Comment by devsda
10 hours 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.
10 hours 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.
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
What exactly is your gripe with MV3?
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...
> What exactly is your gripe with MV3?
Running an adblocker is the defining feature of the extensions API. ublock origin has 5x as many users as the second-most-popular extension [1]
Supporting ublock isn't just a nice-to-have add-on feature for an extension API, it's literally the only thing most users care about.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Firefox supports webRequestBlocking with MV3, so even if they fully remove support for MV2, ad blocking is still available.
Mozilla refused to approve MV3 version of uBlock Origin
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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.
Helium still supports MV2, because the upstream hasn't removed related code. They basically turn on/off some macros to enable MV2 again. And this won't last long for sure.
Safari still supports MV2
I don't know if Edge supports MV2, but they do have uBlock available and it works just as well as on Firefox.
1 reply →
> 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.
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> Firefox is the last holdout.
Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)
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If Raymond Hill says blocking doesnt work anymore, ill use... umm... Lynx?
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).
>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?
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.
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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.
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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.
> 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.
Try Zen! Firefox fork with Arc-like UX.
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.
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.
Tell me more, what's your setup.
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
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.
What would prevent sites from just injecting ads into their content server-side? You'll always need both element and request blocking.
That's why GP wrote MITM, not just network blocking. MITM implies the middlebox is trusted by the browser in which it has installed a certificate, so can see and modify content.