71–78 of 78 posts
The only thing that is holding me back from not making safari my primary browser is not having an extension like ublock origin. This seems really promising.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/52#issuecom...
They might need some help, not much visible progress since it started.
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That’s a very technical description. The Safari extensions I use already do block YouTube ads. So it’s unclear what WebShield brings to the table in practical terms over existing extensions.
Well, WebShield is free & open source, those extensions may or may not. It's also a single app/codebase across macOS/iOS/iPadOS/visionOS. If you're happy with your current ad blocking setup for Safari, continue using it. I'm not trying to conquer the world.
It would be useful to describe what specifically this adds over existing Safari content blockers in that space.
Author here (I'm not OP): It converts filter lists to Safari's content blocking API using SafariConverterLib (by AdGuard) and stores advanced blocking (scriptlets, extended css, css & js) in a json file. The WebExtension then reads the json file through native messaging and injects the scriptlets, extended css, css & js. This means that things like YouTube ads can be blocked too, whereas using just the content blocki…
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To set a baseline: Ad blockers work by a combination of static rulesets and dynamic javascript. Safari does not support the ruleset format of Chrome/Firefox, so a ruleset has to be maintained for it specifically. In practice this is always the AdGuard ruleset. I doubt a single adblocker doesn't use this as a base. Beyond that is the custom JS they inject. It's hard to say how good it is but that is the only selling p…
>AdGuard has its own too: AFAIK only the paid version of adguard has access to these scriptlets. The free version only has content blockers, which puts webshield ahead of adguard.
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To set a baseline: Ad blockers work by a combination of static rulesets and dynamic javascript. Safari does not support the ruleset format of Chrome/Firefox, so a ruleset has to be maintained for it specifically. In practice this is always the AdGuard ruleset. I doubt a single adblocker doesn't use this as a base. Beyond that is the custom JS they inject. It's hard to say how good it is but that is the only selling p…
Safari ad blocker extensions will never be as powerful as uBlock Origin in terms of the sheer number or types of content they can block, but they can be as performant or efficient, or even more so. To my knowledge, uBlock Origin uses its own custom networking engine through webRequest, WebShield uses Safari's content blocking API which is baked into WebKit. When loading a content blocker in Safari (& thus WebKit) rul…
It would be great if you did some benchmarking though!
Its also possible to extend WebKits rules, if you can prove minimal performance regression.
Seems to feature a lot of AdGuard filter lists. Does this blocker differ materially from AdGuard?
Author here: No, not really. It uses AdGuard lists, SafariConverterLib by AdGuard for converting filter lists to Safari content blocking format. The only difference is that WebShield works on iOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and macOS as one app & codebase (AdGuard has separate apps for Safari on macOS & iOS), and its completely free & open source, albeit I accept donations, but nothing is behind a paywall, and will never be b…
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> But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox Blink is a separate engine, as it has significantly diverted from WebKit.
How significantly could it actually change? Maybe the process model, etc but I doubt most of the layout algorithms etc have changed much.
That said, as a frontend dev, I very very rarely run into real world issues between Safari and Chrome. More often it's Firefox/Gecko that lags behind, usually in some sort of graphics optimization (SVG and canvas stuff). Also some differences in WebGL and webgpu support, but those are niche enough that it's not a big deal yet.
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Author here (I'm not OP): It converts filter lists to Safari's content blocking API using SafariConverterLib (by AdGuard) and stores advanced blocking (scriptlets, extended css, css & js) in a json file. The WebExtension then reads the json file through native messaging and injects the scriptlets, extended css, css & js. This means that things like YouTube ads can be blocked too, whereas using just the content blocki…
That’s a very technical description. The Safari extensions I use already do block YouTube ads. So it’s unclear what WebShield brings to the table in practical terms over existing extensions.