[HN Gopher] Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers
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Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers
Author : dagurp
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-09-23 10:54 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vivaldi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vivaldi.com)
| alexvoda wrote:
| Vivaldi really needs its own extension store.
|
| What would be even better would be to use the repository model
| used by linux distros for software distribution.
|
| The user should be able to choose which sources of extensions
| they trust.
| terramex wrote:
| Sure, Vivaldi's AdBlocker might not be impacted a lot, but it
| does not matter because it is terrible anyway and it triggers
| every "adblock detection script" I've ever seen. While I like
| rest of the browser it is unusable without customised uBlock
| Origin.
|
| I was hoping some company would fork Chromium before Manifest V3
| change and apply patches from mainline as necessary but it seems
| less and less likely with every day. If Vivaldi manages to patch
| out Google's changes and keep uBlock working as it is now they
| will have me as their user until heat death of the universe.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'm familiar with the Chromium codebase, and maintaining the
| Manifest web request V2 API wouldn't be a tricky patch to
| maintain.
|
| Even if Google rips it all out and the supporting
| infrastructure, a full rewrite from scratch wouldn't be too
| tricky. It's just a bunch of RPC calls to the right extension
| process from the network stack.
|
| You'd still have the downsides that Google is trying to get rid
| of (extensions can delay requests making the browser slow, and
| extensions aren't multithreaded so all web requests have to be
| funnelled through a single javascript thread in the extension).
| But we've lived with those downsides for 10+ years - I think we
| can keep them.
| tyingq wrote:
| >extensions can delay requests making the browser slow
|
| There's an older UBO wiki post showing, with their default
| set of rules, the onBeforeRequest() processing adds about
| 130ms of latency per request on an older i5 machine. It does
| also show that a less performance focused ad blocker adds
| around 420ms.
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-
| vs.-ABP:-effic...
|
| Of course, then you can subtract whatever performance issues
| loading all those ads would have caused. That math often ends
| up in favor of the ad blocker, even if it's not a
| particularly efficient one.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 0.13 ms per request is _loads_ when you consider a typical
| web page (facebook homepage) has about 700 requests now,
| and due to the single-threaded nature of javascript they
| all need to be processed sequentially. Ie. thats 91
| milliseconds seconds of pegging one core, just for one
| extension, for loading one page.
|
| It's also probably an underestimate, because it doesn't
| include the IPC time within Chrome, which involves at least
| two context switches, and the associated cache rewarming.
|
| Granted, extensions could be better implemented - for
| example, for URL blocking, there should be a bloom filter
| for allowing stuff so that the whole list doesn't need to
| be checked.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| It costs 0.130ms or 130ms, not 130ms.
| thedanbob wrote:
| Glad to hear it. I've been using Vivaldi as my main browser for a
| while now and I'd hate to give it up, but if it's a choice
| between Vivaldi and a fully functioning ad blocker I'm probably
| choosing the latter.
| riidom wrote:
| Yes, same for me. On my work laptop I use Firefox, and tried it
| for a few weeks without adblocker, then I gave up.
|
| I'd love to keep Vivaldi, and when there are problems with
| adblocking, I will give it a patient try to see how bad it
| actually is, but leaving the chromium world is absolutely an
| option here.
|
| Wonder how Firefox' market share will be influenced by this, in
| general.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'm curious why you used Firefox without ublock origin?
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| Pretty much every browser that isn't Chrome or Edge, has put out
| a similar message to Vivaldi's team. If that's not enough for
| Google to get their **** together, and stop pretending like
| they're doing this for the good of the end-user, I dunno what is.
| Raed667 wrote:
| It is hard to over-state the impact that MV3 will have on the
| current extension landscape!
|
| This move is a blatant attack from Google on power-users, always
| in the name of "security" and performance.
| hbn wrote:
| I don't even think you can say adblockers are a "power user"
| feature. The web is so bloated and bad that it's virtually
| unusable without it.
|
| I hope this gets found as the anti-competitive move that it is.
| They're taking advantage of their near-monopoly that they have
| in the browser space to force people to view more of their own
| ads. It's disgusting.
| Raed667 wrote:
| Adblocking is the tip of the iceburg. Proxying, dev-tools
| that manipulate CORS, rule-based cosmetic filters etc... will
| also be impacted.
|
| The other huge change that most people don't know about, is
| the move from a persistent background.js script to a sevice-
| worker will just make a number of use-cases impossible or
| very hacky
| aeharding wrote:
| > the move from a persistent background.js script to a
| sevice-worker will just make a number of use-cases
| impossible or very hacky
|
| Yep.
