howtogeek.com/…/turn-your-computer-into-a-file-mu…. They were trying to bring the web back to its original form, where everyone hosted their own content.

    All of this was built-in, and yet it was somehow lighter (in terms of RAM usage) than other browsers?

    They were truly innovating. We just don’t see a lot of software doing that any more. So many companies these days are trying to figure out how to extract more of your personal data and show you more ads.

    TWeaK ,

    Don’t recommend Brave either lol.

    eddanja ,

    Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.

    huquad ,

    You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

    MacNCheezus ,
    @MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

    Always has been.

    RokAlamSeth ,

    Brave Chad’s keep on winning and shitting on Firefart buttboys

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