We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the …

  • @underthesign@lemmy.world
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    176 hours ago

    Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I’m personally very bored with my kids’ schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won’t open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.

    • @gerbler@lemmy.world
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      394 hours ago

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If your site doesn’t work on Firefox your site doesn’t work. As web developers your job is to develop applications for the web not for one specific browser. This goes double for essential services.

      • @Marx2k@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        256 minutes ago

        My job requires login to most internal websites via Microsoft Azure AD SSO using Kerberos authentication using passwordless, smart card auth.

        This switch happened this week. Up until yesterday I was 100% Firefox until this.

        Firefox for MacOS is not able to do this. I spent an hour or so looking for solutions. Chrome on MacOS also doesn’t. Safari does and now I have to fucking use Safari FFS.

      • @GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
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        -83 hours ago

        That’s some BS. You and i both know that Chromium has the largest share in the browser business, so it makes sense from a development perspective to develop websites that will reach the most people. It’s on Firefox to optimise their browser so that it can run these sites as well.

    • @fxdave@lemmy.ml
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      74 hours ago

      Slack calls disabled for firefox users, but if you change the user agent to chrome it works…

    • @tehmics@lemmy.world
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      94 hours ago

      Okay that’s fine, but when websites are effectively writing

      if user_agent_string != [chromium]
           break;
      

      It doesn’t really matter how good compatibility is. I’ve had websites go from nothing but a “Firefox is not supported, please use Chrome” splash screen to working just fine with Firefox by simply spoofing the user agent to Chrome. Maybe some feature was broken, but I was able to do what I needed. More often than not they just aren’t testing it and don’t want to support other browsers.

      The more insidious side of this is that websites will require and attempt to enforce Chrome as adblocking gets increasingly impossible on them, because it aligns with their interests. It’s so important for the future of the web that we resist this change, but I think it’s too late.

      The world wide web is quickly turning into the dark alley of the internet that nobody is willing to walk down.

    • yoasifOP
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      166 hours ago

      Firefox can’t fix all the broken sites in the world, but they do investigate issues reported to https://webcompat.com

      You can help by reporting sites that don’t work for you.

    • @realitista@lemm.ee
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      34 hours ago

      I encounter this very infrequently. I think I only have 1-2 examples at work. It’s not a huge deal for me to spin up a chrome for those one or two occasions.

    • The Menemen!
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      34 hours ago

      Can you send me an example? I don’t think I ever really encountered those sites and I use FF almost exclusively for ~20 years.

      • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        Its a frequency of use thing, and also some required sites. Examples are sites hosted by schools, government, or workplaces.

        Although most people using Firefox aren’t aware of spoofing the client to look like chrome, so that might need to be talked about more.

        That all said, I don’t have problems with any required usage, the only ones I have an issue with are on my phone, using mull, some sites payment forms won’t load or work correctly. Taco bell is pretty bad for that and then the app wouldnt work either for a while. I also run grapheneos though so its hard to say what’s the cause there.

        • The Menemen!
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          22 hours ago

          Hm, okay. Maybe it’s just a US government page thing then. Here in Germany firefox is still at 20% and used to be the standard browser until 5-6 years ago, so maybe pages are still optimized for it here.

          • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            110 minutes ago

            It varies state to state here as well. Someone in Georgia might have way more problems than someone in Minnesota. Its hard to generalize the US in that way. Sort of like the EU being a group but each country separate.

    • @sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      63 hours ago

      It’s addressed in the article. The brave CEO has stated they will continue to support manifest v2 as long as the needed code remains in Chromium. He made no promises what happens when it is removed, though (“I don’t write checks of unknown amount and sign them”)

      • @cmhe@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        So that means they are just supporting it as long as it is easy to do, and that they are not brave enough to fork chromium.

  • @ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    318 hours ago

    Honestly I’d say the Internet isn’t safe, and it’s because of Google, fuck you Google. It’s not just the wine I’ve been drinking, it’s true dammit.