|
| Chrome is even crippling some of their own APIs, like
| chrome.tabCapture (not available in service workers, and in
| mv3 will be "foreground only")
|
| AKA, if you want to use chrome.tabCapture in mv3, you have
| to run it in a tab. And because that tab can be closed at
| any time, you need to serialize megabytes of data to the
| chrome.storage api every few seconds.
| rasz wrote:
| Google announced that in order to achieve security we must get
| rid of all "remote code" execution avenues.
|
| Really small print: "Remote code" being all code Remote to
| Google, as in code not residing on Google servers. User code
| sitting on Users disk in form of an extension installed Locally
| by the User into his "User Agent" is "Remote code" to Google.
| svnpenn wrote:
| > "Remote code" being all code Remote to Google, as in code
| not residing on Google servers. User code sitting on Users
| disk in form of an extension installed Locally by the User
| into his "User Agent" is "Remote code" to Google.
|
| Replace Google with Mozilla, and you still have an accurate
| statement:
|
| https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yet lots of people seem to manage, e.g. by stating that
| adblockers will cease to function entirely.
| Raed667 wrote:
| I have tried both uBlock Minus[0] and AdguardMV3[1] and can
| confidently say that they're barely a shadow of their
| manifest-v2 versions.
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/tree/master/platform/mv3
|
| [1] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardMV3
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| I use Vivaldi with NextDNS and LuLu blocking a layer up so
| between the 3 I get great blocking and love Vivaldi.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Vivaldi, uBO, Pihole. I feel pretty safe online.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google made a faux-pas with this one...
|
| Their stated goal is to improve the performance of the web
| request blocking API.
|
| Their (unstated but suspected) goal is to neuter adblocking
| chrome extensions.
|
| They should have made extensions get auto-disabled if they 'slow
| down web page loading too much'. Set the threshold for that to be
| say more than a 20% increase in page load time, but make the
| threshold decrease with time - eg. 10% in 2023, 5% in 2024, 2% in
| 2025, to finally 1% in 2026 etc.
|
| Eventually, that would achieve both of Googles goals - since
| adblockers would be forced to shorten their lists of regex'es,
| neutering them, and performance would increase at the same time.
| Extension developers would have a hard time complaining, because
| critics will always argue they just have bloated inefficient
| code.
| benjaminjosephw wrote:
| Ah, the boiling frog strategy. Effective but definitely evil.
|
| Is "don't be evil" still part of the Google's official ethos?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >Is "don't be evil" still part of the Google's official
| ethos?
|
| No it is not, and has not been for decades
| vorticalbox wrote:
| It no longer prefaces the code of conduct but it still has a
| mention.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
| syrrim wrote:
| Even a very poor adblocker will speed up web page loading in
| the average case. If google went that route, they would be
| forced to confront the fact that not having an adblocker is one
| of the worst web performance decisions one can make.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google get to pick the metric. They can easily choose
| "TotalCPU time spent by Chrome over the past week" vs "CPU
| time expended in the extension scripts in the past week".
|
| Remember that whatever matric they pick must be automatically
| measurable by the end users machine - and loading a page with
| and without an ad blocker isn't that.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > Their (unstated but suspected) goal is to neuter adblocking
| chrome extensions.
|
| Except they didn't. There's already 3-4 adblockers that work
| perfectly as far as blocking ads is concerned. They do lose
| more advanced features, but 99.9% of people with adblockers
| installed never ever touch those features.
|
| To claim that this neuters adblocking is truly ridiculous. It
| also ignores that Safari has the exact same restrictions yet no
| one complains that Apple wanted to neuter ad blocking.
| robertoandred wrote:
| There was tons of complaining when Safari adopted those
| restrictions with the same claims and fears that ad blockers
| were dead forever.
| gorhill wrote:
| > 99.9% of people with adblockers installed never ever touch
| those [advanced features]
|
| Custom matching algorithms and ability to fine tune or expand
| matching algorithms according to new content blocking
| challenges are actually a kind of advanced feature that are
| used by all those users without them ever realizing it since
| their content blocker work seamlessly on their favorite sites
| without the need for intervention.
|
| The declarativeNetRequest (DNR) API has been quite improved
| since it was first announced and its great, but since it's
| the only one we can use now, it's no longer possible to
| innovate by coming up with improved matching algorithm for
| network requests.
|
| If the DNR had been designed 8 years ago according to the
| requirements of content blockers back then, it would be
| awfully equipped to deal with the challenges thrown at
| content blockers nowadays, so it's difficult to think the
| current one will be sufficient in the coming years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nothing stops the API evolving... Anyone can make a build
| of Chromium with a better API, test it out with their own
| extension, and if it works better, then they can send a PR
| to get that API into Chrome.
