344 points
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74 points

Hardly surprising considering that Brave, Vivaldi and Edge are all based on Chromium. The Brave and Vivaldi team won’t have the resources to maintain Manifest v2 support for each new Chromium version, and Microsoft doesn’t have any reason to support v2 with Edge outside of goodwill.

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51 points

They are just giving some time for the waters to calm a bit, and then say that it is taking too much effort.

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20 points

Yup. And perhaps even hoping they can pick up a few users from Chrome when it drops support.

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50 points

i don’t know why people are so allergic to firefox but it is the answer.

its the only halfway decent answer. install firefox and switch to it.

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38 points
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7 points

Vivaldi just has better features than Firefox. I’ll switch to Firefox when Vivaldi is forced to switch to V3 but until then I’m gonna continue to enjoy Vivaldi

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5 points

Curios, what sets Vivaldi apart so much in features that makes it hard to switch to Firefox?

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-1 points
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i don’t know why people are so allergic to firefox but it is the answer.

Basically because in the later year, the development of firefox took very curious directions, from trying to break some decades old, standard feature (only to revert when gmail users, of all things, complained en masse), to integrating many useless extensions (pocket anyone?) that you can’t remove and that are more and more difficult to disable. To say nothing of the occasional advertisement for irrelevant products. Basically, even if it’s on a smaller scale, using firefox today is starting to look like using windows: you have to fight it on every update to remove something they bork.

And I’m not even talking about the shit that happens at their mother business, Mozilla.

All of this is even more infuriating, because they could very easily not do it and still pursue their venture. Have Firefox, the web browser, be a thing, and have all the shit actually packaged as a separate extension. Heck, even sell or promote it as “Firefox+” or whatever. Just, don’t break the core feature to add “smart bookmarks” or whatever VPN ads.

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4 points
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are ads and 24/7 surveillance not worse than this though? and all of googles questionable business practices they do not only on chrome but all of their products? i think the choice is clear here. perfect doesnt have to be the enemy of better.

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-4 points

I love Firefox, used to use it all the time. Now it’s slower on Ubuntu than Brave. I mean slow as in irritating to use, click and wait.

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8 points
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thats probably because you are using the snap version of firefox canonical is pushing.

a big reason why i want to ditch ubuntu.

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2 points

Then something must be wrong with the way you configured your OS.

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27 points

I came back to Firefox this spring after probably 12 years, or how long is Chrome around and I must say everything works with it, it is snappy, doesn’t bog down my memory and has great extensions even on Android. I don’t look back to Chrome. It was great in the beginning and got more convoluted as the time progressed. With switching to Firefox i feel like when switched to Chrome back in the day.

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14 points

The answer is more than one, because Firefox has several forks of its own, and as far as I know all of them (even Pale Moon, which is highly divergent and never supported Manifest V2) support uBlock.

I agree that all Chromium-based browsers are going to drop support sooner or later.

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9 points
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6 points

Vivaldi does a lot of adblocking natively, and they are maintaining V2 as long as they can, which based on info from Google is summer 2025 but might change.

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6 points
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Does Firefox use “manifest v2”? When reading all the frothing news about this stuff, I assumed the “manifest” thing was a Chromium thing.

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36 points

Firefox will support Manifest v3. However Mozilla will be implementing Manifest 3 differently so the routes Ublock and other extensions use to maintain privacy and block ads will still be available. Firefox will support both the original route and the new limited option Google is forcing on Chromium.

Googles implementation deliberately locks out extensions by removing something called WebRequest, supposedly for security reasons but almost certainly actually for commercial reasons as they are not a neutral party. Google is a major ad and data broker.

Apple will apparently also be adopting the same approach for Safari as Mozilla is for Firefox.

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23 points

If I remember correctly, yes. There was a pain in the ass a few years ago when Firefox switched from their own add-on system to one that matched Chrome’s, despite Firefox’s being more powerful and mature. The goal was to make it easier to port Chromes (arguably) greater variety of add-ons to Firefox.

It was an unpopular decision and it was the start of a downward decline for Firefox. People that had their browser “just the way I like it” found themselves starting fresh essentially, and without some of their favourite add-ons.