  • @irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    258 hours ago

    Also Firefox mobile has nearly all of the extensions as the desktop version so it’s more similar across all of your devices. Personally, I use LibreWolf on desktop and Mull on mobile, but they’re just tweaked versions of Firefox with some bloat and telemetry removed and preconfigured to be more private.

  • MobileDecay
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    309 hours ago

    Welcome back to Firefox everyone! At least if you’re as old or older than I. 😁

  • @GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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    03 hours ago

    I might try uBlock Origin Lite, then if it doesn’t work very well then maybe I’ll just use Firefox

    I guess Google are betting that only a small segment of power users will switch to Firefox, while the mass of ordinary people won’t be bothered enough to switch.

    • Khrux
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      -12 hours ago

      This is definitely a selfish opinion but people who block adverts or torrent being a small percentage of users can be a good thing.

      If they lose even 5% of their userbase to Firefox over this decision, they’ll find a way to make grand modifications to Google search and YouTube in a manner that stops you blocking ads from alternative browsers, and while I’m happy swapping to an alternative search engine, it’ll definitely becometedious to sidestep Google’s gaze.

      But if it’s 0.1% of people who swap due to this, and Google already don’t care about the small percentage they lose to Firefox then I would rather sit under the radar and not be cracked down on.

  • @EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee
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    26 hours ago

    When was chrome or chromium safe?

    Bloated memory hole in the last 10yrs.

    The way it goes about Sucking up resources convinced me to switch to Firefox completely long ago.

    • @realitista@lemm.ee
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      14 hours ago

      Yes it was performance that first got me to switch too. But now I have plenty more reasons.

    • Madis
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      7 hours ago

      We will now [Oct 9] begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.

      https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline#october_9th_2024_an_update_on_manifest_v2_phase-out

      So there is no single date for normal users, but June 2025 is fixed for enterprise (and expected date for Brave, Vivaldi)

      • @Mwa@lemm.ee
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        15 hours ago

        is ungoogled chromium affected i use that as a secondary browser for some extensions

        • Madis
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          3 hours ago

          Yes, by default every Chromium browser is affected. It is just a matter of

          • whether they want to extend it to the enterprise time (which Edge and Opera won’t do IIRC)
          • whether they’d try to keep it working after enterprise time (maybe Brave and Vivaldi, but it could take a lot of effort)
          • whether they even have an alternative place to download extensions from if CWS takes MV2 extensions down (Brave has some workaround for few extensions, not sure about others)

          Maybe there will be some devs working on Ungoogled Chromium to keep the support, but they also have to think where users would even get the extensions from.

          • @Mwa@lemm.ee
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            13 hours ago

            Ohh okay I wanted to try bromite on pc bcs it has a inbuilt adblocker but it broke some my extensions

  • @funkforager@sh.itjust.works
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    2515 hours ago

    You can make a windows registry change to have Chrome let you keep using uBlock Origin, with the V2 manifest. It will buy you six more months, basically the enterprise support period.

    There was a handy shortcut created by the Security Now podcast you can use as a one-click file to update the policy. The show notes also give a more detailed breakdown of what’s going on.

    The relevant section in the notes is page 10. The link to the file is page 12. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-995-notes.pdf

  • Brownian Motion
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    -65 hours ago

    Opera GX has promised to keep MV2 in their code. So I’ll just keep using that until I see something different. The other thing is that Opera GX has built in ad-blocker which is pretty much on par with third parties.

    Firefox is not the “great browser” you think it is. It has had its fair share of fuckups and failures over the years, like laxed security certificate updates leaving users in limbo.

    Google didn’t come and just out do Firefox. It was the other way around, firefox fucked themselves with poor management and failure after failure, and people left. Chrome was the new boy in town, and that is why firefox is where it is today.

    Also, I would never use firefox, if I do need an alternative browser renderer, I use WATERFOX which is far more privacy compliant than firefix ever has been.