|
| Obviously, extending an API is a long term commitment, so I
| can understand the Chrome team wanting to only do it if
| there is a decent benefit - "it makes my one extension with
| 10 users work slightly better" probably doesn't cut it.
| doomrobo wrote:
| > Nothing stops the API evolving... Anyone can make a
| build of Chromium with a better API, test it out with
| their own extension, and if it works better, then they
| can send a PR to get that API into Chrome.
|
| This is not at all how API proposals are handled. There
| are a lot more (time, financial, logical) barriers to a
| change like this. See the role of the W3C in this:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-
| web-p...
| tyingq wrote:
| >To claim that this neuters adblocking is truly ridiculous.
| It also ignores that Safari has the exact same restrictions
| yet no one complains that Apple wanted to neuter ad blocking.
|
| I think it's more nuanced than that. Working around
| adblockers is hard right now, because there are many
| different types, and the ones that leverage onBeforeRequest()
| are the hardest to work around, and are VERY popular.
|
| So widespread working around declarative and DNS based
| adblocking isn't happening, because the publishers rightly
| recognize it would just drive people to better adblockers.
|
| But, once all adblockers are declarative only, it could be an
| effort worth taking.
|
| Also, the Safari comparison is hard because Apple devices do
| many other things to shore up their adblocker. It has a
| larger allowed list, and comes along with everything else
| Apple does to protect privacy and customer-specific targeted
| ads.
|
| Last, if it was really a nothingburger, I'm curious why
| mobile Chrome has never allowed Chrome extensions.
| [deleted]
| TingPing wrote:
| This isn't an advanced feature, it's just how to effectively
| block modern ads and ad networks will just rely on techniques
| that can't be blocked now.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Is this speculation or has there actually been an analysis
| of how many ads are unblockable?
|
| I've used a declarative ad blocker on iOS for years and
| haven't seen ads in a long time, especially not on big
| websites like Youtube
|
| Just sounds like a bunch of speculative hysteria tbh.
| Shank wrote:
| > I've used a declarative ad blocker on iOS for years and
| haven't seen ads in a long time, especially not on big
| websites like Youtube
|
| I do too! But I also run into pages that are broken all
| the time (pages don't scroll down, entirely white/black
| pages load with no content, etc). This is with AdGuard's
| basic filter set and updated filters. uBlock Origin
| doesn't have these problems.
| gorhill wrote:
| > Is this speculation or has there actually been an
| analysis of how many ads are unblockable?
|
| You could go through all the issues that are solved on a
| daily basis by filter list maintainers and see how your
| content blocker deals with those specific issues being
| solved for uBO.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3
| Aissue+...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Which declarative ad blocker?
| rasz wrote:
| >They should have made extensions get auto-disabled if they
| 'slow down web page loading too much'. Set the threshold for
| that to be say more than
|
| oh but they already did - All extensions are ignored and pushed
| into lower priority thread when you are starting browser and
| the first page loads. Everything is set to prioritize that time
| to first page load. Result is first page loaded when browser
| starts often manages to skip all adblockers.
| westurner wrote:
| eWASM opcodes each have a real cost. It's possible to compile
| {JS, TypeScript, C, Python} to WASM.
|
| What are some ideas for UI Visual Affordances to solve for bad
| UX due to slow browser tabs and extensions?
|
| - [ ] UBY: Browsers: Strobe the tab tab or extension button
| when it's beyond (configurable) resource usage thresholds
|
| - [ ] UBY: Browsers: Vary the {color, size, fill} of the tab
| tabs according to their relative resource utilization
|
| - [ ] ENH,SEC: Browsers: specify per-tab/per-domain resource
| quotas: CPU, RAM, Disk, [GPU, TPU, QPU] (Linux: cgroups,)
| worble wrote:
| >As Vivaldi is built on the Chromium code, how we tackle the API
| change depends on how Google implements the restriction. The
| assurance is, whatever restrictions Google adds, in the end,
| we'll look into removing them.
|
| Is this not a serious wake up call for all these companies
| relying on Chromium? You are staking so much of your business on
| a giant conglomerate that does not care about you or your users,
| whose only aim to sweep up as much data from the web as possible
| to feed their ad machine.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| IMO this is a great chance for Microsoft to take charge and try
| to get back in the browser game.
|
| They should fork Chromium and sign up all the others (Brave,
| Vivaldi, Opera) to help maintain the code base. Of course MS
| can afford to pitch in the maximum amount of resources, both
| human and financial.
|
| This way we will have a serious contender to Chrome in the
| industry and they can differentiate themselves meaningfully
| from Google's hegemony in the space.
|
| But they won't do it, it's hard to ignore those sweet potential
| ad monies.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The first problem with your (and a lot of peoples') proposal
| is the notion that a Chrome ripoff (aka a fork) is a valid
| competitor.
