For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin
You shouldn’t be using Chrome anyway.
Still clinging to Firefox and living ad-free.
Same
But then I would not be able to run my x86 emulator in pure CSS!
On the serious side: The source is there and I am very sure this can and will be fixed eventually. All just a matter of pain and pressure. I will get concerned only when proprietary (web-) extensions become dominant so that we had to use a closed source browser.
Andreas Reichel,
I know you are saying this in jest, but more and more websites now require proprietary Chrome features. Fortunately I can still write here on OSNews with my Firefox install.
Though, some banks, many streaming services, or even plain old basic websites (behind akamai or cloudfare) will either downgrade the experience, or outright not work (ensh**ttification)
But those are not proprietary features but an open standard. It’s just that Chrome is the only one that implements more of it.
Chrome is the new Internet Explorer 6.
So far I’ve never had a problem with anything using FF for any of these purposes here in Australia. Geographical differences?
ThaiAirways was the only website I ever encountered where the Captcha did strictly not work on Firefox, but Chromium only. And this has been fixed since.
Teams (yes, I am forced by clients!) also works smooth with FF in recent years.
So indeed, I am not aware of any website depending on Chrome features. Yet, I still have Chromium instances ready (just in case, and also as browser for the business web applications).
Andreas Reichel,
Some are more obvious, some or subtle.
Many streaming services offer lower quality on non-Chrome browsers. This changes from day to day
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081
I don’t have Netlix, but I used to have, and they downgraded to SD. Today it is a bit better it seems 1080p on Windows Firefox (but no 4K, unlike Chrome), and 720p on Linux (but interestingly only Opera gets better treatment)
Other times it is just more Captcha ratio. This is more subtle, but since Firefox has to spoof user agent, and the cloudfare system has better sniffing they detect a mismatch, lowering your trust score
Not to mention harder requirements by some schools and enterprises.
Unfortunately the Web is not a level playing field.
Slack is one of those websites that doesn’t work fully on Firefox, since it doesn’t support video calls (or even regular calls) in Firefox.
Yes, you can use the Slack app, but if you want it in the browser, it won’t happen in Firefox.
Have you tried changing the source of something as complex as a web browser while keeping track of new releases? It’s not easy, and I doubt whether Brave and the like have the resources to do it.
And while I’ve heard people say “just use FF or DNS adblocking”, Google are becoming more aggressive to adblockers in non-google browsers as well. These are not impervious to google’s mission to block adblockers. Anyone else notice youtube is increasingly breaking ublock in firefox? I hope people don’t dismiss the significance of what’s happening on the basis that they can switch browsers.
The ad riddled experience is coming for everyone.
@Alfman,
while I do understand that this is or could become annoying: On youtube they have all rights to battle ad-blockers to their last. We have no right using youtube w/o paying (with time or money). If you don’t like it, simply don’t use it.
Andreas Reichel,
The problem is that once youtube became a monopoly for video clips, very little content gets uploaded elsewhere – even when the content is free. Youtube is expensive to run, but honestly I wouldn’t mind centralized services going away and revitalizing decentralized P2P with proven scalability.
Haven’t noticed anything like that so far on the desktop. (I barely use mobile for content consumption.)
Shifu,
Yes, I believe google uses a strategy of selective enforcement and mechanisms in order to make it harder for adblock developers to mitigate.
Ublock origin commented on this…
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube/detection-faq/
My observations have been inconsistent, though lately I would say it’s gotten noticeably worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if google ramps up the adblock counter measures in other browsers as they kill adblocking in chrome.
Actually, Google has not become a deity yet. I get that people worship it though.
I’m not an expert in web development (although I have one MV3 extension for Chrome), but aren’t they deprecating MV2 because of privacy or security concerns?
For me, the worst problem in the adblock space is sites that ban adblockers themselves. I have to use Safari just to access a couple of sites, including TechCrunch. I don’t use browser extensions for adblocking; instead, I use Little Snitch (an application firewall for macOS). It has self-updating lists for blocking ads, and I had to add Safari as an exception to those lists.
Yes and no. They “claim” that the APIs in v2 are broken by design and that their v3 APIs are better. You can find some people who have done detailed analysis but the end result is their replacements arent really replacements though. They affect ad blockers particularly badly and Google arent in a business where they want to care about that use case so it didnt factor in. There is a uBlock Lite that uses the new v3 apis and does a decent enough job but realistically all that does is keep you tethered to a browser made by a company that sees you the user as meat to be eaten by their true customers, the data collection companies
Luckily, there are multiple new web engines on the way. We have Firefox now and multiple options including Servo and others that we get blocked for talking about on OSnews.
This comment is coming from Firefox but I do most of my “non-work” browsing on “the other” browser now and it is really coming along nicely. It is rare to find a site that it cannot handle and it has gotten a lot faster. Still slow but usable. We have options.
What’s users of this site are actually using?