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77% Positive

Analyzed from 1883 words in the discussion.

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#firefox#browser#support#still#brave#https#don#without#chromium#adblock

Discussion (69 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

devsdaabout 4 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.
OsrsNeedsf2Pabout 4 hours ago
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
ximmabout 1 hour ago
Firefox supports webRequestBlocking with MV3, so even if they fully remove support for MV2, ad blocking is still available.
pogueabout 3 hours ago
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.

cookiengineerabout 3 hours ago
> 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.

nukerabout 2 hours ago
> Firefox is the last holdout.

Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)

userbinatorabout 1 hour ago
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.

6ak74rfy18 minutes ago
Tell me more, what's your setup.

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

zephyreonabout 4 hours ago
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).

charleslmungerabout 4 hours ago
>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?

zephyreonabout 4 hours ago
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.
tostiabout 1 hour ago
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.

Dylan16807about 3 hours ago
> 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.

strikingabout 3 hours ago
Try Zen! Firefox fork with Arc-like UX.
pjjpoabout 2 hours ago
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.
Steve6about 4 hours ago
I migrated from Firefox to Brave years ago, and it's been incredible. It's easy to turn off the crypto stuff and turn on more advanced privacy protection. Then it's just a fast browser with awesome adblocking.

My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.

I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.

abdullahkhalidsabout 3 hours ago
The Greasemonkey Firefox addon that allows you to run site specific JS has been around for two decades [1].

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

Brybryabout 1 hour ago
And they even have a name: userscripts! [1]

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...

halaproabout 1 hour ago
It certainly is great to have first-party support for such a simple feature. It doesn't have to support the whole GM_ API
dlcarrierabout 2 hours ago
It's too bad that Mozilla does everything they can to alienate its users, with failed attempts to attract a different but non-existent new user-base. Without them, and with Safari being run by a company that likes to tie its software to its hardware, there's pretty much no reasonable non-Chrome-based web browsers, so it's the new Internet Explorer, and many web pages only work on it, because no one tests their web pages on anything else.
unethical_ban20 minutes ago
I simply have no idea why people hate on Firefox so much. I mean it, it feels like an outlet for frustration toward an org people think might listen.
vachinaabout 2 hours ago
I don’t see how supporting Chromium is better than not supporting an alternate rendering engine. Firefox for the end-user is fantastic.
eductionabout 1 hour ago
People build on chromium for the same reason they build on Linux. I’d personally prefer if they built on illumos or bsd but at a certain point people would rather spend their innovation budget higher up the stack and benefit from the platform that has the most open source engineers working on it.
esperentabout 4 hours ago
Even better now that they have a paid offering with all that crap stripped out (Brave Origin) which is free on Linux.
pogueabout 3 hours ago
Everyone has made these Brave debloat tools that basically do the same thing as their ridiculous Origin offering.

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

topspinabout 2 hours ago
> a pretty goofy move

I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.

esperentabout 1 hour ago
That's such a weird reaction. There's constantly, for years, people here asking for Firefox to just start offering a paid version to get away from needing support from Google. And yet when someone actually does that apparently it's goofy and we should just be manually stripping that out without paying.

If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?

How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?

cr125riderabout 3 hours ago
Eh that’s a common business model. Pay to get the ads removed is basically the same thing.
armada651about 3 hours ago
> It's easy to turn off the crypto stuff

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

the-grumpabout 2 hours ago
If your mind goes to TLS when you read crypto, you surely do live under a rock ... in bliss.
dlcarrierabout 2 hours ago
Instead of turning it off, you can just make it useless: https://youtu.be/M1si1y5lvkk
devsdaabout 2 hours ago
As a developer, personally I would be worried if that wasn't my first thought when someone uses browser and crypto together :D
Zardoz8414 minutes ago
uBlock Origin was and is the BEST adblock. And it was one of the fist suggested add-ons when you get in the add-ons page. It should have been integrated.
Markoff31 minutes ago
Why not Cromite (or Ultimatum, Helium)? Hard to understand why someone reading HN use browser without extensions support.
MrAlex94about 3 hours ago
I think people are reading into this too much - I don’t think Mozilla would ever implement an actual full spectrum ad blocker (although who knows with the new direction Firefox is headed), this will likely be used as an improvement/replacement for the current tracking protection implementation.

Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.

gbilabout 3 hours ago
If this means that they release a iOS version with the same Adblock features as brave then I’m sold. I use essentially all OSs and I want a browser with basic features like adblocking/custom filters on all the platforms and currently Firefox fails this on iOS devices. Still I believe the Firefox sync is much more robust than eg. Brave one , among various platforms. But then I will also need Firefox to fix keyboard shortcuts on Android which they had until the Fenix rebase some years ago and still haven’t fixed since
bartvk4 minutes ago
Same, I'd love for the iOS version to be a little more developed. Especially support for plugins for dark mode and stuff. Safari for iOS does.
mmoossabout 1 hour ago
What is the use case for keyboard shortcuts on handheld devices?

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?

JoshTriplettabout 1 hour ago
I have a physical keyboard for my foldable. Works great, except that keyboard shortcuts don't typically work as expected.
gbear605about 1 hour ago
Could be referring to a physical keyboard attached to an iPad
poisonborz19 minutes ago
Why do people still have hope in / clinge on Firefox when projects like Librewolf and Waterfox exists? Yes those are still dependent on Mozilla's upstream changes, but users not trusting them have still options.
nextaccounticabout 4 hours ago
Does this benefit people that use uBlock Origin?

Maybe uBlock Origin for Firefox could be updated to make use of this

toofyabout 4 hours ago
sounds like it just uses ublocks lists.

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.

SadTrombone20 minutes ago
I'd imagine that's the reason it's not enabled by default, they're not finished fully implementing it in Firefox yet.
fabrice_dabout 4 hours ago
Probably because they don't leverage cosmetic filtering yet: https://docs.rs/adblock/latest/adblock/struct.Engine.html#me...
Markoff34 minutes ago
For anyone looking for Android alternative:

Cromite - Chromium, MV2 extensions, good new tab page with 4x4 shortcuts (2x4 pinnable) with direct access to bookmarks

https://github.com/uazo/cromite/releases

Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR

https://github.com/gonzazoid/Ultimatum/releases

Helium - Chromium, only MV3 extensions, built in browser from Graphene

https://github.com/jqssun/android-helium-browser/releases

Elixir - Chromium, only MV3, tabbed interface suitable for tablets

https://github.com/SF-FLAM/ElixirBrowser/releases

Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).

On desktop the recommendation is much easier:

Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF

https://vivaldi.com

FireInsight26 minutes ago
Android Firefox versions that are geat as well - [Ironfox](https://github.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox): Hardened - [Fennec](https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/): Fully FOSS
gtrevorjayabout 4 hours ago
This feels like a betrayal of their ousting of Eich in the first place. I can't imagine a world I would do this and be able to look at myself in the mirror.
silisili3 minutes ago
Same. The entire company more or less turned on him. Not picking a side, that's your right. But to then start 'borrowing' from someone you refused to work with feels... hypocritical.
dlcarrierabout 2 hours ago
The whole organization is a huge mess that doesn't really want to accept any management.
proxabout 2 hours ago
They try to make it feel like an “us” browser, but it just comes off as a corp trying to talk cool.

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

yborgabout 3 hours ago
>"their"

It's an entirely different management team.

Paul-Craftabout 2 hours ago
I can certainly imagine such a world. I don't use Brave because I don't want to support Brendan Eich.
kulahanabout 1 hour ago
So instead you use, what, Chrome because you want to support Sundar Pichai??
JoshTriplettabout 1 hour ago
You are literally on a thread about Firefox, and you think someone saying they don't use Brave must be using Chrome?
SadTrombone19 minutes ago
If only there was another browser option that was the first word of this thread's title!
fishgoesblubabout 4 hours ago
It's surprising, and disappointing that this hasn't happened sooner. A real shame that it took a browser company other than Mozilla to make (In Rust no less!) adblock-rust. I wonder if this could've been a native Firefox feature and selling point years ago if Eich wasn't kicked out.