|
| If you're going to sell me a Chrome ripoff, I'll just use the
| real deal. It's the same reason why Firefox died: They
| tried/try to ripoff Chrome, and as a result everyone just
| moved/moves over to the real deal.
| Volundr wrote:
| I'm confused by both your assertion Firefox is dead and
| that they tried to rip off Chrome. Can you clarify?
|
| I'm using Firefox specifically for a number of features
| chrome does not have.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >assertion Firefox is dead
|
| Firefox is (and has been) no longer a consideration in
| web development because of its tiny and thus
| inconsequential market share.
|
| Lest we forget, Firefox was once the market leader that
| usurped the position from IE6.
|
| >they tried to rip off Chrome
|
| The constant dumbing down and changing of the UI, removal
| of XUL in favor of WebAssembly (dropping Firefox
| extensions in favor of becoming compatible with Chrome
| extensions), moving to the Chrome Version Number system
| (we're on Firefox what again? 100? 150? 200?) to not look
| ancient comparatively, etc.
|
| I'm sincerely of the opinion Mozilla should just drop
| Gecko and move Firefox over to being another Chrome fork.
| It would be far more in line with Mozilla's goals of
| shipping a Chrome ripoff in vain attempts to steal Chrome
| users.
| Volundr wrote:
| > Firefox is (and has been) no longer a consideration in
| web development because of its tiny and thus
| inconsequential market share.
|
| Is 7.4% of desktop users [0] inconsequential? Maybe to
| your business, but I think most would be sad to lose 7%
| of desktop users. I'll also note if this indicates
| "death" Safari is dead too.
|
| I know XUL pissed off a lot of people, but I really don't
| think copying Chrome was the main motivation. XUL had a
| LOT of cruft and issues they wanted to escape and going
| to web extensions for some level of interoperability made
| sense, and looking at data from around that time [1] it
| doesn't appear to have cost them much of their user-base.
| It's also a perfect example of Firefox _not_ copying
| Chrome, with Firefox supporting a ton of APIs Chrome
| doesn 't or has removed [2].
|
| As for the UI "copying" Chrome, I'm not sure how to
| respond to that. I just spun up vanilla profiles of
| Firefox and Chrome, and sure they both have tabs at the
| top, but they are pretty visually distinct. Yes Firefox
| has reduced the size of it's UI over the years, but if
| that's copying Chrome... I guess a lot of apps are.
|
| Firefox may be in decline, and that makes me sad, but I
| think that has a lot more to do with shitty developers
| using non-standard Chrome APIs and then telling users to
| use Chrome when it breaks, while GMail and other Google
| properties cripple Firefox performance, rather than
| Firefox blindly copying Chrome.
|
| Personally I hope this trend reverses. Firefox is the
| only thing stopping Chrome from becoming the next IE 6.
|
| [0] - https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/desktop/worl...
|
| [1] - https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/desktop/worl...
|
| [2] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm curious about the notion that Firefox tried to ripoff
| Chrome. I have qualms with Firefox, but that wasn't on the
| list.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think he may be talking about the UI. Firefox's UI
| changes were very Chrome-like.
| zagrebian wrote:
| > They should fork Chromium
|
| Microsoft already did that. Edge uses Microsoft's fork of
| Chromium.
| BidensBikeRide wrote:
| Edge isn't a fork, it's just a Chromium browser. All of the
| horrible changes Google makes to Chromium affect Edge too
| zagrebian wrote:
| You're wrong. Microsoft maintains a fork and continuously
| decides which changes to pull from Chromium's source.
| BidensBikeRide wrote:
| It's not a fork. They have to go out of their way to
| exclude changes from chromium https://www.reddit.com/r/IA
| mA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...
| rasz wrote:
| >Microsoft reported more than $10 billion in advertising
| revenue last year
| lamontcg wrote:
| Or they (Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc) could use Gecko Quantum
| instead of Chromium.
| Mogzol wrote:
| If that happens I suspect they would lose a large portion
| of their userbase to Firefox. The main selling point for a
| lot of people is that these browsers are basically Chrome
| without the Google stuff. If they change to Quantum, why
| would people not just use Firefox? Unlike Chrome, Firefox
| is already fairly privacy focused, there's not as much of
| an incentive for people to use alternative Firefox-based
| browsers.
|
| I currently use Brave, but if they switched to using
| Quantum I personally would just switch to Firefox proper.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Microsoft should have based Edge on Mozilla's engine instead
| of blink, and should not have tried to get Mozilla to move to
| blink
| AlphaSite wrote:
| It would have been good for the ecosystem to spin up around
| Firefox or WebKit, either would have been a less problematic
| entity than Blink.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's not really a wake up call - at any time they could fork
| and go their own way.
