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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

#131

Post by axegon_ »

wow00 wrote: post #13
axegon_ wrote: post #6

Many years ago I published a small extension for common functions I use on daily basis(hashing, url encoding and decoding) for quick access as opposed to either opening a random site or some scripting language. If my memory is correct, I can kiss it goodbye(no idea where or even if I have a copy of the source code). Oh well... As for ad-blockers, funny enough I used to be firmly against them until not that long ago -…

Totally agree on that, I used the web without an ad blocker for years before going back due to having too many ads on YouTube, Google is slowly closing their walls and I may end up on Firefox at this rate

Firefox has always felt a bit clunky to me hence the reason why I went with brave: it's built on top of chromium but with a built-in adblocker, also some crypto rewards if you are into that(I'm not). Give it a go if you ask me.

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

#132

Post by aembleton »

joelthelion wrote: post #114

I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?

Probably because v2 extensions haven't been switched off yet. It might be different in January 2023; or maybe the limited adblocking of v3 will be enough for most people. Time will tell.

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

#133

Post by ravenstine »

lazybreather wrote: post #110
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

I have a stupid idea. But first, a bunch of questions: - Can you legally advertise a product you're not affiliated with? Is this OK by the ToS of major ad networks? - Is it possible to target ads by user's browser? I'm thinking, maybe we should crowdfund a public interest ad, targeted at people browsing from Chrome, with some attention-grabbing art or distracting colors, and a clear message: "Want to stop seeing this…

Make this happen and I am going to do my best to publicize this. On the other hand, chrome is making it increasingly tough to use any other browser by sheer intuitive and useful features. Grouping tabs for eg. I know other would do it one day. But there is a lag. I wonder why other browsers (OSS) do not straight up copy any good features and release. Assuming there is good enough dev resources. Or is it really that h…

Other browsers don't so what you say or are slow to do so for the same reason that the EFF will likely never publicize such an ad campaign against ad-blocking. Not-for-profit organizations of all kinds optimize for either wasting revenue or wasting effort. Just look at where all these organizations are, like Mozilla/Wikimedia/EFF, compared to where they were 15 years ago. They consume more and more money while doing proportionally less with that money. What would have been obvious decisions back then that could be implemented in short order now require bureaucracy that ultimately sidelines what's important for what will inflate the egos of suits. (The same happens to for-profit companies, but that's usually more a function of time and scale rather than time and incentive.)

I suppose there are browsers like Brave that would be in the position to implement Chrome features, which I guess happens by default. But let's just say in the situation where Chrome implements something that doesn't show up downstream in Chromium; Brave's interests might not be in competing directly with Chrome but focusing efforts on BAT/crypto and replacing ads.

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

#134

Post by 12ian34 »

moonchrome wrote: post #93
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

Didn't Mozilla fire their devtools team ? FF devtools weren't up to Chrome as-is, and doesn't sound like they ever will be. FF seems like a sinking ship, not worth investing time in. TBH I'm perfectly happy with Chrome and using Google accounts. The benefits of my data following me around seamlessly far outweighs the downsides of Google having access to it.

To your second point, what does Chrome's browser sync do that Firefox Sync doesn't?

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

#135

Post by commoner »

Mirioron wrote: post #97
tjpnz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android it's freaking fantastic. Everything feels snappier and I can utilise uBlock Origin to block all of the BS. I've set this up for family, friends etc and none have gone back to Chrome. I think the biggest issue is marketing.

Have they fixed the scrolling? For years the scrolling in mobile Firefox felt bad/off. At one point I just gave up on trying to make it work.

This was fixed for me in November 2017 when Async Pan/Zoom (APZ) was implemented:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/async-panzoom-apz-lands-in...

Also, Firefox 79+ on Android (August 2020) performs significantly better than older versions, despite having lost many features in the rewrite. The current version might meet your expectations.

