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Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

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Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#111

Post by whywhywhywhy »

smaddock wrote: post #19

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.* I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0]. - Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idi…

I remember some people saying Safari's extension changes and specific content blocker API would be a good thing because ad blockers would use less resources.

The change happened, uBlock Origin broke for Safari and here we are several years later and the Safari ad blocker ecosystem is an absolute joke and most of it barely works or demands subscription fees (and the ones that do are certainly not worth paying for because they don't even block YT ads)

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#112

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #21

if you haven't already use Firefox and recognize that this is a fundamental question of freedom and whether you want the internet to be controlled by dystopian corporate advertisement monoliths or institutions that care about your rights. Every time this comes up and 80% of discussions is about whether the tab bar in firefox is flat or three pixels wide instead of five makes me more depressed

[deleted]

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#115

Post by zarzavat »

hnlmorg wrote: post #100
vadfa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blink is better than Gecko. Why would someone who intends to create a new browser do so using Gecko?

For literally the reasons we're already discussing: to offer an alternative to Chrome. If every browser is based on Chromium then you're not really offering an alternative to Google Chrome because Google still own the supply chain. Not only in terms of your new browser's rendering engine but also in terms of website owners being vindicated in targeting Chrome. The only way to offer a legitimate counterargument to Chr…

I think that's backwards. Gecko requires constant and expensive work to keep up with Blink. And it has been falling behind.

Whereas Blink gets that work for free from Google.

If you want to offer a legitimate counter argument to Chrome by using Gecko then you have to find some way to bring in the hundreds of millions of dollars of necessary funding to bring Gecko up to Blink's quality.

If you want to create a counter argument to Chrome using Blink, then you have everything you need already.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#116

Post by joelthelion »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
Barrin92 wrote: post #21

if you haven't already use Firefox and recognize that this is a fundamental question of freedom and whether you want the internet to be controlled by dystopian corporate advertisement monoliths or institutions that care about your rights. Every time this comes up and 80% of discussions is about whether the tab bar in firefox is flat or three pixels wide instead of five makes me more depressed

Fair criticism of Firefox is that it is dependent on Mozilla 'the org' which is a pretty shaky foundation to base such a critical component on. Witness the exodus of even die hard supporters over the last couple of years. That has nothing to do with minor UI details.

Mozilla for all its flaws is far, far preferable to Google as a steward of the web.

Switching to Firefox should be a no-brainer for people who care about the future of the web.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#117

Post by 0-_-0 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #21

if you haven't already use Firefox and recognize that this is a fundamental question of freedom and whether you want the internet to be controlled by dystopian corporate advertisement monoliths or institutions that care about your rights. Every time this comes up and 80% of discussions is about whether the tab bar in firefox is flat or three pixels wide instead of five makes me more depressed

FWIW, you can adjust the tab bar by editing UserChrome.css, I use this:

  .tab-content {
     background: #ffffff20 !important;
     border-radius: 4px 4px 4px 4px !important;
     margin-bottom: 4px !important;
     margin-top: 4px !important;
   }

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#118

Post by A_Venom_Roll »

nottorp wrote: post #44
irjustin wrote: post #37

For me (I imagine a lot of others as well), it's simple. If Chrome removes adblock, I'm going back to Firefox. HN ilk don't represent a good target market. Can't really make money off traditionally tracked ads off of us. FWIW, I love Chrome, still do. I've been here since those entirely useless but super viral and catchy speed test ad/vids. It worked on me. I love the debugger as a web developer, more so than Firebug…

I don't see the point in using an ad blocker but running Chrome. It's not like Google would allow the ad blocker to filter their own tracking. Sadly, the only option seems to be Firefox and the niche browsers.

Not OP, but the main reason for me to use adblockers is not to prevent tracking, but to block ads. This alone makes websites load significantly faster and it sometimes prevents dozens of annoying ads per webpage.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#119

Post by ayushnix »

irjustin wrote: post #37

For me (I imagine a lot of others as well), it's simple. If Chrome removes adblock, I'm going back to Firefox. HN ilk don't represent a good target market. Can't really make money off traditionally tracked ads off of us. FWIW, I love Chrome, still do. I've been here since those entirely useless but super viral and catchy speed test ad/vids. It worked on me. I love the debugger as a web developer, more so than Firebug…

> For me (I imagine a lot of others as well), it's simple. If Chrome removes adblock, I'm going back to Firefox.

uBO is already hampered and less powerful on Chromium based browsers right now (CNAME un-cloaking doesn't happen). I imagine this will keep on happening with the advent of Manifest v2.

Not sure if gorhill will choose to maintain different codebases for different browsers.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#120

Post by tfehring »

blitzar wrote: post #103
quonn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the UI is finally good on macOS. The only thing I find strange now is the button-like tab style. Which seems like a minor issue.

But does it still halve my battery life?

Yes, at least as of a month ago.
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