The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
Yeah, if you didn’t see that writing on the wall you need your eyes testing.
No Chrome browser will be maintained to keep using Manifest V2.
Use Firefox.
Me and my colleagues in tech call it the ‘Granny Browser’.
Either use Firefox/UBlock Origin or Brave. Brave’s native adblock is good enough you don’t need add-ons.
I dont know why people keep recommending brave.
its a fucking scummy fucking browser that has a history of stealing money, hijacking referal codes (like honey just got in deep trouble over), installing unnecessary software without consent and more.
Because it’s a good product.
They really only recommend it because the average joe doesn’t need to install UBO on it, I also removed it after the VPN service controversy.
My friends who are less tech literate swear by brave. I think it’s the way they market their browser… Some of Brave’s core audience don’t want to install a third party extension for adblock (either they don’t like third party or they just don’t know they can do it in other browsers)
Also on opening a new tab, they show the stats of how much data they saved and how much ads it blocked. Some people like seeing the number grow.
All this is my speculation. There may be some other reason for it being this popular.
If it’s being heavily marketed, that’s a red flag.
There may be some other reason for it being this popular.
Because it just works fine and block ads by default, maybe? A wild guess, I know. /s
I dont know why people keep recommending brave.
Because it’s good.
its a fucking scummy fucking browser that has a history of stealing money, hijacking referal codes (like honey just got in deep trouble over), installing unnecessary software without consent and more.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
If you want to use the browser despite those controversies then that’s your choice, but be honest enough to admit they exist.
I don’t use brave and haven’t for a long time, but these things are well documented.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/brave-affiliate-links-autocomplete
These are negligible or even non-issues and it’s not like Mozilla didn’t have its fair share of controversies as well. In no way they are “better”, whatever this means.
Yeah, I peeked at your moderation history after posting, it’s OK, I see now this is the best I could have expected in answer. Good day to you!
Hes the kind of person that gets haughty and arrogant over warnings to be safe.
and the first person to start crying about “how did this happen, how could anybody let this happen, why didnt anyone stop this from happening!” the second they are personally fucked over by ignoring the repeated warnings they were given.
Are you implying the crypto-bro browser with connections to a billionaire that runs the largest corporate intelligence agency in the world may not be the best choice of browser? That’s not the sort of attitude that generates value for the shareholders.
What’s Edge?
You don’t Edge?
Mine Linux don’t have it
Let me help you:
flatpak install flathub com.microsoft.Edge
Why would you do this to him
Because the best sort of shit post is one that’s also informative!
The thing you use once to download firefox, and then never again.
The browser you use to download Firefox
a chromium skin
They get you really close but stop just before finishing.
🥵
Right, you don’t need extensions, because you don’t need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.
I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.
A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.
BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.
I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we’re basically running Doom in a word professor. I don’t know what a better system would look like, but I’d draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.
Did both Edge users complain?
Unfortunately Edge is the 2nd most popular browser, with double the market share of Firefox.
Firefox time
Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”
LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.
For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search.
Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads.
There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.
Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past.
In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option.
All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.
Yup. But FUD must be pumped out.
The Privacy Policy for a long time has been that they use your data for marketing. I’m honestly completely confused why people are always recommending it.
For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.
Thanks for the eli5
firefox is starting to enshittify, LIBREWOLF, or another might be better.
I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated… Intel Xe graphics.
Personally I keep a copy of chromium around just for Google meet. Everything else is on Firefox.
Same…
same
I used to just use Firefox for Google Meet, but it seems they broke it somewhere along the way. Probably on purpose.
Using Vivaldi as a second browser, after Firefox.
If I needed ANY version of chrome around I would keep Vivaldi.
LibreWolf time too.
Zen is nice
Zen was amazing when they first came to light, but they keep changing how workflows work, and it destroyed the workflow I had.
