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How convenient that this happens just a few days after Firefox implements the features that have been blocking me from switching for the last few years.
Still, I’m curious about other browsers. We know Chrome is killing V2, but what about other Chromium-based browsers? I saw below a comment espousing Brave, but I’d rather use Chrome than Brave because of the gross crypto bs. What about Vivaldi, Opera, and Chredge? Will they keep supporting Manifest V2?
just a few days after Firefox implements the features that have been blocking me from switching for the last few years.
Which are those?
Multi-window support on iPad is the main one. Less important, though it would have bugged me if they didn’t have it, is sustained Incognito tabs—which apparently they had until a couple of months ago, then removed without explanation, then added back in just 1 day ago, also without explanation. Found a thread on their forums with a whole bunch of people perplexed and asking what happened.
Your first point at least is an iPad thing. Nothing is fully featured on the iPad. Not even safari. It’s thanks to that exact fact that chrome is at least mostly fully featured on the iPad. If safari had comparable function, you could bank on them blocking those features from the chrome app too. There’s a deal made somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if cash flow from Google is why safari is still the same piece of crap it always has been. “Hey your R&D + return for safari only nets you 1% YOY. We’ll give you 2% YOY if you just don’t even bother.”
They only know raising prices and knee-jerk reactions to competitive moves in their market space. Additional functionality for the user is only granted when it’s being used as a cudgle against their competition. Never for users benefit.
If you’re seeing new functionality on the iPad Firefox app, it’s likely because Firefox figured out a way to implement it without paying apple because they want the user to have that function. Totally different ethos.
There are actually no alternative browser on iOS. Before the European Digital Market Act all iOS browser have to use webkit, so while you could install Firefox, Chrome and others, they were actually using Safari’s rendering engine. I believe that’s where a lot of the limitations come from. Now with the DMA Firefox could use it’s own rendering engine but this hasn’t landed yet. I don’t know if any other browser has switched from webkit yet.
Mozilla about to lose funding from Google antitrust consequences :(
Pihole for the win
I use one too, but it doesn’t block certain things like YouTube’s embedded adverts. Also use uBlock Origin.
It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they’ve placed on watching videos outside of youtube.
I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.
You can get “android on a stick” computers and sideload some de-googled stuff. They plug right into the USB port of some smart tvs. You might be able to hack an Amazon Firestick too.
I keep seeing this posted here and elsewhere. Is there a simple, easy step-by-step explanation for how to build one of these and how to deploy it on your home network?
I’ve got very limited experience with working with Raspberry Pi.
If you don’t want to tinker with a Raspberry Pi, a simpler alternative would be AdGuard DNS
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
(Configure manually -> Routers)Step 1) Get a raspberry pi. Step 2) Open terminal and paste: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash Step 3) Point your DNS to the raspberry pi’s IP address.
Interesting. So does it slow down your speeds any that you can tell?
It doesn’t really. I won’t give a whole course on DNS and network stuff, but basically it has zero effect on your download and upload speeds.
DNS is like a phone book. You type Wikipedia.org and DNS translates that to an address like 200.92.36.68
When you download stuff, that’s not going through the Pi at all. So there’s no negative effects.
Your own raspberry pi will probably outperform your ISPs DNS, since it’s on your local network.
Also, just by blocking what it does, pages load a lot less, so they load a lot quicker.
You actually need a pi to run pihole, anything that can run docker would do
You absolutely don’t need a pi to run pihole. They have a list of officially supported OSs that can run the software, regardless of the hardware (as long as it meets the insanely low system requirements), and it can also be run in a docker container.
I looked into making one a while back and it’s honestly quite complicated if you’re not a techy person. I gave up on it, though I think you can also buy them pre-built for a bit more money so you might look into that.
That’s not the same. DNS blocking is great but it can block as well as a proper ad blocker.
No, but better then nothing and network wide
What does chromium-based browsers on pc have that Firefox doesn’t have? Like I don’t understand why people use Chrome instead of Firefox.
One thing for danish people is the “online government id” (MitID) everyone has and needs to use for online purchases and logins to banks and various other things.
It straight up only works on chrome for mobile :/
I really wish Mozilla would focus on these missing bits and bobs like WebUSB and this one you mentioned instead of whatever the fuck it is that they’re doing now
And in the meantime Mozilla keeps making worse decisions, too
Someone who gives a damn needs to be in charge of mozilla but i dont see that happening.
As long as they are entirely supported by Google, they aren’t going to try too hard to outcompete them.
In order to get away from that, they need to find alternative ways of making money, like showing ads, which loops us back around to the guy above saying they’re making bad decisions.
Your point is fair, but their real problem is they bloated up to absorb their insane budget and they are going to have to strip down to a reasonable size for a browser company before trying to establish a non-google revenue stream.
Enshitification of all the things.
Mozilla is about to collapse due to the Google antitrust ruling though.
Um, what makes you think that?
Mozilla makes about $590m a year.
$510m of that is from Google paying for the search engine default spot.
Well I for one hope they figure out an alternative income, like a premium subscription? Or perhaps look to get acquired by proton and get some integration going with those services? I’m no expert here, I just think that they have a lot of happy users, and there must be some way to figure this out financially.
They need to reform as a non-profit with user membership, an elected board, and fundraising like Wikipedia.
I’m not aware of any non-profit with staffing the size of Mozilla. The problem is that you need to be able to make money and to set it aside for bad times, so you don’t have to fire employees the moment the donations falter.
The 501©(3) non-profit form of tax-exempt non-profit, which is what the Mozilla Foundation continues to be, is not allowed to do so. That’s why they opened up the for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary that does most of the Firefox development.
On the plus side, the only shareholder of the Mozilla Corporation is the Mozilla Foundation, which therefore essentially cannot accept any of the profit the MoCo might make.