|
| Just right now, they prefer to not have to pay for 1000+
| engineers to work on the codebase to keep up with the pace that
| Google manages.
| kevincox wrote:
| I'm not sure a lot of these browsers have the resources to
| fork Chromium and stay "profitable" or whatever their goal
| is. Microsoft probably could but they gave up on Edge when it
| was pretty feature complete so I'm guessing that they would
| really prefer not to maintain a browser by themselves. I'd
| bet that most of the other Chromium-based browsers would not
| be capable of financially maintaining a serious fork where
| some fundamental internal APIs have been changed.
| rasz wrote:
| Microsoft had a chance of winning back Browser war by
| announcing Blink fork with V2 and 100% backporting of all
| Google changes. But "Microsoft reported more than $10
| billion in advertising revenue last year", so they were
| reluctant to get this easy win.
| alyandon wrote:
| Yes, I was pretty disappointed when Microsoft announced
| they would transition to v3. They already do so much
| customization to completely de-Google Chromium and
| replace it with Microsoft equivalent functionality (and
| adding new features on top of that) - it would have been
| almost a no-op for them to maintain v2 compatibility.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think Microsoft is increasingly getting into the ad
| business themselves, and so may have the same incentive
| as Google in terms of neutering adblockers.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Former browser engineer here: Thank you for that second
| sentence. So many people forget that part!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > keep up with the pace that Google manages.
|
| Absent security issues, what's the value of the last N
| releases of Chrome? How far do you have to go to get
| something of value that changed?
|
| Serious question, because I'm not on the cutting edge of
| browser technology. From a step away, it seems like it's been
| fairly stable.
| dotproto wrote:
| > Absent security issues, what's the value of the last N
| releases of Chrome? How far do you have to go to get
| something of value that changed?
|
| IMO something of value changes with every release. For
| example, in the most recent release (105) Chromium gained
| support for container queries and the :has() pseudo-class.
| Container queries allow web devs to change how styling is
| applied the contents of an element based on the size of the
| element itself. That's a major new tool for web developers
| & designers. 105 also supports the HTML Sanitizer API,
| which relieves the need to use libraries like DomPurify to
| protect against XSS attacks.
|
| If you're interested in digging into what changes in each
| release, Chrome has a blog post series called New in
| Chrome[1] that summarizes changes. And to dive even further
| into changes, the Chrome Status[2] site allows you to
| filter platform feature changes by release milestone.
|
| [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/tags/new-in-chrome/ [2]:
| https://chromestatus.com/features#milestone%3D104
| [deleted]
| fpoling wrote:
| Mozilla (and Opera for that matter before) showed that one
| needed much smaller team to maintain a full-featured web
| engine. Plus a lot of Chromium complexity comes from the
| desire to make such big team manageable. So they split
| tightly coupled code into separated components worked on by
| different groups resulting in a lot of glue interfaces and
| wrapper classes.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Former Mozilla engineer here: The Firefox team isn't as
| small as you are implying, and they are always constrained
| by inadequate resources.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| They could fork and alter only this part of the code and
| likely manage pulling from upstream with very few people.
|
| Even easier if there's a shared open source fork. My company
| did it with 2 people
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't think it's a preference thing. I don't think Vivaldi,
| or Brave, or any other company whose main product is a
| browser, can have the income to pay 1000+ engineers to work
| on the codebase to keep up with the pace of Google.
|
| Maybe it should at the very least be a wake up call to
| companies which can't afford the engineer-hours it takes to
| maintain a Chromium fork.
| madamelic wrote:
| There's enough of them and I am sure non-affiliated as
| well, they could likely scrape together enough engineering
| 'power' to maintain their own sane fork of Chromium.
|
| They don't need to keep pace feature-wise. I don't need a
| featureful browser, I want a browser that performs well.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _They don 't need to keep pace feature-wise._
|
| Last I looked into it; the problem wasnt with features.
| The Chrome code base is very dynamic and if you fall
| behind then it becomes very hard to pull upstream patches
| due to the pace at which things get refactored.
| cjpearson wrote:
| Out of curiosity, does Google really have that many engineers
| working on Chromium? According to Wikipedia, Mozilla has ~750
| employees and only a subset of those are working on Firefox.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The repository gets 500 commits per day. Assume the average
| engineer manages about 1 commit per day. Thats about 500
| engineers working on it... [very rough, but ballpark
| correct].
|
| And remember some people might be working on
| experiments/research/ideas that never make it into the
| repo.
|
| And there are lots of libraries in other repos that kinda
| only exist for Chromium that Google also works on - eg. the
| Skia graphics library.
