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What’s going on in the world of extensions

blog.mozilla.org

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

#41

Post by m-p-3 »

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…

not only ad-blocking for me, but also for automatically stripping superfluous url parameters that are detrimental to privacy when sharing a link.

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

#42

Post by NegativeLatency »

tommica wrote: post #8
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…

No fucking way - I guess its time to setup pihole again

FWIW I switched to adguard home and it's been much more reliable for me

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

#43

Post by karaterobot »

> The panel shows the user’s installed and enabled extensions and their current permissions. Users are free to grant ongoing access to a website or to make that decision per visit and can remove, report, and manage extensions and their permissions directly from the toolbar.

Does anybody know whether this change allows me (the user) to grant an extension permission to a specific, arbitrary domain only? That is, to take an extension which wants permission to read and write every website, and sandbox it to only a particular set of user-defined domains? Have wanted this for a while.

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

#44

Post by 4bpp »

jakear wrote: post #28

It's upsetting to see all this corporate double-speak when Firefox fails to support the most basic extension functionally: the User Agent should allow the User to run their own code on their own machine without any requirement of phoning home to the manufacturer. This is currently impossible on Firefox as they forget extension loaded from local files to be removed after. The force everyone who wants to run their own…

> It is difficult to understand where the HN vulpephillia comes from.

I imagine it is in part backlash, fueled by political impulse. Mozilla's appointment of Mitchell Baker and subsequent course of Firefox development have taken on unmistakable political valence in the US culture war (especially seeing how its drift could be uncharitably glossed as "coddling non-technical users at the expense of power users"), which resulted in criticism invariably sounding like, and, I guess, even really somewhat functioning* as an attack on the political group that Mozilla is associated with. This, in turn, makes those who support said political group, or simply are exasperated with its most vocal opponents, instinctively oppose the criticism.

*I'm thinking of something like the affect-loading concept in https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-mea....

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

#45

Post by heresaPizza »

briffle wrote: post #24
nfriedly wrote: post #14

Meanwhile in Firefox for Android: absolutely nothing is going on with extensions, because Mozilla disabled nearly all of them.

Which is WAY better than Firefox for IOS.

It is Apple’s fault, but the EU’s DMA will force Apple to allow alternative engines. However this raises many doubts: - Will Apple just allow every browser in the App Store or they’ll manage to use side load (which they’ll also be forced to allow) as the only way to comply? (Probably not legal but i expect them to try, would vastly limit an App’s user base as demonstrated by Android). - In the best scenario, wich is Apple letting Mozilla put the full Firefox in the App Store, would they be interested at all to port Gecko to iOS?

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

#46

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

burkaman wrote: post #35
piyh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use Firefox nightly and enable any that you want. I'd rather use the version of Firefox that doesn't crash more frequently, but that's the trade-off I gotta make at the moment.

How? I use Firefox Nightly but I only see the handful of recommended extensions available.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... has the full instructions. In addition to creating an add-on collection you need to go to the About page and tap the Firefox logo 5 times to get the proper menu items.

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

#47

Post by Arnavion »

jakear wrote: post #28

It's upsetting to see all this corporate double-speak when Firefox fails to support the most basic extension functionally: the User Agent should allow the User to run their own code on their own machine without any requirement of phoning home to the manufacturer. This is currently impossible on Firefox as they forget extension loaded from local files to be removed after. The force everyone who wants to run their own…

>This is currently impossible on Firefox as they forget extension loaded from local files to be removed after. The force everyone who wants to run their own code on their own machine persistently to file for a developer code signing certificate, essentially copying Apple's approach to marketplace management.

My distro's firefox package loads extensions I zip'd and placed in /usr/lib64/firefox/browser/extensions , probably because it's compiled with `--with-unsigned-addon-scopes=app --allow-addon-sideload`

FOSS authors are catching on to all the tricks that Windows etc closed source authors have been doing - locking down their software, phoning home with telemetry, bundling in closed-source components with non-free licenses and what not. Distro maintainers are the last line of defence against this shit. Don't use upstream binaries.

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

#48

Post by necrosmash »

keyme wrote: post #37
burkaman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? I use Firefox Nightly but I only see the handful of recommended extensions available.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/ You can create your own "extension collection", and change the default one used by FF on Android. I use the Fennec build of FF from F-droid (Playstore build doesn't support this).

You can do the same thing with the regular playstore nightly build, works great

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

#49

Post by ndriscoll »

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…

If there's any spin, it's in characterizing ads as neutral "content". While something like uBlock can block general content, it's primarily a web malware blocker. That includes adware, spyware, crypto miners, etc. It's a necessary security feature preventing the extremely common practice of websites hijacking people's computers to run software they don't approve of.
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