Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
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It’s good that I use Firefox and will continue to be ad free then, eh?
I sure hope so. I’ve been on team Mozilla for a long time, but right at this critical moment they are starting to wobble. Their CEO seems to be steering them in a direction that I don’t agree with.
(I still believe Firefox is the best option right now; but I’m a little concerned for the future.)
I switched to Firefox over the summer and have been mostly happy with my decision.
However, there have been a LOT of issues with video playback on certain sites and I really don’t know how to fix them. Searches have been just about useless in regards to finding a fix. The worst one is Nebula. The video often just freezes while the audio just keeps trucking along like nothing is wrong. This has happened to a more limited extent with some YouTube videos as well. And the TAB crash on some sites is quite infuriating.
And we started with “Don’t be evil”
I believe their new slogan is “Fuck em’, what they gonna do!?”.
We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.
Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB, etc.
Devs, please stop using those features. I know it’s tempting, but they’re basically bribes to encourage you to sell out to Google. Don’t do it.
We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.
It’s basically IE6 and ActiveX all over again.
Most “Chrome-only” web applications I have to use I can get around just by changing my user agent string and everything works fine. I try not to use that stuff when I can, though.
This is my experience. They are just taking your default agent and throwing up a message because they can’t be assed to do minimal testing in FF.
Some of the older stuff is indeed that way, but there are more and more features which Firefox can’t support. Web-based custom keyboard configuration tools, tools to flash phone firmware, and one niche MiniDisc tool all are chrome-only things I’ve had to open Chrome to use
we are really really better off without features that grant any website such deep access to our systems just by a single click, trust me. this is a security nightmare, especially looking at people who don’t understand computers and those who instant allow permissions by reflex.
tools to flash phone firmware
Yep. Forgot I had to use Chrome on Windows to flash GrapheneOS.
you don’t have to, there’s no need for that. they have a normal flashing tool too
Wait is this real? That’s hilarious
https://grapheneos.org/install/web#prerequisites
Technically it works on Linux, but I didn’t feel like installing a Chromium browser to do it at the time.
I just don’t use services that don’t work with Firefox. Easy.
Yep. There are plenty of other ways to do something that don’t require selling out.
What about ad blocking services where you would need them, such as browsing into an ad farm of a website?
Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB
I’m very serious about my opinion that we are better off without them. If the feature does not exist, it cannot be activated by a bug in the permission system, and also the lesser technically inclined people won’t allow them by reflex/accident
Teams calls for example :( I have chromium on my Debian only for teams.
Teams works in Firefox, I sadly have to use it almost every day interacting with clients who use teams for comms.
One of my company’s customers is a DoD contractor that uses the government version of Teams, which does require Chromium, unfortunately. Or at least, I haven’t found a way to make it work on Firefox yet.
idk what to tell you, calls have no sound.
I’ll try again, though.
But you can’t turn on camera with Teams on Firefox iirc
I’ve not had either of those issues on my laptop, using teams through Firefox. I wonder if there is something else going on there.
I’m using Firefox as my only browser. If everything works in Firefox that’s fine for me.
That’s the best advantage of only making websites / web applications for fun (for friend groups, video games, family etc)
Yeah, but that’s my point, not everything works in Firefox now - even though admittedly it’s relatively niche stuff - and my prediction is that if we continue on our current course Firefox will either have to compromise their commitment to privacy and security or will become more and more unusable.
I saw this quote a while back “if you only make code that works in chrome you aren’t a web developer, you are a google developer.”
Google’s working on fixing that for you right now. That’s more people switch to Firefox and there’s futures don’t work they’ll start complaining to the developers and then to Firefox. Microsoft road the it only works in IE train for a long time and it eventually buried them
Good thing I’m on LibreWolf that comes with uBlock Origin.
My Chromebook heard about it and a few weeks ago developed a display issue. I’m now looking for a new laptop that allows Firefox browser. It’s kind of funny how things work out.
Wait, a Chromebook won’t let you use any browser other than than Chrome?
Chromebook won’t let you get browser Firefox unless you switch to Linux but not all Chromebook’s are able to get Linux because of hardware. I was one of those people.
Comeon 0.0001%! Let’s get those last 5 people who know what an extension is but were holding out for…???
Yeah… These articles are like reading the tally marks on a prison wall. Let it go.
