For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.
I look forward to the slight bump in Mozilla userbase.
Laughs in Firefox based browsers
Oh look all the “chrome but in a different outfit” browsers are doing the same terrible shit? What a shocker, no one could have predicted that the many many things all on the same base where actuality just fake competition.
Firefox has webserial support now. I no longer need anything chromium. Let them rot.
What is it used for?
Communicating with external devices via USB or the old D-Sub connectors.
Printers, microcontrollers, instruments, etc… Directly instead of through the OS.
Notably, ESPHome Programmer uses it for flashing ESP32s wired. Other companies like Solo Motor Controllers use it for delivering a user GUI to customers that is always updated but that can switch between versions instantly for production without having to having to deal with window’s broken method of having to manually search and download .exes for every program.
never heard of it till now. neat!
I had to use Brave earlier this year to flash firmware onto a Meshtastic device. It’s good to hear that Firefox has that option now.
Even grapheneOS use it for adb into your phone to flash the images.
webserial
they use WebUSB in GrapheneOS
Where oh where is my PWA…?
“Coming soon…”
Really? Holy shit I can switch to zen fully at work and at home and uninstall chromium. Webserial was literally the only thing I needed
I heard about the web usb thing, it’s also going to be a game changer for me (I haven’t tried yet, hopefully it works)
It does? Guess I can finally yeet Chromium from my machine then.
How about bluetooth support? Has that been fixed yet?
Why the downvotes? I have 4 machines at work, and none of them can send code to a LEGO Spike Hub over bluetooth in Firefox but works perfectly fine in Chrome.
They are all chrome with google scratched out and their name written in sharpie in its place.
Of course they are all doing it, cause they are all the same thing.
They don’t even try to pretend to fight it.
because theres no fighting google.
Microsoft tried, and google won, which is why Edge became a chrome reskin instead of what it was before.
Everything dies.
Yeah, but the worse they are the longer they live apparently.
Luckily, that’s something you can change!
To avoid a visit by the FBI, I will say no its not.
Microsoft “tried” about as well as a quadraplegic “tries” free climbing
The winning move is not to do business with them, don’t compete just exist and pretend they don’t exist. Microslop played the game and lost, but it is a stupid silly game.
kinda hard to do when google holds the internet by the balls. and can twist at any moment to get what they want.
Microsoft and Mozilla employees have both accused them of doing this in the past, to sabotage non-chrome browsers on google services, to make chrome look better and drive users to chrome.
News to me, Does google hold this site by the balls? They have a lot of power yes, but they are not some unsinkable boat.
They only ‘hold the internet by the balls’ if you are using and reliant on Google products.
There are hundreds (if not more) tutorials and lists online to guide you through degoogling
I’m sure we can get thousands of websites and every major corporation to degoogle cause you said they should.
All the FF forks are the same. Soft forks.
Pale Moon is not a soft fork.
Define soft fork
Can hold spaghetti but not a meatball 😔
ohhh, thanks!
God it still pisses me off what they did to my boy Opera. All of us left when they diverted after v12. We all saw this coming.
Then Vivaldi came which I have tried in quite a while but it sucked. Firefox it is.
It’s a damn shame, I’ve always liked Vivaldi otherwise. I’ve been dual running Vivaldi and Firefox for years now, Vivaldi for casual browsing and Firefox for more serious stuff + YouTube.
Oh well, it’s time to do a full switch, I guess.
Kinda funny, I’ve been doing the exact same thing with Win/Linux for approximately the same length of time. Needed Win because of dome software that just doesn’t work linux, and sadly, I still do.
Google and Microsoft can go fuck each other with a frozen cactus for all I care.
The folks at Vivaldi have been doing some work on their internal ad blocker, I think with the intention to bring most of the functionality of uBo internally so that it doesn’t have to be an extension. Not sure how far along they are, but maybe they’re intentionally keeping it quiet.
I mean, on a technical level chromium isn’t a terrible browser engine. Building your own engine from scratch is Extremely Hard™ and it’s entirely possible to build a decent browser on top of it, so I can understand why most alternative projects have done just that.
It’s just… google’s control over chromium is concerning.
Illusion of choice
Yeah its a real surprise. :)
Firefox and its derivatives (and Safari - sorry Apple users) are the only browsers not using Google’s Blink web engine these days - at least until Ladybird is released.
Despite the Mozilla Foundation’s many stupid decisions, Firefox (and Safari) is starting to look like the only thing stopping Google from completely controlling the internet.
People will *anything *except use FireFox
The browser wars have been kind of strange from the perspective of someone who’s been using Firefox for well over a decade. It’s a bit like hearing about the Civil War while living in Oregon.
Librewolf gang rise up
Remember that article awhile back about the FBI recommending you use an adblocker?
That means even the FBI recommends you don’t use Google and Microsoft browsers anymore
The 2026 FBI recommends that you vote for Trump, or else.
Just use Firefox (or Zen Browser, which is a nice fork of Firefox)
Excellent reason for even the normies to ditch chrome 🥂
Great… I work in IT so this means MORE “virus” calls because you 100000000% need an adblocker on the web to stop those fake “your computer is being hacked” malicious advertisements from websites.