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-5 points

Damn. That means they are once again on a divergent path.

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-12 points
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Brave has “partial support” which means it may as well not

They don’t need v2 because their ad-blocking has always been built into the browser itself.

Personally don’t really care about the browser because the ad-blocking is built into my router and VPN and the apps I use and so many other things.

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30 points

Brave is based on Chromium, so where Chrome goes, Brave is likely to follow.

Routers and VPNs are only able to filter URLs. They have no way of manipulating the browser session, which is the other half of uBlock’s functionality and why it will always be superior to PiHoles or ad-blocking DNS.

Google, for example, smuggles ads through their “good” domains on YouTube that deliver video content; at that point, it’s an endless game of whack-a-mole in the dark to have a list that filters the correct URL without obliterating the ability to watch videos.

URL filtering is better than nothing, but it’s not really a comparable solution.

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-12 points
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Brave is based on Chromium, so where Chrome goes, Brave is likely to follow.

To follow what? Brave’s adblocker is not an extension and it is not affected by MV3. And it has most of uBO’s features. More than I have ever used on uBO anyway.

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-18 points

where Chrome goes, Brave is likely to follow.

What is that supposed to mean? You realize Chromium-based browsers and Chrome are not the same thing? Brave is made by a completely different company making independent development decisions.

Google, for example, smuggles ads through their “good” domains on YouTube that deliver video content; at that point, it’s an endless game of

I don’t know anything about that. I just know that I don’t use the browser to watch YT videos because it’s an absolute nightmare. I use FreeTube, GrayJay, LibreTube, etc.

I also know I don’t have any problems with ads.

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1 point

Adblocking should be accessible to every layperson and not just people who know how to set up a pihole or use a VPN. It’s a basic security feature.

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-3 points
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I don’t understand what that has to do with this conversation…? Brave makes it easier than Firefox to get ad-blocking. You don’t even need to download an extension…

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98 points

Firefox

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45 points

So Lynx is not going to support uBlock?? Outrageous

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14 points

Browsh does!

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5 points

holy crap that’s a neat project

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4 points

But what about links? W3M?

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37 points

I wish someone could explain to me how it is firefox, which is not chromium based but larely dependent on google for funding, has the ability and manpower to maintain not just the manifest v2+all the other stuff, while every single chromium fork has no choice but to use v3. Why can’t they just fork the last usable version of chromium and go from there as an independent fork? Is it just that no one wants to?

Like firefox has lots of ports, some of the follow the main branch but then others like waterfox forked off older versions at some point and just kept going, why can’t chrome based browsers do a fork like that? How is it there are people making new browsers from scratch like ladybird, but this manifest stuff is just out of reach for everyone, except mozilla (and i guess other firefox forks).

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24 points

Not having control of the core codebase, and branching/tracking based on 1 (declared) legacy feature could lead to huge amounts of work and issue in the future.
Manifest V2 spec is defined, manifest V3 spec is defined… They can be developed against.
JS-whatever-spec is defined, CSS-whatever-spec is defined, HTML-whatever-spec is defined… They have industry standard approved specs (even if they can be vague in areas). They can be developed against.
They have defined spec documents that can be developed against.

Firefox has control and experience of how they implement those specs.
Chrome forks do not have control of how those specs are implemented.
So if chrome changes how things are implemented, forks might not be able to “backport” for manifest V2 compatibility, and might find themselves implementing more and more of the core browser functionality. Browsers are NOT easy to develop for the modern fuckery of the web.
Firefox hopefully does have that knowledge and ability to include V2 manifest backwards compatibility in future development without impacting further spec implementations… It seems like Google is depreciating V2 to combat ad-blockers (ads being their major funding revenue)

There are already very slight differences how Firefox and Chrome interpret all these specs. I’ve noticed a few sites & plugins that just work better (or just work) in Chrome. Which is why I still have (unfortunately) an install of Chrome.

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11 points

You could also just stop using sites that don’t work in Firefox. Also https://webcompat.com/

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5 points

Absolutely.
And casually, that’s exactly what I do. To be honest, casually I haven’t encountered any (I don’t think…).