Yeah but Mozilla just turned into an ad company. Hard fork time.
Not really. Ads aren’t gonna dissappear, with Mozillas tech, they’d at least be more private than what Google will implement.
That’s true, Mozilla’s vision of ads is much better than Google’s. But is there any reasons it will be one or the other? Is there any reason to believe that Mozilla’s ads will displace Google’s ads? Or are we just going to end up with more ads: Google’s very bad ads plus Mozilla’s less bad ads.
[edit] Just to be clear - I don’t want to sound any Mozilla. Mozilla hasn’t actually acted on this yet. Firefox is still good right now, and will continue to be good at least in the short term. It’s just that Mozilla have stated their intention to work on making ad systems. So when that actually happens, it will be bad.
Maybe they’ll replace ads on sites that let them and block them on other sites? Who knows
I can’t imagine a few developers maintaining Firefox without MILLIONS of dollars.
Librewolf didn’t take as much adjustment as I would have expected, and it even supports toning down specific security postures for QoL niceties like Firefox account sync. Made the switch just to try it out and haven’t gone back. Excited to see what people come up with for more forks/hard forks in the future.
While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won’t be enough. Too many people simple don’t know, or don’t care, it won’t affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.
It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.
But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?
as a chromium browser user - i’ve been meaning to switch to firefox, and i know it’ll take me maybe a day, but it feels like so much workkkk. In a similar fashion i’ve been meaning to switch to Linux for ages too. I guess it just hasn’t gotten bad enough for me to take action
as long as my adblockers & script blockers work, i’m not forced to upgrade to win11, and win10 still has security updates i don’t think it’s pushing on my discomfort buttons strong enough. I know the day will come, but like with a lot of things in my life - why do something today when i can do it tomorrow?
if that helps, switching browsers is a lot easier than switching your OS. the automatic import brings over most of your data (bookmarks, passwords, history, …), and you only need to handle the addons, if you had any, and the browser settings if you need anything from there
What do you mean “work”? What is it that needs to move?
You just fire up Firefox and start using it. It’ll even scrape your chrome setup to move bookmarks and stuff over.
It’s not an OS. It’s an application.
i don’t use chrome itself. i have a lot of saved things, roughly a million tabs open at every moment, and passwords saved which i do not remember
There’s extensions to export all your open tabs and then a similar extension to import those tabs and open them as a session in Firefox. Source: I, too, have a million tabs open at every moment, and had to do that to transition myself. Same for exporting/importing passwords.
This is all mostly automatically transfered over… I don’t know about passwords though
I’m not sure if Firefox pulls passwords when you import your data, but you can manually export passwords from Chrome and import them into Firefox.
If you have tabs like that, they’re not “open”. They are crumbs left as you wandered the internet. You’re not going back to them. Do yourself a favour and close them.
It’s like having thousands of unread emails in your inbox. At some point you have to stop kidding yourself you’re going to read them.
I feel you. It’s vey much a convenience thing, and sitting down with something you’re used to.
I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn’t want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I’ll have no choice.
I don’t know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox’s homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows
That’s some procrastination going on. Sometimes you should force yourself to start doing something for a minute or so and things will eventually change.
Chrome devtools and debugger are awesome
If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it’s their internet now. This worked for me parents.
Same
Not for mine, they couldn’t make the switch even though everything was the same
I even changed the icon to Chrome’s
Come and join me in Firefox and try out container tabs. Super powerful when you’re trying to keep home and work identities seperate.
I love containerized tabs. They do break online payment for some sites but imo it’s worth it. Wondering if there’s similar feature / addon in brave / librewolf…
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I kinda wish for google CEOs and shareholders to die a horrible, painful death :p
They know that’s how peasants feel that’s why they feel zero shame or guilt about fuxking people over. We are not human to them anyway.
I would wager that at least some of them do not confuse effect for cause.
I find it funny how so many people are switching back to firefox but its been my default since I was like 10. I had crappy laptops when I was young and it was the only one that worked, it works amazingly for my modern computer.
Yeah, I remember when Chrome was first released, I was already on Firefox, and I downloaded and tried Chrome…
I absolutely hated the UI, and kept on using Firefox.
Over the years, I have seen many articles about how Chrome is better because it is faster, I never had an issue with Firefox, so I kept using it.