Cue the Brave shills “recommending” to switch to Brave in 5…4…3…
Wait what’s wrong with Brave?
Brave is by a company who’s in the business of serving ads.
Much like google was back in the day, they’re trying to obtain market share with a product that they can easily manipulate after the fact and rely on people not jumping ship as things get progressively worse and worse bit by bit
Think of the “approved ads” era followed by the “enhanced security features” which made it so your block list couldn’t be updated at a moments notice and now it’s being stripped entirely.
Better to avoid it entirely and just use Firefox or a derivative thereof
It’s not firefox
Firefox doesn’t have tab groups on mobile
“Firefox doesn’t have this one feature I like so I will keep using browser made by an ad company. I’m sure there will be no consequences long term”.
Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin
“Oh shit. No one could have predicted this!”.
Firefox dragged its feet on an extremely useful feature for years.
Are you seriously trying to act like Firefox hasn’t been continually shooting themselves in the foot the past decade?
I’ve been using Firefox for decades without issues. Yes, Chrome was a better browser for a long time but Firefox wasn’t that far behind and was absolutely fine browser to use.
Do you really think Mozilla could win browser race with Google, the fucking second biggest company in the world? Of course Chrome had more features, it had basically unlimited resources at it disposal. But yeah, let’s blame Mozilla for not winning with them decisively.
YOU are shooting yourself in the foot. You abandoned Firefox for couple of features and soon you will be browsing the web with ads. Come back and tell me how extremely useful Chrome’s features are when can you no longer skip Youtube ads.
You may have a browsing addiction if you need tab groups on mobile, wow…
I swear I hate tabbed browsing, because it leads to people hording tabs like a freaking squirrel hordes nuts.
If you need it for later, book mark it.
If you’re done with it close it.
This doesn’t work when I have memory issues. That tab is open as part of my external system of memory for myself so I know what I was trying to do before one of my several issues prevented me finishing.
Those are my emotional support ‘∞ tabs’, thank-you very much.
I might need them.
Bookmarks in mobile Firefox is another issue. Bookmark management is a massive chore. I end up keeping tabs around a lot longer in mobile just to avoid messing with it.
On desktop Firefox with the Bookmark Tab Here extension (native functionality I missed from Chrome), bookmarking and organizing a new page is just two clicks. I use that workflow extensively. Apparently I have over 7000 bookmarks all organized that way.
7000 bookmarks
… Whoa… of what, out of morbid curiosity?
I’ve started using Karakeep for this. If I haven’t used a tab in a while but want it to stick around, throw it to Karakeep, let ai tag it, then close that tab.
“People don’t use their browsers how I want REEEE!!!”
Added to nightly somewhat recently.
It’s still not pushed out to phones. I’m going to keep shit talking them until it’s actually out, because they’ve spent far too much time stringing them along
It is also chromium based, so stands to get the same nerf.
Yeap, just a matter of time.
Nope, Shields are built into the browser itself, not as an extension which uses those APIs. [1]
I would argue that if you’re choosing between chrome and brave, brave is still better.
Sure. Probably. But why are we choosing between Chrome and Brave?
People entirely blind to the idea that they can just choose something else instead of 2 piles of shit, one of which has a cherry on top and was sprayed with perfume recently.
Its like some sort of awful american tradition at this point.
Is a two party system not capable of approptiately responding to the needs of the people within it?
On iOS you can go on pornhub on brave and it blocks all the ads and cookie popups.
That’s one reason that uh… “someone” might use brave.
Orion also blocks ads on iOS and isn’t backed by Thiel, run by Eich or an ad business startup masquerading as an ad blocking browser.
Ok i will look
Because Firefox is a different engine and might not work well with certain websites.
I’ve only ever encountered one website where Firefox didnt work.
and that was because the website was coded maliciously to reject firefox… a plugin to make it think firefox was chrome and suddenly it ran fine.
Couldn’t use just set the user agent?
Firefox doesn’t support WebHID, so I can forget about configuring my custom keyboard with anything other than a Chromium based browser.
Keyboard setup would be a system level setting, no?
Well I did, the Amazon Prime Video has many weird behaviors on Firefox compared to the Chromium engine, even YouTube used to have before.
Any web developer knows it isn’t as simple as “code once, work everywhere”. If companies don’t test on Firefox (which is a reality nowadays given its small market share) bugs happen in very weird and unusual ways.
Only issue I’ve ever had with Amazon Video was the fact they artificially limit resolution to 320p for people on linux, regardless of browser.
I consider that a website problem, not a me problem. I choose what I do on the internet, the internet doesn’t dictate the software I use.
My real issue is as a dev of a web application, using Firefox makes things occasionally render differently. It’s only once in a blue moon but enough to make me just accept using Vivaldi to be closer to the defacto user experience. And then I can’t be bothered to switch between FF (I use Zen) and Vivaldi and split my bookmarks, extensions, logins etc. it just doesn’t make sense.
For a lot of people, it’s an easy transition.