For example, I am a browser minimalist. I don’t need workspaces, and I don’t have thousands of tabs open, because that’s insane to me, personally. I now have to see the ugly Default Workspace at the top of my tab bar every time I go to open or switch tabs. This was an option before, so it was perfectly fine. They’ve taken that option away, which is very much not okay. Options are good. They also messed around with the New Tab icon, making it to where I couldn’t move it to the bottom where I prefer it to be, instead putting it at the top, which is extra movement needed to get to the top… They later added that back in, but again, why the fuck are you just willy nilly taking options away from people? It should just be an OPTION.
Anyway, I’ve had so many headaches with their approach to changing workflows that I don’t even recommend it to anyone any longer. I’m sure I’m just the crazy person who wants some of the offerings, while not being FORCED to use some of the others. :)
In floorp you can remove the workspace button from the top and disable them altogether I think.
To be fair it’s still alpha software, things are basically guaranteed to change until they reach a stable state. I’ve enjoyed it so far though
You can remove that, i don’t see any workspaces
I have a feeling you might be one of those that turned their automatic updates off after an issue where they really, really fucked the UI up on Macs, or something like that. Or you might be a person who doesn’t like the auto updates anywhere.
I turned mine off for awhile, but don’t want to catch anything when a new FF release rolls out, so I turned them back on, especially since I rarely use the browser anymore due to said changes with no user options.
I’m on the latest version on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The option is gone, I’m afraid.
I’m on the latest version try installing this Zen Mod that lets you remove anything https://zen-browser.app/mods/ab9b529c-63d6-48c0-a59a-4a407c5c3129/
While I really appreciate you for helping, the fact that these were part of the core application, then taken away by the developers so that we rely on third parties to bring back, is my biggest gripe with the browser. The options were there, and they took them out. I would rather just go back to Firefox than deal with an always changing UI, and removal of options. :/
Yeah, I hate how projects become allergic to options. If you want to push your own agenda with new defaults, okay fine, but never ever remove options, let people keep it how they liked it.
I saw in their notes for the previous updates about the workspaces, which essentially said “workspaces are a major part of Zen, so you are no longer allowed to NOT use them”. When it was clearly a viable option before. So much for being customizable!
Infinite options is bad design for a number of reasons. One is that when everyone’s experience is unique, troubleshooting is impossible. Two is that when you add an option, you have to support that option forever.
Options are expensive, at least if you want to keep your software working for a long period of time.
Then adding too many options is the problem, not having options in the first place.
Hopefully mainline Firefox can take some design notes from Zen
Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?
My work insists on using it too. Fuck knows why, maybe it’s a security thing? And my personal laptop is constantly nagging me to use edge - it could be the best browser ever and I would still avoid it just because of the pushiness.
It’s a good Chromium based Windows native browser that has integration with your Entra ID account so all your bookmarks / history is automatically synced and users have seamless experience when switching devices. No longer seeing tickets like ″My bookmarks are gone after I reinstalled my PC″ is enough to consider Edge as your company main browser. And the fact that it is part of OS, you do not need to worry about install and patching.
I prefer Firefox, but from Chromium browsers Edge is really good, you cannot expect companies to suggest something like Vivaldi.
This is for companies being in M365 ecosystem. If you are in Google then I suppose Chrome would make more sense.
Yeah, that’s fair, I thought it would probably be something like that. TBF it’s work, they’re paying me, I’ll use whatever they choose. I won’t have it on my own computer though just because of Microsoft’s hard sell
Exactly that
Tell IT and your boss how your productivity tanked since edge disabled uBlock.
This might actually reverse firefox’s decline in userbase at least in the business world. Any shop that already has multi-OS management could probably insta-switch to firefox, and i’m sure that MS locked-in places could too given enough of a push by IT.
I saw one guy from my it team use a browser without adblock. Please send help
Click on all the ads and install all the malware. That will teach them.
So, unironically, I do plan to request Firefox with uBlock Origin as a reasonable accomodation for my ADHD if I’m not able to use it at a job in the future. Banner ads are genuinely distracting and I have a real disability that makes them worse for me.
🤭yea, and what are we gonna do against it?
We manage everything with azure group policies (therefore use all microsoft). we don’t want an extra system to manage the browser of the employees. Maybe corporations are save from that just a while longer than private user 🤔
Intune can manage Firefox add-ons btw, no need to use any extra systems.
