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What’s going on in the world of extensions

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Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#11

Post by Vinnl »

dessant wrote: post #7

Firefox no longer allows extensions to have full control over requests in Manifest V3, despite their repeated public statements. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1786919 They have merged a change that makes it impossible to access and download certain website content the user is viewing and wants to process. Now that Firefox has introduced this limitation without offering an alternative, it is now much ea…

That bug reads to me like that functionality is not yet implemented, because they're still figuring out how to securely add that back in. However, since MV2 is still supported, I don't see the problem here — this is just the first public release of some MV3 functionality, but full feature parity is still being worked on (Service Workers aren't supported yet either, for an example that affects my extension).

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#12

Post by dessant »

Vinnl wrote: post #11
dessant wrote: post #7

Firefox no longer allows extensions to have full control over requests in Manifest V3, despite their repeated public statements. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1786919 They have merged a change that makes it impossible to access and download certain website content the user is viewing and wants to process. Now that Firefox has introduced this limitation without offering an alternative, it is now much ea…

That bug reads to me like that functionality is not yet implemented, because they're still figuring out how to securely add that back in. However, since MV2 is still supported, I don't see the problem here — this is just the first public release of some MV3 functionality, but full feature parity is still being worked on (Service Workers aren't supported yet either, for an example that affects my extension).

You think it's fine to invite developers to begin porting extensions to Manifest V3, and then kneecap their work a couple of months later as they port their extensions, while also telling them to open new bug reports in which they need to spend time defending general-purpose computing? This is not a missing feature, but a limitation that has been added only to Firefox.

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#13

Post by dspillett »

tomComb wrote: post #5

Need we play such language games? It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. If you asked the average user about their privacy preserving add-on, or their content blocker they would probably be confused. Yes, obviously I understand the privacy dimensions of advertising, and I realize that this is all in the service of the good guys and against the bad guys, but that shouldn't affect our response to…

> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads.

I use them, and DNS filters, to block stalking. They just happen to block adverts too because it is practically impossible to separate the two ATM. I'll accept ads based on the page I'm looking at and my rough geographical position, but I don't see why I should put up with being followed and profiled everywhere I go.

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#15

Post by CharlesW »

tomComb wrote: post #5

Need we play such language games? It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. If you asked the average user about their privacy preserving add-on, or their content blocker they would probably be confused. Yes, obviously I understand the privacy dimensions of advertising, and I realize that this is all in the service of the good guys and against the bad guys, but that shouldn't affect our response to…

> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads.

But crucially, not just ads — they block trackers, known malware source, etc. "Content blockers" encompasses everything that these tools do.

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#16

Post by roter »

contravariant wrote: post #3

Ah so this is why they messed up the overflow menu. Kind of hoping I can actually order the extensions at some point though, it's a bit messy if you can no longer control which extensions are in the overflow menu or what order they're in.

extensions.unifiedExtensions.enabled: false

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#17

Post by Vinnl »

dessant wrote: post #12
Vinnl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That bug reads to me like that functionality is not yet implemented, because they're still figuring out how to securely add that back in. However, since MV2 is still supported, I don't see the problem here — this is just the first public release of some MV3 functionality, but full feature parity is still being worked on (Service Workers aren't supported yet either, for an example that affects my extension).

You think it's fine to invite developers to begin porting extensions to Manifest V3, and then kneecap their work a couple of months later as they port their extensions, while also telling them to open new bug reports in which they need to spend time defending general-purpose computing? This is not a missing feature, but a limitation that has been added only to Firefox.

As long as it's clear that it's an initial exploration and that not everything is possible yet, sure. It was clear to me, though admittedly I'm probably paying closer attention than most, so I'm not representative — it might indeed be that communication could have been better.

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#18

Post by [deleted] »

dessant wrote: post #7

Firefox no longer allows extensions to have full control over requests in Manifest V3, despite their repeated public statements. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1786919 They have merged a change that makes it impossible to access and download certain website content the user is viewing and wants to process. Now that Firefox has introduced this limitation without offering an alternative, it is now much ea…

[deleted]

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#19

Post by sp332 »

tomComb wrote: post #5

Need we play such language games? It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. If you asked the average user about their privacy preserving add-on, or their content blocker they would probably be confused. Yes, obviously I understand the privacy dimensions of advertising, and I realize that this is all in the service of the good guys and against the bad guys, but that shouldn't affect our response to…

Yes, it's in bold even.

If ads give you the ick, then one distinction we’ve made around ad blockers has been especially crucial to privacy-lovers everywhere.

Re: What’s going on in the world of extensions

#20

Post by evilpie »

dessant wrote: post #7

Firefox no longer allows extensions to have full control over requests in Manifest V3, despite their repeated public statements. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1786919 They have merged a change that makes it impossible to access and download certain website content the user is viewing and wants to process. Now that Firefox has introduced this limitation without offering an alternative, it is now much ea…

Did you ever get around to communicating your use-case to the developers?
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