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Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

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Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#781

Post by cptskippy »

wlll wrote: post #760
SimonPStevens wrote: post #727

I say this all the time when this kind of thing comes up. Please use Firefox! Even if it's worse. Even if its slower[1]. Even if it doesn't have that one feature or bug fix that you personally consider really important. Just use Firefox anyway. Find a workaround. Suffer whatever it is you dislike about Firefox because in the end if we don't act as individuals against the chrome monopoly then google are going to own t…

I switched to FireFox I think about a year ago. I prefer Chrome for sure. It full screens video properly (which I need to automatically trigger turning off f.lux), it seemed faster, it does spell checking of form fields. I'm sticking with Firefox though as these features aren't much of a hindrance compared to the increasingly shitty behaviour of Google, and one benefit is that my Macbook Pro (2014, max spec), doesn't…

> it does spell checking of form fields.

So does FireFox, other than Form Fields where else would one need/use spellcheck? I wonder what's been done to yours so that it doesn't.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#782

Post by behringer »

josteink wrote: post #562
Mirioron wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn't Firefox require that godawful add-on signing?

Yes, but so does Chrome. In that regard, Firefox is not a worse option, just equally suboptimal.

Signing is pretty important. Without signing anybody could surreptitiously replace your addon with something else.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#783

Post by amelius »

danShumway wrote: post #504
RealityVoid wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the idea of having a small (likely secret) list of browser behaviors that reward users, rather than punishing them. It makes it feel more like a game or a cheat code or easter egg to me than a heavy handed lecture. While that is nice, you run the risk of nobody noticing. For some strange reason, I wanted to comment to your post and you didn't have a reply button initially. I had to refresh and then is showed…

Agreed, but the point is specifically not to nag people -- I don't think that works for Open Source communities; people just get mad. So yeah, tradeoffs. To put it specifically in advertising terms, I'm also optimizing for conversion rate, not impressions. I'll make a (light) prediction that the few people who know in advance about a system like this will be more likely to try out a browser to save a dollar than they…

I like this idea. You could perhaps add a small logo that says "optimized for Firefox and AdBlocked browsers".

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#784

Post by nostalgk »

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

My one issue with Firefox is the disk usage. Running on an internal SSD, the entire browser still slows to a crawl for 30+ seconds upon opening, regardless of the previous tabs open (although if a video is there, it takes even longer).

I've done all the tweaks and configurations found online, and nothing has made a marked improvement whatsoever. Not going to switch, but it's incredibly frustrating.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#785

Post by nh2 »

dmos62 wrote: post #648
nh2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has significant performance and correctness problems. * Multi-second UI jank/freeze ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546847 ) * HTTP2 is broken, infinite-stalls and internal errors surface if you upload enough files ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540574 ) * WebGL is very slow on Linux ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1010527 ) * High CPU on Linux even when in the…

> High CPU on Linux Provided this is anecdotal evidence, in my experience it's the opposite. I gained an enormous amount of performance-related comfort after switching to Linux Firefox from Windows Firefox/Chrome (where a JS-heavy web site that I use frequently would cause memory overflow and would stall the laptop). I've not experienced any problems with CPU usage since. I've not experienced the other problems eithe…

I can't really speak to the Windows (FF/Chrome) -> Linux (FF) switch, but I have seen so many Windows setups that 100%-CPU-loop for unknown (likely browser unrelated) reasons that I would not be surprised if people considered switching to what I experience now a major improvement :)

> You make it sound like Firefox is heavily broken for everyone. That's not the case.

I didn't say it's unusable. But these things matter. If you get constantly annoyed by such things and you know that with Chromium this annoyance would stop, it is no surprise people use Chromium a lot and claim it's "faster". If we want them to be happy Firefox users, this has to be fixed.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#786

Post by bad_user »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #759
bad_user wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How so? I've been a Firefox user ever since the beginning and I can't remember once when they violated my trust. It seems to me that Mozilla is held to much higher standards in this community. I often see a huge double standard.

The Looking Glass extension, the whole deal with pocket, and Studies being on by default and allowing them to push changes remotely with no user action. I don't use Firefox currently, so these are just what I recall from HN posts.

I love Pocket, I love seeing them experiment with such services and I don’t get what the big deal is.

Sure they could have pushed it as an extension instead, but note that nowadays Mozilla owns it so the issue is irrelevant.

The source code for the Looking Glass extension was open source and was a mistake, they are only human.

Nowadays every platform maker has the capability to push changes via updates. This increases security for regular users and it’s what the default should be. I agree that there needs to be a way to turn off these updates for power users.

No, those issues haven’t violated my trust in them and when you compare it with what companies like Google are doing, the double standard should be clear as day.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#787

Post by estranhosidade »

microcolonel wrote: post #153
ljm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink. Electron, various browsers that are just skins over the embedded framework... We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013! Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome. The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong competitors in t…

> This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink Chromium is generally fine, until Google packages it as Chrome. The issues are not inherent to Chromium, they're failures of principle at Google. I know people like the idea, in concept, of engine diversity on the web, but the alternatives are terrible. Anyone who says that Firefox runs anywhere near as well as Chrom…

>On top of this, in my experience, I've found the Firefox UI extremely frustrating.

Amen! I mean, the layout look as if it were something made in the early 2000s

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#788

Post by SquareWheel »

shawnz wrote: post #766
SquareWheel wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying. They're not lying. This was listed as one of the reasons by Google. >The declarativeNetRequest API provides better privacy to users because extensions can't actually read the network requests made on the user's behalf. https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReques...

What I mean is the fact that they are deprecating the blocking API. That wasn't an action taken for privacy's sake. Otherwise, why wouldn't they deprecate the observational API too?

I don't know. It's a very fair question.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#789

Post by lkbm »

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

I've had significant performance problems with Firefox recently. It's always felt less snappy than Chrome, but it got much worse these past few weeks -- every time I try to close a window, it would freeze with a busy spinner for 3+ seconds, often 5-10 seconds.

I did a profile refresh last night and I think it's resolved the primary issues (despite retaining all my extensions). If it hadn't, I would have seriously considered switching to Brave or Chrome.

Ideologically, I believe it's very, very important to support Firefox, and I also think the work they're doing with the Stylo, Quantum, etc. is very exciting, but performance issues with the UI itself got me off of Firefox for years once before, and almost did it again recently. (The first time it happened it was shortly after they started using sqlite, and I suspect that both of these instances were sqlite/profile data issues.)

From my own personal experience, UI speed (partly influenced by "bad" profile data) is the area where Firefox is failing, and the only thing that keeps me from unabashedly telling everyone I know that Firefox is better (user-experience-wise).

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#790

Post by nh2 »

snazz wrote: post #748
nh2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has significant performance and correctness problems. * Multi-second UI jank/freeze ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546847 ) * HTTP2 is broken, infinite-stalls and internal errors surface if you upload enough files ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540574 ) * WebGL is very slow on Linux ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1010527 ) * High CPU on Linux even when in the…

I’m guessing most people don’t suffer from the first issue because they don’t have 800 tabs open? The bug reports were very nicely done, however. I’d recommend using bookmarks instead of keeping tabs open and unloaded, but I do think that insane numbers of tabs should be something that Firefox can handle.

> 800 tabs

As you commented, most of them are unloaded and only 10-20 are actually "real tabs". Have also tested with less by now, same problem.

On Chrome on Android I have more tabs, 16x less RAM and 50x less CPU power, and it doesn't jank at all, so this seems solvable.

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