Of course, but extra work is required for third party browsers vs just using windows built in browser designed to be managed using entraID / intune.
Companies don’t like to pay extra.
It’s no different than controlling add-ons via GPO like we did in the old days of on-prem. No extra cost associated.
Tell that to oir IT partner that we outsourced our IT to…
Your outsourced IT provider charges for simple configuration changes? That’s a yikes from me. I worked in MSPs for years and those sort of changes were always covered in the standard contract.
Less browsing of news articles?
I work in research and development, I have to constantly search the web for stuff
It’s slowly turning, too. Start looking for something else.
We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn’t it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don’t have one yet.
Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still
From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed
Backed by Shopify, huh? Bet they wish that wasn’t the case, given recent events.
The web platform is huge… It’s going to take a long time to reach parity with other browsers.
BSD licensed
Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.
(I almost just said “copyleft,” but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)
Truly; it’s shocking how much people are still clinging to permissive licensing in the middle of everything going on.
Huh? The goal of the chromium project was to facilitate a corporate browser in the first place. It’s why they don’t have a more permissive license. They want to be able to use everyone else’s work if anyone forks it.
Permissive license doesn’t mean that corporations suddenly get the ability to completely change existing work for the worse, or change its’ license. They can bloody well do that with GPL too if they own the project including contributions, so it doesn’t matter if it’s BSD or GPL, the only protection that the open source users have, in any case, is that licenses can’t be changed retroactively, so if Firefox, Chromium or Ladybird went completely closed source and proprietary today, we’d still have the right to use the code as it was yesterday. Permissive licenses just mean that someone somewhere can create a closed source build without the permission of the person or company who owns the project and that doesn’t particularly matter for anyone using Ladybird or any future open source derivatives. Permissive licenses are useful for libraries, but also for software that could be bundled as part of a bigger solution. Maybe you want to embed a web browser in your proprietary application and don’t want to use webview because its’ usability differs platform to platform.
Also why AGPLv3 and not GPLv3? I don’t think the “A” part is even necessary here, that’s needed more for server side applications, I.e if the end user is using online without the code running on their own computer, AGPL is the one to use.
Anyway, in the modern age, (A)GPL is used by a shit ton of corporate software. Oftentimes with an (A)GPL open core and a bunch of proprietary functionality not included in the core. I should know, I work with one example on a near daily basis. This way, nobody can just take their core functionality and develop a closed source alternative, while they can sell you an enterprise license for full functionality on their “open source” software.
The reason why Chromium uses LGPL is because they forked the code from Safari, which had previously forked the code from KHTML (KDE’s web rendering component, used in Konqueror). The LGPL was provably insufficient to prevent corporate usurpation of the project, as a historical fact.
As for the “A” part of AGPL not being relevant for locally-run software, (1) it doesn’t hurt either, and (2) having maximal protections could prevent weird corporate shenanigans that we haven’t thought of yet.
The LGPL does its job, it’s not as copyleft as GPL or AGPL, but having those licenses doesn’t guarantee that companies will use it, like Gab, which used a fork of Mastodont, Truth Social, or Pawoo. If you want a more restrictive license, the OSI basically won’t accept it as open source because it doesn’t meet their guidelines.
Also, there are no other browsers due to the standards set by W3C and therefore browsers have to have corporate support.
An AGPL license is a verdict that the browser will not be successful.
In addition, Ladybird is under the guardianship of a non-profit organization.
Sounds like a job for JoMiran! Rooting for you!
I agree. I’d even be willing to regularly donate to a foundation that would have this aim as their goal and have their acts matching their promises.
Although, not necessarily a new engine. Going from scratch is a good way to remake a lot of mistakes, while reusing old code is a good way to keep old debt. That’s not a decision I would like to have to take.
It’s almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).
Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can’t develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?
Sam Reichfox
The only way to learn, is by playing
Not for much more, it seems.
Lil arms!
I was on Netscape in the 90s, I got on Firefox when it was still Phoenix/Firebird, and I haven’t left once. You’ve been a good friend.