DDG, Vivaldi, etc. harder transitions.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
I’m just saying perfect is the enemy of good.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
Very difficult to believe. I have had issues with Firefox over the years but in every single instance it was a result of my custom setup. The browser has no major compatibility issues out of the box. I think it’s way more likely your parents are technologically illiterate and confuse other problems or gaps in their knowledge as issues with the “new” thing (in this case, the browser).
I rarely encounter sites that don’t work with Firefox. I’d be surprised if it’s even 1 per month.
When that happens, then I just end up opening it in a different browser. I can’t actually remember the last time I’ve needed to do so.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
Sorry, what? If they are so tech-illiterate that they have to call you and ask why the website is not working, then what kind of web sites are they visiting?
Been using FF since 2022 and the only sites that wont work are the ones that utilizes HID. Are your parents trying to flash custom firmware for their phones though browser every third day?
Good for you. I’ve been in tech for over 16 years and FF absolutely does not work well on ~25% of websites.
Been in tech longer then that (if for some reason we are doing that now) and I will officially call bullshit on that claim.
I get it that tech people stumble upon these sites much more often than non-techies. My point was that if your parents are having website issues every other day (which implies they are not tech-savvy), then why would they even visit sites that are not FF-compatible. How many sites out of all the web do you think are not compatible with FF? Give an example of a normie site that wont work well with FF.
On the other hand, if your parents are tech-savvy then why would they ask you why a website wont load properly? Do you get it that your statement counters itself?
Wait, really? The access cripplers are crazily powerful add-ons for the paranoid, like NoScript, not the browser itself. Like what example websites, specifically?
Wanna link those websites so we can see?
calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right
Sir, 2000s called and asked you to return this argument back.
What sites are those?
Websites that are actively malicious against firefox, that miraculously work when you have a useragent plugin that makes firefox report that its chrome proving that the site works fine, if the asshole code is removed?
I think this is when @AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com will discreetly not answer or otherwise avoid mentioning the exact websites… (Because there are none)
Yup mostly because I don’t care anymore. You’re all stating the, “it works on my machine” mantra and I don’t care. See my other comments for some examples.
It’s true, unfortunately. Not every 3 days, but once a month I encount these sites.
After seeing all the people talking about Vivaldi in this thread I figured I’d try it out…got to the “Panel” setup page, saw there’s one for reddit, maybe I’ll try adding lemmy.zip…
Failed Cloudflare check in panel, but it worked in a tab…okay, weird.
Thought about checking out Kagi since now privacy is on my mind…the front page would reload every 5 seconds so I couldn’t read about it. It’d say “Verification failed please try again” and refresh.
Apparently this has been an issue with Vivaldi for some time? I guess this is the future of the web? You try to escape the claws of these giant internet powerhouses and they just…don’t let you?
Change the icon on the desktop to the chrome pinwheel and they’ll never know the difference.
Brave has a certain distasteful reputation earned by repeated unethical fuckery. If you are fine with what brave does, you have no reason to avoid chrome in the first place.
So Brave is a good answer to an absolutely terrible question?
Nothing.
Government becomes more fascist, tech companies become more fascist.
People don’t like surveillance advertising, and most reject it when given the choice. Unpopular policies are squashed when the people are represented, and the Republican policies and interests of forced and extreme deregulation are being represented here, not the people’s.
That, and I believe advertising is inherently fascistic in the way that it distorts realty, and intrusively attempts to modify thinking with punitive, insulting, and psychologically coercive methods - it is corporate propaganda, and when it is combined with surveillance and purchased by the State, it becomes fascism.
I can’t wait for them to try and make ad-blocking illegal. We’re seeing a similar trend with the age verification firm Yoti “reporting” GrapheneOS users to “the authorities”, whatever the hell that Gestapo bullshit scare-tactic means. If FOSS software and ad-blocking are tools of privacy and freedom from thought manipulation, and those concepts are being attacked by a State-backed corporate entity, then the State no longer represents those values. Chrome, like so much other corporate software that has sunk to surveillance advertising with a healthy side of selling data to the government, is now just another fascist tool to punish democratic resistance.
Freedom from advertising is a human right.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …
~Edward Bernays From his 1928 publication - Propaganda
Edward is the father of modern advertising through psychological manipulation.
He’s the reason bacon and eggs are breakfast.
I am posting this again in such a short time, but The Century of Self is required viewing in my opinion. That asshole you mentioned, Bernays, is one of the prime perpetrators for the state of advertising.
— Anyway, I do highly recommend (for those that haven’t) investing the time and watching The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. It is very illuminating as to how we’ve arrived where we are now with regards to propaganda and advertising which are rooted in the same psychological underpinnings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
It appears to be on Netflix, as well.
I was the one who you posted it to and it’s well worth a watch. I put it at 1.25 speed and that was about right.
Hey there, Pele!
I was going to mention two other docs to you that my friend and I found quite good (though different topics). They are:
I hope you can find them somewhere. If you torrent or what not, they are doubtlessly found there.
And people still use these trash dumpster of a browser?