|
| But... on top of those engineers will be UX designers,
| managers, HR, finance, chefs, and all the other people who
| make an organisation work.
|
| I think 1000 is a good guess - maybe even 2000.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Former Mozilla employee here: A subset, yes, but also a
| majority. And it isn't enough.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Brave will probably be the only remaining chromium-based browser
| to have a solid adblock system that's low level enough to not be
| affected by the manifest changes.
|
| Vivaldi is great and all but they suck at privacy.
|
| Source: https://privacytests.org
| dagurp wrote:
| https://vivaldi.com/is/security/common-questions/#privacytes...
| drcongo wrote:
| > Vivaldi comes with [...] a built-in Mail and Calendar
|
| Why? Why on earth would anyone want those built into their web
| browser?
| zamalek wrote:
| Zawinski's Law. [1]
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_La...
| selykg wrote:
| Vivaldi is sort of the spiritual successor to Opera and Opera
| had those things built in and by the sounds of it, some people
| really enjoyed that.
|
| Just because you might not be interested does not mean others
| aren't.
| drcongo wrote:
| I get that, but that doesn't really answer the "why". I also
| wouldn't buy a fridge that had a built-in toaster.
| majou wrote:
| How about a water dispenser and ice machine?
|
| Mail and Calendar apps are mostly used from the browser now
| anwyay.
| drcongo wrote:
| Cold water and ice being dispensed from a thing that
| makes things cold? Makes sense.
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| How about a gaming console with a built-in chicken warmer?
| https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/
| drcongo wrote:
| Now we're talking.
| rickstanley wrote:
| Your "why" is exactly what selykg answered. To paraphrase:
| there are _some_ people that would like the convenience to
| have calendar and e-mail client in their browser, just
| because it 's already there and maybe intersects with the
| workflow. A niche? Maybe, but there's always someone.
| drcongo wrote:
| I guess the thing that's baffling me then is how they got
| there in the first place.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| In the 90s, the Internet was seen differently. The core
| functions - email! Shopping! Message boards! - were
| thought of as the pillars of what made up the World Wide
| Web. And so AOL and Netscape and others bundled the
| software into suites, where you got all your Internet
| stuff done. Mozilla used to be this way in its early
| days, before the web browser branched to Firefox.
|
| Opera did it, too, and Vivaldi is a spiritual successor
| to Opera.
|
| I switched to Vivaldi on Android because I didn't want to
| use Chrome, but Firefox on Android was doing two things
| that annoyed me: Reloading tabs when I navigate back to
| them after a long time ( which is a delay at best or
| loses the page state at worst) and as of six months ago,
| the screen would stutter when scrolling through pages
| like the New York Times.
|
| Anyway, I tried Vivaldi mobile and liked it, then decided
| I might like the sync features between desktop and
| mobile, so I now use it on desktop.
|
| And _then_ I decided to try their mail client, which
| "just works" for me and my light usage. I already have
| the browser up all the time, so I hit F4 and check my
| mail.
| coldacid wrote:
| Mozilla was like this too because it was (initially) the
| open sourced Netscape code, at least until they decided
| to throw most of it away and start over.
| Terretta wrote:
| > I also wouldn't buy a fridge that had a built-in toaster.
|
| Storing food and transforming food are not the same
| activity.
|
| However, "trivection" ovens that use 3 kinds of eat and
| also microwave or toast are increasingly popular, because
| people _very much_ like one thing that does several related
| things. (EDIT: Same story as the water + ice you agreed
| with below.)
|
| "Get my stuff that's online" or "do things online" is one
| of those same-headspace things large percentages of boomers
| grew up doing in one place (AOL, then Mozilla suite, Opera,
| etc.), and "portals" perpetuated today by Google and
| Microsoft except as web apps in browsers (Edge, Chrome)
| trying to be the portal wrapping the web apps, which the
| same people tend to hate.
|
| So Vivaldi gives the "one place" that works "one way" but
| doesn't feel like a weird web app you accidentally close a
| tab and lose everything.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Why not?
| BidensBikeRide wrote:
| Because I can access email online and my OS has a built in
| calendar
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Emacs has a mail reader.
|
| Why would anyone want a mail reader in their editor. /s
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Yeah... relying on Chromium and "don't be evil" Google definitely
| sounds like fun.
|
| It's sad that Firefox engine is so difficult to embed and we
| could have seen more projects using it.
| djbusby wrote:
| Or that Rust based renderer they were working on.
| solarkraft wrote:
| As far as I'm aware they integrated Servo into Firefox piece
| by piece.
| freediver wrote:
| Fun facts:
|
| There are as many project using Gecko as they are using WebKit
| (roughly). [1]
|
| Browser framework that Firefox is built on is called Quantum.
| Other Quantum browsers are LibreWolf, Tor, Pale Moon etc..
|
| Chrome and clones are based on Chromium.
|
| Interestingly there is no browser framework available for
| WebKit rendering engine and every WebKit browser has to be
| built from scratch on top of WebKit.
|
| Web rendering engine -> Browser framework -> Browser
|
| Blink -> Chromium -> Chrome, Edge, ...
|
| Gecko -> Quantum -> Firefox, LibreWolf, ...
|
| WebKit -> -> Safari, Orion, ...