That’s a ridiulously low amount of money given the amount of users. I’d happily pay 10-20 bucks a year to keep mozilla alive. Not that I like it much, but more so than the big alternatives
The Google antitrust decision will result in Mozilla losing 90% of their revenue since Google won’t be allowed to pay them to use their search engine anymore.
The antitrust case is about Google and Apple, not Mozilla. It doesn’t mean the antitrust case will have any impact on Mozilla, because it’s not a major player, unlike Apple.
I don’t think you realize where and why Mozilla gets its funding.
Mozilla and its murder/suicide pact with Google falling apart may be the best thing that could possibly happen to Firefox.
the number of forks says ff is next. the ad machine needs your money.
I mean unless Mozilla starts getting sued by Ad companies to force them to ban ad blockers, I don’t think that will happen because being able to have ad blockers is a major selling point.
But even if it does happen, Firefox is open source and has been forked, so the next alternative is LibreWolf.
The ad machine doesn’t need my money. They never even asked. I am the product to them.
I use Opera
(yes i know it’s “Chinese spyware” if the Chinese government really wants to know what youtube videos i watch for hours, what porn i browse, and what impulse purchases i make they can have it, i don’t fucking care, when i want privacy i use Tor)
anyway i use Opera, and despite the fact it’s been my browser of choice for over a decade i will switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if my ad blockers stop working and i’m forced to watch ads for over 3 days in a row (in uBlock devs i trust)
wasn’t tor created by DARPA?
Nah it was the United States Naval Research Laboratory.
If you want opera without rationalizing what the Chinese government does to you, you can try vivaldi.
nah it’s not rationalising, i really just don’t care. I mentioned it there because the second i mention Opera anywhere the first reply is always “but did you know it’s Chinese spyware?”
I like Opera’s features like workspaces, tab islands, built in adblock, built in vpn etc. it really suits my scatter brain self
I also used to use opera, and thought the Chinese ownership made me uneasy, I only left due to their short term loan scandal.
But honestly I don’t regret it because vivaldi has a lovely community. Opera just felt cold and faceless, and I didn’t even know anyone else who used it.
Vivaldi has all the features (except VPN) and a lot more, so you won’t find it lacking there
huh interesting! is it chromium based too though? I think at this point i’d mostly want to make a switch off chromium browsers with all the rumoured forced ads nonsense
Yes, but built in adblocker like opera so it’s unaffected
nah i’d not trust that, if chromium itself gets invaded by forced ads no chromium based browser is safe
Are you talking about manifest v3 or something else? Cause manifest v3 doesn’t force ads, it just cripples third party ad blockers. Also viv, (and some others, like brave) already disable plenty of Google stuff like FloC and privacy sandbox
We need another meme like this about Firefox but with the first panel saying “Antitrust judgement against Google” and the second panel blank, without anyone coming to the rescue.
The large majority of Mozilla’s revenue comes from the money that Google pays to be the default search engine in Firefox.
Firefox feels so much slowwr than chrome when loading sites for me
If you’re talking about Google owned sites, there’s circumstantial evidence that Google sets their sites up to do that intentionally in order to gimp competitors.
That’s weird, something is definitely wrong. Are they set up in a similar way? The first thing that comes to my mind is: Are you using the same DNS server on both? Differences in DNS response time should be more noticeable than rendering time on most hardware. And I think Firefox doesn’t use the system DNS by default but I might be wrong. Do you mind checking? I’m curious now.
I’ll take slower over ad-bloated every day.
For me, switching from chrone to ff around 3 years it felt the opposite. Ff opens so much faster. Also scrolling is way smoother.
Floorp for power users
I’ve been curious about Floorp. Are you using it as your daily driver? And pros and cons?
The biggest pro for me is the vertical tabs. It’s got the same vertical tabs that Edge has which are great. I only use Edge at work but it’s great especially when you have a web based production environment like nCino that you work in all day and have dozens of tabs open. You can group them up nicely and keep yourself organized. Floorp is based off of Firefox ESR so it’s on an older build (but up to date security). The current build is based off FF 115 while FF is on 129 now.
Have you tried Tree Style Tab or Sidebery?
I’ve tried but for some reason, I can never get them set up correctly and I’m not technologically illiterate. Its been a while since I tried it though since Floorp just works.
Source: I made it up
I guess Anonym, PPA, Cliqz, pocket, and the default telemetry that is non-trivial to disable are all just hallucinations.
I like Vivaldi and they are going to keep V2 support for a while. I will switch to Firefox when it’s gone, but for the time being I am happy they are keeping the support.
Hell yeah, best customizable browser I’ve seen
about:config: “Am I a joke to you?”I would totally use Firefox if they had better first-party tab group support and syncing workspaces. They help with my tab messes which I need to keep organized
“And then Mozilla management comes in from the top rope with the chair”
Seriously, for profit companies should not own open source projects.
You can’t stop that. But you can use Librewolf if video download helper stops ignoring Librewolf.
I mostly use waterfox, which is very similar to librefox. I just like the more compacted UI and performance optimization they have done.
That’s awesome. Does Video DownloaderHelper work there?
That for-profit company is owned by a non-profit. They don’t have shareholders to which they could pay out the profits.
my issue with firefox atm is that both twitter extensions I use have been hobbled/removed by it for what looks to me to be spurious reasons.
https://github.com/kheina-com/Blue-Blocker/discussions/294
https://github.com/dimdenGD/OldTwitter/discussions/752
inb4 “lol @ using twitter in 2024” I just steal memes from it, and mastodon/bluesky simply aren’t up to speed yet.
Weighing options though I’ll go with Firefox and shitty twitter experience rather then Chrome and the ads everywhere experience. Not really a contest there. Just idle complaints.
