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Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

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Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#32

Post by dragontamer »

jagger27 wrote: post #20

United States v. Microsoft was 20 years ago. Is there nobody left at Microsoft who remembers that?

Apple's default web browser is Safari on iOS and no one ever sued Apple over it.

At some point, you have to just recognize that the world is different today. The general market has accepted walled garden OSes with anti-competitive behavior towards common applications.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#34

Post by aaomidi »

cronix wrote: post #22

So far in the last year or so, I've heard 0 reasons why I'd even need, want or benefit from Win11 over Win10. Tons of reasons in the negative column though. There isn't even anything to salivate over that might make you think it might be worth it to deal with the other tradeoffs. Hard pass.

Mainly wslg, which has vgpu support for consumer gpus.

That's about it.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#35

Post by mattowen_uk »

quasarj wrote: post #24

What in the love of God is a "microsoft-edge://" link, and why would someone willingly click it? This sounds like non-news.

it's a link buried inside a lot of the bundled utilities in Windows. It forces URLs to use Edge as the browser instead of your chosen default one.

Windows 11 has a news & weather popup widget that sits down by the clock, in which you can click on the live tiles shown to take you to more info on the web. This widget uses microsoft-edge:// URI scheme so Edge is ALWAYS invoked.

Mozilla tried to hack their way around it, and it's been a few weeks of cat and mouse on it. At the moment, MS are winning.

It's like they've totally forgotten the events of the IE anti-trust stuff.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#36

Post by peakaboo »

josephcsible wrote: post #23
cronix wrote: post #22

So far in the last year or so, I've heard 0 reasons why I'd even need, want or benefit from Win11 over Win10. Tons of reasons in the negative column though. There isn't even anything to salivate over that might make you think it might be worth it to deal with the other tradeoffs. Hard pass.

Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay secure.

Or you can use another operating system you actually like. That way you are contributing to the solution and not the problem.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#37

Post by monocasa »

jagger27 wrote: post #20

United States v. Microsoft was 20 years ago. Is there nobody left at Microsoft who remembers that?

I've heard a rumour that the Microsoft anti trust actions in the states were more a proxy war to get Microsoft to play nice with the federal government wrt 'lawful intercept'.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#38

Post by majormunky »

cosmotic wrote: post #8

As far as I know, the workaround is no longer needed https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-re...

The fix from that article has to do with how one would go about setting a different default browser. Earlier, they had to do this by associating the browser with filetypes, so, someone would have to make multiple changes to fully set their browser default. Now, you can just set the browser like you would think.

The issue at hand though has to do with other links within windows that open web pages. Microsoft had used a different protocol (not https, but, something like microsoft-edge://). I think these links are like news items that show up in the start menu, etc. There was no way to set Firefox to open these links with what Windows provided, it only opened in Edge. A program was written that listens for these protocols, and would let the user customize what program opened with those links were clicked. Microsoft has now shut that option down.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#39

Post by josephcsible »

peakaboo wrote: post #36
josephcsible wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay secure.

Or you can use another operating system you actually like. That way you are contributing to the solution and not the problem.

It sounds to me like GP wants to stay on Windows 10. I agree Linux is better, but if you want that, you can move to it whenever you want completely independent of Windows 11.
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