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1492181669788356611/pho...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Pale Moon is not Quantum.
| kolme wrote:
| I'd say LibreWolf, Tor, Pale Moon, etc are not browsers based
| on Gecko. They are forks of Firefox with some modifications.
|
| The interface looks exactly the same.
|
| If you look for "embedding Gecko", all the documentation
| seems to be archived/deprecated. It doesn't seem to be
| supported by Mozilla anymore. And it was never easy.
| freediver wrote:
| They are forks of Quantum browser framework of which
| Firefox is one instance, like Chrome is one instance of
| "Chromium" browser framework.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The history of how Chromium got to such a dominant position is
| basically a history of Mozilla failing to see the next thing
| over the horizon.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Don't forget all the shady bundleware installers that tricked
| people into installing Chrome via Adobe Flash, Avast, etc.
| https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
| freediver wrote:
| Is it? Or is the case of Mozilla innovation being suppresed
| by the virtue of its almost entire revenue coming from the
| main competitor? "Failing to see" could easilly be imposed.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Yes, it's due to Mozilla failing to keep up.
|
| Possibly Google paying companies to bundle Chrome with their
| software installers had a part as well.
|
| Perhaps putting a Chrome advertisement to the Google homepage
| and recommending an "upgrade" to all Google visitors played a
| part too. Maybe.
| ldng wrote:
| It's not Mozilla failing to keep up, it's Mozilla growing
| an unhealthy, greedy and complacent middle-management fat.
| acdha wrote:
| Firefox's decline has been in progress for a long time,
| starting when Google deployed billions of dollars of
| Chrome ads and pushing users of Gmail, YouTube, etc. to
| switch, and as people moved onto mobile devices where
| Firefox couldn't run (iOS) or was at a disadvantage
| competing with the OS developer (everything else). Don't
| forget things like the video wars where Google made a
| promise to drop H.264 support in the name of openness,
| let Firefox suffer the compatibility hit, and then
| retracted that promise.
|
| Mozilla has made some bad decisions but we should
| acknowledge that a fair fraction of them were also
| flailing around trying to recover from those competitors'
| actions. I don't think Firefox OS would have happened if,
| for example, iOS allowed a real browser market.
| zaphar wrote:
| When Chrome came out it was unambiguously:
|
| * A safer browser. * A more performant browser.
|
| Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend
| everyone switch. Much the same was as when Firefox first
| came out it was unambiguously:
|
| * A safer browser. * A more performant browser.
|
| Which was more than enough for most of us to recommend
| everyone switch. The switching cost of a browser is quite
| low. The next browser to meet the above criteria will
| experience a similar jump in users. The challenge is in
| actually delivering a browser that can do so. The web
| standards are massively complex for many reasons, some of
| them legitimate. The barrier for entry is going up over
| time and shows no sign of slowing down.
| imbnwa wrote:
| I was coaching a HS debate team when Chrome dropped and
| all my students switched to Chrome organically with no
| input from myself, a techie, within a week of release.
| Don't even think they were running the ads yet, there was
| just the web comic.
| wolrah wrote:
| I think the biggest boost to Chrome's initial success was
| the fact that it's capable of installing entirely within
| the user profile, so unless a corporate IT department has
| gone out of their way to lock a system down an unprivileged
| user can install it for themself.
|
| Remember, Chrome was released in 2008. Internet Explorer,
| with almost 2/3 of the browser marketshare, was on version
| 7 at that time and a stupid number of corporate IT
| departments would continue to default to IE 6 rather than
| updating or fixing their ancient garbage applications for
| years to come.
|
| Chrome provided a way for power users to have a non-shitty
| browser, which then blossomed from there as more and more
| web sites made use of modern browser capabilities and
| worked worse and worse in corporate-mandated IE instances.
|
| Putting on my BOFH hat obviously I'm not the biggest fan of
| such "shadow IT" processes but I understand that they
| happen when needs and wants aren't being met and sometimes
| this is the most effective way to force a necessary change.