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

#136

Post by cinquemb »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #105
cinquemb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who wouldn't mind if Mozilla post Eich can die under a metadata drone strike (doubly so for google) and will still use my FF fork and avoid chrome/chromium based browsers like the plague, brave, seems like they are willing to build in support for decentralized (to me at least) and p2p web directly into the browser (rather than leave it up to potentially less performant 3rd party extensions which may be ok,…

why cant brave build on top of firefox?

See Brendan's response to me last week[0], which I think comes down to feature set they want to support rather than do all the work it would require to build that in servo now (they went from gecko [no public info on this] -> electron -> and now chromium. they would have to migrate from chromium -> servo).

I wish they did, and just cared less about all the other features that were missing from gecko (but that's just be being selfish and not wanting to build out native stuff myself lol)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28605711

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

#137

Post by mnadkvlb »

yesenadam wrote: post #65
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they keep making stupid UI)UX choices than alienate their users Cannot overstate this enough. They keep randomly changing their UI constantly , and it's especially frustrating when you have a bunch of custom CSS. I'm a bunch of versions behind & dreading updating because I don't want to spend the hours it'll take to fix my shit for their new version. I honestly hate this browser so much at this point, but e…

I don't want to update, when the update is to something that looks horrible. (Last update I spent hours googling for scripts to reverse the appearance changes. Seems there were 1000s of people looking for the same thing!) But in FF preferences there are only 2 choices. 1. Automatically install updates (recommended) 2. Check for updates but let you choose to install them You would think I'd choose option 2, since I do…

I had exact same experience. changed the registry settings in windows and am fine. Didn't have the nerves to find how to do on my mac and am just clicking discard every time. Annoying indeed. i wonder most of this shit is probably from the mozilla funding requirements to nerf the browser.

For eg. why tf would you put a separate scroll menu on tab right click to close tabs on left or right, it saves literally 1 row. and increases every single tab change to two clicks. UI disaster!!

i hope some group forks firefox and i will happily donate. But, due to current mozilla ceo siphoning money, not gonna donate a penny.

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

#138

Post by mmis1000 »

aembleton wrote: post #132
joelthelion wrote: post #114

I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?

Probably because v2 extensions haven't been switched off yet. It might be different in January 2023; or maybe the limited adblocking of v3 will be enough for most people. Time will tell.

Ad providers are obfuscating domains to bypass blocks. Currently only ublock origin deobfuscate and block based on the original domain.(It is supported on firefox only anyway) But after the change... I guess no one on chrome can do. And ad blocking will be totally useless at that point.

See also: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

Mirioron wrote: post #97
tjpnz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android it's freaking fantastic. Everything feels snappier and I can utilise uBlock Origin to block all of the BS. I've set this up for family, friends etc and none have gone back to Chrome. I think the biggest issue is marketing.

Have they fixed the scrolling? For years the scrolling in mobile Firefox felt bad/off. At one point I just gave up on trying to make it work.

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by estebank »

yesenadam wrote: post #65
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they keep making stupid UI)UX choices than alienate their users Cannot overstate this enough. They keep randomly changing their UI constantly , and it's especially frustrating when you have a bunch of custom CSS. I'm a bunch of versions behind & dreading updating because I don't want to spend the hours it'll take to fix my shit for their new version. I honestly hate this browser so much at this point, but e…

I don't want to update, when the update is to something that looks horrible. (Last update I spent hours googling for scripts to reverse the appearance changes. Seems there were 1000s of people looking for the same thing!) But in FF preferences there are only 2 choices. 1. Automatically install updates (recommended) 2. Check for updates but let you choose to install them You would think I'd choose option 2, since I do…

Not wanting to install browser updates is no different to asking "how do I turn this yellow light in my car's dashboard? I know! I'll put tape over it!". Granted, the update might come with UI changes. Changing oil in your car won't do that. That can be annoying, but whether something looks "horrible" is completely subjective. That's fine. You can rely on userChrome.css[1] to customize things more in Firefox than in any other browser.

Personally, I've gone from "customize every last pixel" to just using things the way the designers wanted me to use things. I like having flexibility and configuration toggles, that I use often, but I'm much happier now without trying to customize things for customization's sake.

[1]: https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html

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