The only time I swiched from Firefox since version 1.0 was when they launched the Australis redesign as it made it look like a boring chrome copy.
I swiched to Pale Moon, a Fitefox fork which kept the old UI, then when they released the Quantum redesign, I switched back.
My biggest gripe with Firefox is that if I’m too fast and start typing into the address bar when it first launches, it’ll clear the auto text selection and start prepending my input onto the URL.
Same for me. Cool my commonly used Websites load 0.05ms faster - idc. Still gonna use firefox
Man fuck google
It’s going to be internet explorer era again. I wonder which will replace chrome in the future.
I have hopes, that servo as a little more independent web engine, will thrive in the future
How? If you would have said Chromium based era, then sure, possible. Internet Explorer for 64 bit was officially retired June 15, 2022 and permanently disabled through an Edge update.
it’s not literally just an analogy how a single browser guided by private corporate interests is treated as the only standard
Chromium based era is what I think we had around 2012 and today. But lately Chromium is not exactly equal to Google Chrome now they been getting divergent.
I downloaded Librewolf today - the privacy oriented fork of Firefox!
Good to see there are browser variants that aren’t just Chrome.
yep firefox with arkenfox for me, same deal as librewolf. And Mull on mobile.
Switched about 2-3 months ago thinking it might be difficult or impact me negatively or something but its been easy and great.
You know the problem I have with Librewolf? – Fuckall nobody knows how to spell it.
The beauty of Firefox is that even the densest idiot knows how to spell those two words. And with attention spans the equivalent of a gnat, people need to have things simplified for them as much as humanly possible.
Fortunately enough, Firefox is about the only one with a renderer that isn’t controlled by Google, but - even now they’re shifting to a pro-advertising stance and backing off of the privacy orientation that they took just a year or two ago.
Yes, and we will drop Mozilla when it drops uBlock as well. We will all get behind whatever open-source browser stops ads, and it will very quickly become the most widely used browser. Why? Because everybody despises fucking ads and you can’t curb-stomp them into liking ads, that’s why.
Google can spend all the money it likes trying to piss on users and tell them it’s raining but at the end of the day, a new king will be crowned and if it isn’t Chrome and it isn’t Firefox, then it will be something else.
And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it. Assertions to the contrary are FUD constantly being seeded by Google, Microsoft and their ilk to destroy competition. This is an existential necessity for Google, you can bet they are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo.
And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it
how do you imagine a Linux-sized community getting built around firefox in a few days? and even that is a bad example, because a lot of linux devs are paid by their employer from a company anywhere on the world
Nice straw man. Nobody said the community was going to “Linux-sized” nor that it was going to be built in a “few days,” nor that it was going to have paid devs. It’s like you’re being intentionally obtuse.
There are already multiple supported forks of Firefox and while it doesn’t take much to maintain such forks when they are being fed a large part of the codebase by Mozilla, if you think such a project would not pick right the fuck up where Mozilla left off if Mozilla tried to pull a Google and get behind Manifest V3, you are, I believe, mistaken.
Mozilla itself owes its existence to Netscape’s failure in the face of unfair competition by Microsoft’s Explorer. Netscape released its source code, Mozilla was founded and the power of open-source created Firefox. Chrome’s halfhearted support of Mozilla is itself owed to the fact that they don’t want to get spanked over Chrome like Microsoft was over IE.
Until you actually need a chromium based browser. I get so annoyed when this happens.
Almost 20 years and I’ve never needed a Chromium browser for anything. I’m sorry you were forced to use such garbage ass software.
I have chromium installed for the sole reason to cast some streams to my remote TVs. Otherwise it stays closed. I tried some work around with FF, but I couldn’t get it to work. It’s only once or twice a week for live sporting events, so I can stomach it.
I understand where you’re coming from. It’s never happened to me, but if a website didn’t work with Firefox, I would just assume it’s a shit site ran by rookies who know nothing, and move on to a different site. I understand most people don’t have that kind of principle though.
It’s not that the site doesn’t work in FF, it’s that casting the stream from that site to a remote TV in the house is only possible in chromium, at least with my current device setup. If I just watch on my computer, I watch in FF.
Ah, you did say that. I’m sorry for my misunderstanding. I’ve never tried that, and you’re the first I’ve seen to mention it. I concede to your argument.