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's not even that. They had innovative things (arguably
| before the world was ready) and cancelled them.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Chromium got to be a dominant position because google nagged
| every user that visit google for a period of 10+ years to
| install chrome for a "better experience"
| misnome wrote:
| For at least the first half of that, it was completely
| true. One single change to make crashing sites stop
| crashing the browser.
|
| And, despite it being google - they don't force me into the
| options menu to remove advertising off of my Home Screen,
| and have never forcibly installed extensions advertising TV
| shows.
| danielheath wrote:
| "Failing to see" is one explanation. "Struggling to keep
| pace" is another; there's really quite a lot of work involved
| in keeping up with web standards.
| pygy_ wrote:
| And, surprisingly, Google has more employees on WICG (the
| W3C standards incubator) than all other relevant parties
| added together.
| piva00 wrote:
| Instead of regulatory capture they are going for the
| standards' committee capture... I'm curious about other
| cases of corporations taking over standards' committees,
| anyone else has examples?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Most standards committees are either built from or
| heavily influenced by the corporate interests that are
| directly impacted by the standards.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Well, unsurprisingly. The nature of the web ties 100%
| into everything Google does as a company. It's not just
| in their vested interest to be involved in that system;
| it's an existential underpinning to their company, akin
| to General Motor's interest in rubber standards.
| pygy_ wrote:
| That is also true of Mozilla and Facebook, and probably
| others...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Not really surprising given that W3c is basically a
| subsidiary of Google at this point rubber-stamping any
| change to "standards" that google wants
| causi wrote:
| Personally I'd split it into two eras. The first is "Chrome
| arises as a faster browser and then gimps performance of
| Google services like Youtube on non-Chrome browsers" which
| lost Firefox half its market share. The second era is
| "Mozilla waters-down the essence of Firefox by vainly trying
| to recapture Chrome's market share while ignoring what its
| core userbase actually liked about Firefox."
| folkrav wrote:
| How did Mozilla "water-down" their own essence? Is it about
| that old XUL debate again?
| causi wrote:
| Just one among many other choices. Adding garbage content
| like suggested stories. Removing one method of
| customizing the UI without implementing a new one. The
| pile of flaming garbage that Firefox Mobile became after
| the transition to Firefox for Android. Continually
| dropping options out of about:config and userchrome.css.
| It goes on and on.
| jamespo wrote:
| All of those are niche features that will not hold back
| the tide of Chrome
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Did Google gimp performance on their services or did
| Mozilla not spend the resources to keep up?
|
| I can confirm that Google didn't wasn't testing on Firefox
| first as of the early-to-mid 2010s, but that was an
| efficiency-of-testing decision; how much should a company
| spend on testing a browser with a sub-10% market share?
| causi wrote:
| For example, they created a Youtube redesign which relied
| on a deprecated API that only Chrome implemented. It was
| deliberate and resulted in a 500% slowdown for Firefox
| and Edge users. It was and is a systematic campaign to
| use Google properties to damage the user experience of
| competing browsers.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| So Mozilla didn't implement a deprecated API that would
| have made video 500% faster on the largest video site on
| the planet.
|
| ... That sounds like it's on Mozilla.
| abdulmuhaimin wrote:
| no. its called deprecated API for a reason.
|
| Its deprecated
| shadowgovt wrote:
| _shrug_ To do my actual job, I have to implement on
| deprecated APIs all the time. Deprecation is a
| declaration of intent, but intent rams into reality and
| changes continuously.
|
| There are two types of deprecated APIs: ones nobody uses
| and ones everybody uses. Sounds like Mozilla mis-guessed
| on which one of those Shadow Dom v0 would be.
|
| (From my limited experience: I bet while the Chrome team
| was trying to deprecate shadow dom v0, YouTube, which
| still operates as a pretty independent arm inside the
| Google ecosystem, built a new system on Polymer and in
| terms of Google's management architecture, nobody has
| authority to tell them not to do that. Far from an
| intentional shafting of other browsers, it was likely a
| failure to coordinate internally coupled with total
| apathy regarding what that meant for other browsers,
| since from YouTube's point of view, Chrome is free and
| available to everyone.
|
| Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by
| disorganized-bag-of-cats management style).
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > It's sad that Firefox engine is so difficult to embed and we
| could have seen more projects using it.
|
| Not on Android, it isn't. https://geckoview.dev
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| not just ad blocking, user scripts are going away too.
|
| Next year is going to be the year of Firefox. Mozilla team intend
| to keep these APIs around.
| gorhill wrote:
| It looks like it's being worked on, see
| <https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279>.
| hunkins wrote:
| Having built something that had to use the netRequest API due to
| new extensions being forced into MV3, I can attest to it being
| viciously limited and complex.
|
| Ads will win if MV3 is mass adopted and enforced. Time to set-up
| Pi-hole.
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(page generated 2022-09-23 23:02 UTC)