(Though I do like Palemoon a lot since I love the pre Quantum and pre WebExtensions days).
oh look at that. It’s ‘chromium based browsers are garbage o’clock.’
people use edge? it downloads itself onto your computer without permission.
I use it on my laptop because it doesn’t nuke my laptop’s battery like all other browsers. So it’s a bit of a shame.
It didn’t for me on Linux :^)
It integrates very well with your M365 you need at work, and it saves a ton of time when people can use SSO to basically get everything up and running immediately on a new laptop. Including bookmarks and passwords.
By default I install unblock on any user machine I touch because it’s equal parts user experience and security.
Firefox also has SSO integration with M365! Last I tested it it was less clean than Microsoft’s but it does exist and work the last time I used it
Edit: just tested on a fresh install of Firefox and it worked perfectly. Checked the checkbox under Settings>Privacy and Security for “Allow Windows single sign-in for Microsoft, work, and school accounts” then navigated to my account.microsoft.com and it immediately signed me in (and appeared to be faster than on Edge‽)
O365 never saved anyone any time ever. But it’s the one solution dumb-fuck IT managers know of and think they understand so that’s what everyone’s going with.
If you think SSO and easy profile migration doesn’t save time, there’s simply no point in discussing it with you. I don’t like MS and their near monopoly position as a company much either. But that doesn’t mean every product they make is utter trash for every situation.
There are undoubtedly other solutions but to pretend every one is too dumb to use them shows how little actual experience working in a variety of companies is.
Back in the nineties you might have had Novell NetWare or just plain old LDAP instead of AD, but unlike those competitors AD kept working and offered upgrade trajectories. And it offered decent integration with a decent mailserver (that ofcourse sucked to set up securely for outside access), and that mailserver was fantastic versus the utterly terror that was Domino combined with Notes. I don’t like MS for basically forcing you to go to their cloud now, but pretending it’s a bad product through and through on a functional level is just being willingly blind.
That’s the defeatist attitude of a true MCSE scholar.
And your arguments have the strength of the hobbyist with the homelab he’s constantly having to reinstall, not understanding why companies are so stupid to not do the same thing as him.
Funny that you mention it. Not a single reinstall since I switched my homelab to nixOS. That, and using Tailscale has made hosting your own stuff easier than ever. Microsoft and Google environments are just gross, bloated and dependant on the amateurs who still work for those graveyard companies. I spent close to 20 years working professionally on that crap and won’t touch it anymore. Sorry if you’re still stuck in the past.
All the people who bluster and huff about Microsoft’s stranglehold on enterprise, education, government, etc all absolutely fail to grasp how utterly manageable Windows specifically (and MS products in general) is/are. If you’re familiar with Group Policy, you know; if you’re not, your really, really dont. A moderately competent Windows admin with a single Windows Server can make ten thousand Windows workstations work seamlessley in fifty countries, twenty data protection doctrines and ten languages with hundreds of customisations, tweaks, automations and deployments tailored to each combination of device/user/location, if that’s what they need. I wish that was the case with any FOSS OS, but it absolutely isn’t and even MacOS and ChromeOS don’t come even vaugley close.
This is understandable, and also can see why FOSS would struggle, since a big part of the value is keeping the operators of the machines from doing the things they want or need to do. This is anathema to general FOSS thinking, to keep the user from doing things they would generally be empowered to do.
Which I can see as being great for the admins, but it is often maddening to be a user under that regime. For example, “officially” I must use the corporate load for my work, and it’s super locked down. Problem being is the lock down makes my job effectively impossible (unable to run arbitrarily new binaries, unable to connect to services without a proper certificate, unable to add my own certificates, must get all binaries and service certificates from IT who takes 2-3 weeks to turnaround a signature). So you have a few departments resorting to that naughtiest of naughty words “Shadow IT”, always looking for end-runs around the corp policy that explicitly blocks software development work because they wouldn’t be able to discern that from malware.
