Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge
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I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you're talking about the recent news, that's not what the updated privacy notice says.
Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say "btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party." I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.
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Sam Reichfox
The only way to learn, is by playing
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The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: "This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it." Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking "Manage extension" and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft's documentation, however, still says "TBD," so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of "unexpected changes" coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge's stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
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If you don't want to be compatible with what millions of websites are written in (because that's the complicated part), you now have to convince all of them to invest lots of money to migrate to your new web standard... Good luck...
You don't have to replace the html web. If a new system was sufficiently fun to create with, people might use it for all kinds of cool new projects. Kind of like Flash used to be. You'd go there for a specific thing you heard about.
A new web free of cruft might turn out to be cheaper to develop for, and that might appeal to the corporate types. Maybe useful for intranet type apps where the browser is specified anyway and you have a captive audience.
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Amarok? That was my favorite media player way back when
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Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you're a web power-user / developer sort of person
Works on android?
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Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you're a web power-user / developer sort of person
Zen's glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
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Why let the streaming services tell you what you can or can't watch videos on when you can just pirate everything?
Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can't find 4k versions of movies on physical media.
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Just in case you needed another reason not to use Edge.
Chrome* or Chromium based browsers*
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Works on android?
It's desktop-only right now and feels like for the foreseeable future. Firefox sync works between Zen and Firefox so you can just run Firefox or one of the Android-specific versions of Firefox that support the generic/vanilla firefox sync.
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Does not elicit the image of iron.
Oh, it's libre.
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Amarok? That was my favorite media player way back when
Amarok is the other wolf. I know it looks deceptively similar.
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BSD licensed
Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.
(I almost just said "copyleft," but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)
Truly; it's shocking how much people are still clinging to permissive licensing in the middle of everything going on.
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Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on what we've learned works on standard browsers? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/CSS, have a new UI layout system that's simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.
I feel like this sort of thing should be more modular. Maybe on Linux we could in theory have multiple packages that could have different implementations and the browser UI would just use the underlying packages with their specific extras on top.
That would also align well with the Unix philosophy of each component “doing one thing well” and composing small tools to achieve complex tasks.
But discussing this with an LLM, it pointed out that “Browser engines are among the most complex software systems in existence. Breaking them apart would require a deep understanding of their internals and a clear vision for how the pieces should interact” which is fair.
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Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can't find 4k versions of movies on physical media.
you can buy a normal physical version then pirate the 4K file
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Zen's glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
I was concerned, but it's not Wiki style.
It's just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.
Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven't fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven't looked into disabling it.
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Yes.
I really appreciate the honesty, thank you. I not don't have to care that those downvotes are rational.
Following this same logic I imagine you downvote any treatments that extend the life of cancer patients because the new treatments aren't full cures.
Except in this case, the full cure also exists already and you're trying to push the temporary treatment instead, for no good reason.
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I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?
I imagine so, but the technical burden is at risk of growing over time as the upstream chromium may significantly deviate from or remove some of the functionality.
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Zen was amazing when they first came to light, but they keep changing how workflows work, and it destroyed the workflow I had.
For example, I am a browser minimalist. I don't need workspaces, and I don't have thousands of tabs open, because that's insane to me, personally. I now have to see the ugly Default Workspace at the top of my tab bar every time I go to open or switch tabs. This was an option before, so it was perfectly fine. They've taken that option away, which is very much not okay. Options are good. They also messed around with the New Tab icon, making it to where I couldn't move it to the bottom where I prefer it to be, instead putting it at the top, which is extra movement needed to get to the top.. They later added that back in, but again, why the fuck are you just willy nilly taking options away from people? It should just be an OPTION.
Anyway, I've had so many headaches with their approach to changing workflows that I don't even recommend it to anyone any longer. I'm sure I'm just the crazy person who wants some of the offerings, while not being FORCED to use some of the others.
To be fair it's still alpha software, things are basically guaranteed to change until they reach a stable state. I've enjoyed it so far though
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Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on what we've learned works on standard browsers? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/CSS, have a new UI layout system that's simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.
Probably a lot like Gemini web. No, not the AI bauble.