I’m in the slow process of replacing devices with HTPCs then I won’t need to cast anything. Unfortunately computers and time don’t grow on trees.
As if installing and using something else means you can’t have Chrome lying around for that one stupid website.
And I do. Sometimes I’ll just fire up Edge if Chrome isn’t installed since it’s chromium based.
In what situation do you need one?
I’ve been using Firefox for over a decade and have literally never once needed to open a different web browser. For anything, ever. This is a very common complaint that tons of people seem to have that I have never seen happen even once out in the wild.
Several government websites for the state of Pennsylvania complain and refuse to work if they detect that you aren’t using chrome/edge/safari.
You can spoof your useragent to appear as chrome. And you should as it makes your browser less “unique”
While you can do this, it’s not clear to me that you should. There are a number of additional laws having to do with perjury and misusing goverment sites and while I would undoubtedly agree with you, were you to assert the application of those laws to the utilization of a user agent switcher is a ridiculous overreach, I am just as certain I have no desire to be in the hot-seat on the day we all find out.
Oh wow I didn’t know that. I’ll have to double check for the states that are relevant for me.
I imagine many people naively install a privacy extension and unknowingly have altered useragents
Imagine the government coming after someone, demanding they give Google their fair share
Do the sites work if you use an extension that lies to them about what browser you are using?
I also use Firefox on my work computer, I need to quickly authorize a login in the browser before the local “app” opens (“app” because it’s just a webpage pretending to be an app) and I just recently got a notification that slack won’t support Firefox anymore so please switch to chrome. The fucking animals.
Probably slack is going to have to be ditched on the grounds they have decided to ditch Firefox.
Sounds like Salesforce acting like Salesforce.
I use Librewolf on desktop and Mull on mobile. I have a few extensions on both, which could definitely contribute to issues. When I have issues (usually government sites or financial stuff, sometimes DRM-related stuff for media) it’s easier to just use a Chromium-based browser with no extensions than try to troubleshoot specifically what’s causing the issues. I keep Falkon (desktop) and Vanadium (mobile) installed for this purpose.
I get the feeling a lot of issues people are having in Firefox might be due to extensions or settings, which gets “fixed” by using another browser (which happens to be Chromium-based because most browsers are) and they blame the issue on Firefox itself.
Flashing ESPhome devices. I just had to re-flash one via serial the other day and it requires chrome AFAIK.
Firefox is getting so small it’s starting to disappear out of the testing matrix. Confluence has issues with it, you can’t always log into Vanguard on Firefox, many news website layouts have overlapping elements on Firefox, quite a few shopping websites too (H&M in Europe has a long-standing but with putting stuff in the shopping basket until they revamped their website a couple of months ago). Etc etc. I see it ALL the time.
Chromium isn’t as problematic as Chrome.
There’s still Vivali which is Chromium based and still supporting V2 extension (like uBlock) until June 2025. Its not a full fix, but its a stay of execution. That said, I’m a FF primary user.
I see Vivaldi, I upvote.
I’m already mad about having to potentially abandon my highly customized Vivaldi should ublock lite not work up to my standards
I have no idea why people are downvoting it.
Vivaldi isn’t entirely open source, if that matters to you.
Brave would be my recommendation, I just disable the crypto stuff.
Brave’s CEO is so anti-gay, he dished out 4-figure checks to fight gayness.
I’m not a fan of that, and Brave has issues with being Chromium-based, like Vivaldi.
this reads like a yo mama joke
I’m sorry, but that is an instance of separating the art from the artist, I really don’t care.
Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/
Only the UI part is not open source.
Brave is a series scam company.
If people used other browsers, then the market share would change and this would become less and less of a problem.
I already use Firefox full time and recommend others do as well.
constantly, to be honest
I’ve been using librewolf for a several months. Be careful because streaming doesn’t always work on it due to DRM features, and YouTube has been spotty AF. With YouTube it might start the video a couple seconds into it, buffer for no discernable reason, or just skip a few random seconds.
Oh? I noticed that issue last couple of days using invidious on librewolf, and thought it was YT doing invidious shenanigans again.
Yeah, I have noticed it too. I sometimes just use mpv instead to play YouTube videos instead, but that also has its limitations
I use firefox but I have to change my useragent string to chrome with an extension to get YouTube working.
Might be worth having a look to see if it fixes your issues
