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Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#61

Post by Jonnax »

hajile wrote: post #19
Jonnax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rewrite that is faster than Chrome for Android.

It may be faster than Chrome on Android, but it's certainly not faster than Firefox on Android with adblockers. Not loading/parsing multi-megabytes of Javascript and images is huge. Loads of ads these days incorporate entire JS framework toolchains resulting in a binary bigger than the page they're being injected into. Eliminating a few ads and the rest of your browser could be a lot less efficient and still perform…

It certainly is faster than Firefox for Android.

There are benefits to adblocking of course.

But there's no point lying.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#62

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

It seems I'm in a minority here, but I was never comfortable installing any adblock extension because the existing request blocking API means that the extension would see all web traffic generated by me (including private URLs that are otherwise not known to anybody but me).

I personally feel that now with manifest 3, I can actually install adblockers since the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the extensions.

Can somebody explain why removing blocking API was overall a bad decision by Chrome?

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#63

Post by feanaro »

spinningslate wrote: post #32
Nicksil wrote: post #22

> We have no immediate plans to remove blocking webRequest > immediate We know exactly what this kind of talk means. Don't blow smoke up our ass, Mozilla, just give it to use straight: We'll have `blocking webRequest` for as long as Google allows it.

And in case anyone from Mozilla is listening, this could well be existential for you. Right now, your pro-privacy stance is a principal factor in users choosing Firefox over Chrome. Follow Google - and all its shady practices - and you will lose a large chunk of those users. Many of them, to use current terminology, are "key influencers": technically savvy people who advise family and friends what to do. Lose them an…

Since there is no visible way of leaving a +1 (or a +1000) on HN, I feel like I have to respond to this since it resonates so deeply with me.

Particularly on account of funding, I know I would also gladly pay $30 per year for a privacy, freedom and power use oriented Firefox instead of this new direction they keep taking it in. And so would many of my acquintances.

Perhaps there is merit to organizing a website for people to be able to pledge this.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#64

Post by xvector »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #18

The tone of this post concerns me. What comes across is that Google is not collaborating with Mozilla over the Manifest v3 changes. Instead of using and appreciating the engaged Firefox developer ecosystem we have PM conference rooms in Google mandating huge changes based on... well they've been shady so far about their choices on Manifest v3. The other thing that keeps bugging me about this is - We need a tiered App…

> we have PM conference rooms in Google mandating huge changes based on... well they've been shady so far about their choices on Manifest v3.

I'd like one of the PMs at Google working on this feature to engage in actual community discussion around this issue.

Google is not a monolithic corporation. Individual people are responsible for these decisions. These people are obligated to discuss why they are making these changes, else they deserve to be called out if they refuse to do so.

Is it too much to ask for these PMs to take some personal responsibility and engage in discussion for the far-reaching changes they are forcing upon society?

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#65

Post by kuzimoto »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #62

It seems I'm in a minority here, but I was never comfortable installing any adblock extension because the existing request blocking API means that the extension would see all web traffic generated by me (including private URLs that are otherwise not known to anybody but me). I personally feel that now with manifest 3, I can actually install adblockers since the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the exte…

> Extensions would still be able to use webRequest but only to observe requests, not to modify or block them.

What's the point of an ad blocker if it doesn't block ads?

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#66

Post by gorhill »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #62

It seems I'm in a minority here, but I was never comfortable installing any adblock extension because the existing request blocking API means that the extension would see all web traffic generated by me (including private URLs that are otherwise not known to anybody but me). I personally feel that now with manifest 3, I can actually install adblockers since the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the exte…

> the newer APIs do not share all my web traffic with the extensions

The webRequest API can observe the URLs you visit without needing blocking permission.

And so does the webNavigation API, the tabs API, history API, content scripts, possibly cookies API and whatever else does not come to my mind.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#67

Post by michaelmrose »

A humble proposal: A build of firefox that initially differs from Mozillas in that

- it has a different default search engine selection that can be sold in the same way that Mozilla sells this same feature to google presently

- no ads on new tab page

- bundled with ublock origin

The goal being to increase the value of selling the search engine selection while decreasing the value of mozillas in effect siphoning off some of the value of mozillas primary revenue stream.

Such funds could be donated back to Mozilla or used to maintain a fork that doesn't ruin adblocking. Their choice.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#68

Post by pessimizer »

sp332 wrote: post #8
badsectoracula wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla abandoning their much more powerful XUL-based extension system for Chrome's inferior WebExtensions wasn't already an indicator towards that?

Firefox is faster and more secure now that they don't have to maintain compatibility with a bunch of old extensions that touch a bunch of internal stuff. Firefox's WebExtension API goes well beyond Chrome's at this point and is still adding features.

Firefox is a clone of Chrome now, that google makes a little bit janky when you browse google sites.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#69

Post by pessimizer »

Ygg2 wrote: post #7
badsectoracula wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla abandoning their much more powerful XUL-based extension system for Chrome's inferior WebExtensions wasn't already an indicator towards that?

> more powerful XUL-based At the time of conception, it was pretty great. However, that much customizability came at two expenses. 1) Web devs can't use XUL, because it's its own little cosmos, you as Web dev couldn't mod Firefox UI 2) The XUL was legacy software and super hard to optimize.

Repeal and replace would have been fine, but instead we got repeal and here's a mobile OS. And new extensions can't mess with our look and feel.

Re: Mozilla’s Manifest v3 FAQ

#70

Post by CamJN »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #54
JohnFen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving away from that was definitely the right approach for Mozilla Perhaps, but it also made Firefox into a browser that can no longer meet my needs.

What are your "needs"? Perhaps it's your needs, not Firefox, that are incorrect.

Not the parent, but a short list of mine:

link location bar extension: this cannot be replaced with a webextension as mozilla refused to add the necessary API

websocket monitor extension: this is being built into the dev tools, after 2 years and counting

tab groups / panorama: every single extension that tries to replace this is terribly broken, because the provided extension APIs don't really support this use case or are super racey

like the link location bar extension it's impossible to write an extension to replicate the old refresh/stop/go button in the url bar. You can have 3 buttons, but that's stupid.

All that and mac (nightly & dev-edition) users only recently got back to the level of performance from pre 57 Firefox due to work described here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522#c26 (ongoing).

And before I get crucified: there aren't any better browsers, so I'll be sticking with Firefox, but it sure isn't anywhere near as useful as it used to be.

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