Ours also shot us in the head, by forcing automatic updates off (because they know better how to deploy patches than Micrsoft I guess) and then there’s a ransomware attack that cripples things because they didn’t realize they failed to apply security updates for two years on most systems. Fortunately enough people had been manually updating to keep things going.
You’re not wrong about it being easy to set up and use, but the reason it’s still the defacto is because of its earlier monopoly. Now, they are slowly killing what made it the best Enterprise option either by its greedy licensing schemes hiding things you used to use behind new and additional licensing or breaking them with untested patches that go straight from dev to production.
At work. Corporate web based software doesn’t always play nice in firefox.
yea, our comp uses only chrome or Microsoft outlook. even my old state Uni used outlook.
Honestly, it’s pretty easy to dunk on edge. But it’s based on the same chromium browser. They have excellent customer support. I have in the past submitted bug reports and they have followed up. Until now, they had pretty good privacy and options in their settings. With this v2 / v3 situation, I will have to reassess all that.
Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android
I don’t suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.
It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.
For people in [email protected] that’s less of a problem but I wouldn’t suggest it to my family members.
Mull is not maintained anymore. However there is a fork called IronFox.
What’s the advantage over regular Firefox?
You can think of it as a mobile version of LibreWolf. Strict security settings are default and Mozilla’s telemetry is disabled/removed. Also unlike regular Firefox, you can download it from F-Droid (currently you need their repo but it’ll be added officially soon, probably).
Are they doing their own development or are they still mostly reliant on Mozilla? The thing with all these forks is that I doubt they’d be able to continue development if Mozilla were to disappear, since they still rely heavily on Mozilla.
They are reliant. These forks are basically tweaked Firefox.
Yeah, FIrefox is a huge code base. If Mozilla disappears, some big developer group must take over the flag. Otherwise with only community effort, the development would be slowed down.
Firefox is in the process of enshittifying.
Well shit… Thanks for the heads up!
No problem!
DivestOS has ceased maintaining Mull if I remember correctly. I use Ironfox on Android now.
Regular Android Firefox has Ublock origins as well.
I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?
I imagine so, but the technical burden is at risk of growing over time as the upstream chromium may significantly deviate from or remove some of the functionality.
IIRC Vivaldi and Brave promised to prolong it for a year.
Test-driving them both now.
That’s not what that Firefox thing was about at all.
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you’re talking about the most recent news about the Terms of Service, that is a gross misreading of what they said.
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you’re talking about the recent news, that’s not what the updated privacy notice says.
Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say “btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party.” I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.
Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you’re a web power-user / developer sort of person
Firefox based. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’mma give this a try.
Why is there a sidebar for tabs? That seems wasteful for all the screen space it takes.
Edit: From what I see it tries to do everything that is a job of a window manager/desktop environment. There are various solutions to have workspaces, etc. that you can use globally, so I don’t understand why would anyone use this, unless you are on locked system like Windows or Mac.
Zen’s glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
Yeah, viewing a link without opening it is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
You just viewed a link without opening it.
Nonsense, you’re not opening them! You’re fetching them for viewing. It’s totally different!
I was concerned, but it’s not Wiki style.
It’s just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.
Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven’t fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven’t looked into disabling it.
deleted by creator
It’s desktop-only right now and feels like for the foreseeable future. Firefox sync works between Zen and Firefox so you can just run Firefox or one of the Android-specific versions of Firefox that support the generic/vanilla firefox sync.
I was thinking of maybe trying it for a few specific websites that I keep persistently on since I think it may work well for that. However, I was a bit concerned that logins and stuff won’t sync which might make it annoying. Having this sync seems pretty cool though, might try it out.
I use love the mod feature
Honestly this has been my daily driver for the past 6 months or so.
I really like it. The aesthetics are really modern, while still maintaining all the things I like about firefox.
'nough said!
Amarok? That was my favorite media player way back when
Amarok is the other wolf. I know it looks deceptively similar.
Looks like
itsthesamepicture.bmp
They recently started developing it again, after being silent for a long time. They released Amarok 3.0 in April 2024 which migrated it to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5.
Does not elicit the image of iron.
Oh, it’s libre.