But for work stuff, sometimes I don’t have a choice. I guess I’m just thankful it doesn’t require edge IE compat mode, or even IE itself

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22 points

A port of a browser is relatively minimal effort. Typically, the changes are largely cosmetic, and occasionally skin deep.

There’s a reason none of the ports of Chrome caught the recent snafu with Google having its own special addon that fucks your privacy.

Developing a browser, Firefox or Chrome, takes a huge amount of effort, and are on a similar scale to both Windows and Linux. It’s a lot. There are a lot of places to hide things. Taking all of that, and making V2 continue to work… well it’ll be alright to start with. It’s probably a flag somewhere currently. But in 2 years time? 5 years time? It will take a lot to keep V2 working, let alone back porting V3 features that people may actually want.

Just use Firefox instead.

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1 point

But firefox is funded by google and has been making questionable decisions for years, LibreWolf is the only fork I would use at this point but I think waterfox really proves my point though that its not really the impossible undertaking people seem to be making it out to be. Waterfox even support BOTH chrome and firefox addons somehow and they have no where near the amount of funding or manpower Mozilla does.

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3 points
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18 points

Why can’t they just fork the last usable version of chromium and go from there as an independent fork? Is it just that no one wants to?

Creating or even just maintaining a web browser is an insurmountable amount of work. With constantly changing and new specs coming out all the time, it’s an unwinnable amount of work. Not to mention, browsers and the Internet in general is so complex it’s like web browsers are an operating system themselves.

A web browser is likely the most complex software on your PC outside of the operating system itself.

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3 points

It is not insurmountable, new browsers made by single or small dev teams exist. If there is enough demand and motivated people to make something like ladybird there is people who could handle maintaining a fork that works, Chrome wasn’t always the only game in town and in the IE there was even at least one sort of engine agnostic browser that you could switch between Trident (IE) or Gecko rendering. Its not an easy thing but its very much possible.

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15 points

Funny you mention Ladybird… It’s a commendable project and I hope they succeed. But until it renders 99% of websites, plays Netflix videos, has all the modern features people expect of a web browser and is an actual viable option for non techies… It is really proving the opposite of your point. The fact that an alpha is still years away speaks to how hard this really is.

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2 points

Web browser made by a single or small dev tends to not support nearly as much of the web standards, which are many. Using the web today with partial support for some stuff is the nightmare we escaped when IE got deprecated, and some still have with Safari.

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1 point
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waterfox ftw

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10 points

Well, Thorium developer stated he intends to support Mv2 past the 2025 deadline. Whether he’ll make it, we’ll see. It’s a one man show, there was some drama involving it in the past, and there’s the question of what’s the point in maintaining Mv2 extensions support if you won’t be able to install them from the store after they’re cut off?

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6 points

To clarify for anyone curious about the drama, while it was blown out of proportion, it was absolutly vaild.

  1. there was a light nsfw furry easter egg, removed once found. Considering the browser was originally a side project by a young guy (teen/early 20?) it’s not really surprising or a big deal. Once the browser gained a sudden boost in users and it was found, the image was removed (once the guy got back from vacation? hospital?, there was a month or two gap)

  2. this one was a larger problem for sure, and again removed. If I reacll right, he was apparently hosting a website for a friend about supporting the end of a certain procedure done to baby males at birth. There were some graphic images, its not technically CP anymore than the infomus Nirvana cover, but still…not okay.

To make matters worse, the link the site was somewhere browsers home or about page, making it pretty easy for anyone to find.


It’s all old news now. Personally I didn’t really care, but some people might.

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2 points
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I don’t actually care about the drama per se at this point either. I mentioned it because, along with the fact that:

  • development is not very open (in that only that one guy commits and releases stuff)
  • release cadence is very erratic and often lags behind upstream chromium, which is a direct consequence of the previous point
  • you mentioned about the guys absence - the first time was some time ago and he was inpatient in the hospital for (IIRC) alcohol abuse, and this absence actually coincided with the drama over the furry and the other stuff, so it took awhile for it to be addressed, which only added more fuel to the fire. The second was just this last couple of months were he was house sitting for his parents (mentioned on the release notes I linked before)

All of this paints a bleak outlook for the long term health of this project, IMO. Which is too bad , because I still think it’s one of the better forks of chromium.

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