Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.

(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)

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).

However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.

[1] https://www.greasespot.net/2005/03/

Fantastic first impression. I'm good, thanks.

I'm living under a rock, but my first thought was that you turned off TLS.

Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.

It's an entirely different management team.

It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.

When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.

Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:

> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.

The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adbl...

At least that's the nonsense you hear when you recommend Brave as a decent alternative to someone.

On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.

Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.

Do you use Android with a physical keyboard?

though it doesn’t seem to work as well as ublock, the ad slots are still there with just the ad missing so there’s a giant ugly blank spot.

You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.

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.

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.

Chrome also used to natively support userscripts back in 2010 [2] but they mostly killed it off

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userscript

[2] https://lifehacker.com/chrome-4-supports-greasemonkey-usersc...

I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.

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.

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?

I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.

To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.

Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...

Brave Just Released a Paid Browser: Here's What You Need to Know https://youtube.com/watch?v=3i5KH0l895o

Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?

Sources? I can't find anything on that via google/ddg (Germany)

edit: oof.

[1] https://drewdevault.com/blog/Cloudflare-and-fascists/

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' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=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...

[1] https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks

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

[2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.

2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.

3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).

4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.

Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.

By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...