Chrome Web Store warns end is nigh for uBlock Origin Back in June, Google's Chrome Web Store began alerting users of uBlock Origin who had developer-oriented versions of Chrome that the popular ad-filtering extension could soon stop working. With the stable release of Chrome 127 on July 23, 2024, the full spectrum of Chrome users could see the warning. One user of the content- …
"I loathe the bug on android where it'll refresh a page if you look at something else for even half a second. Making a mockery of 2FA"
That might not be a firefox bug, but a byproduct of android killing a process once the user leaves it. When you "switch" back it actually starts again and loads the page in a new session.
- On newer androids you can disable battery optimization for firefox to allow it to keep running in the background.
- Make sure the "don't keep activities" option is disabled in developer settings and the "background process limit" is set to standard
Some underpowered / old devices kill and reload stuff all the time which is mostly fine for static app screens, but is an issue for ephemeral content.
Anyone ?
Anyone who minds their privacy, you mean.
Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Origin is absolutely my trifecta when it comes to surfing the web on my home PC.
I would accept nothing less.
Chrome ?
I use that only to access my professional GMail, Google Maps or Google Translate. Anything else means Google can go forth and multiply.
> I use that [Chrome] only to access my professional GMail, Google Maps or Google Translate
Why?
I'm exclusively a Firefox user on desktop and never have any problems with any of those or are there some extra toys in the professional versions that don't place nice if you're not using Chrome?
> I use that only
Same here. My browser workhorse is Firefox (since Netscape was killed), but there are some "Best viewed with Internet Explorer Chrome" websites, and for those I also keep a Chromium clone on my laptop*.
* After trying to mess with my NoScript/uBlock Origin settings. If I don't succeed after a minute or two, I fire up the Chromium. (Note "Chromium", never (ever) Chrome.) Happens once or twice a month. *shrug*
Unfortunately Google keeps doing things to their services which inconvenience non-Chromium users from time to time.
For example a year or so ago 3D mode in Google Maps didn't work on google.co.uk (but did work on google.com oddly), but only on Firefox.
Right now, people are having trouble with YouTube - I can't watch any video which has a live chat or chat playback on the page as it only loads approximately 50s-1:20 of the video then refuses to buffer further and goes into an error if left for a while - again only on Firefox.
"I can't watch any video which has a live chat or chat playback on the page as it only loads approximately 50s-1:20 of the video then refuses to buffer further and goes into an error if left for a while - again only on Firefox."
It's not just on Firefox. My copy of Vivaldi (Chrome based) has been doing exactly the same for about a week. Normal videos play fine, live streams don't.
I quit using Firefox when the backup your bookmarks and history app (on PC) quit working with current versions. I had bookmarks dating back to the mid 90s that I would always restore whenever installing Firefox, and suddenly all that data became unavailable. There's probably a new version that allows such functionality but I've moved on, I use Opera on PC (but I rarely use a PC these days) and I use Brave on Android for my phone. I have yet to look and see if there's a way to backup my Brave bookmarks, when I get a new device I have to start from scratch and memory, which isn't exactly ideal.
> I had bookmarks dating back to the mid 90s that I would always restore whenever installing Firefox
You could've just copied the entire Firefox profile from your old machine to the new one and had your new Firefox install configured EXACTLY the same as your old one
In fact, knowing Firefox there's probably a single file\folder you could've copied to migrate just the bookmarks if you wanted a clean install of Firefox on the new PC
> there's probably a single file\folder you could've copied to migrate just the bookmarks
Like, going into "Manage Bookmarks", choosing "Backup", and telling it where to put that .json file containing all your bookmark data... This creates a file surprisingly named (today) "bookmarks-2024-08-06.json", which you can then copy, backup, or import into another Firefox using the "Manage Bookmarks"/"Import" menu.
Pretty easy I would say.
(Didn't downvote you though.)
Try a browser extension called "XBrowserSync". It lets you sync your bookmarks between all browsers, both Chromium-based and Mozilla-based, and it uses a third party (and client side encrypted) server, which could be a public instance they provide, or your own.
This lets you both back up your bookmarks, sync them between browsers, and do so in a way that doesn't tie you to one vendor's sync source.
Thank you, apparently I wasn't doing that properly, I was only vaguely aware that it could be done. However, usually the reason for installing Firefox was that it was installing onto a new Windows installation, typically because of corruption of my Windows installation. And, of course, we all know how reliable Windows backup typically works, I've always found it easier to keep all my data off the boot drive. Could I have also installed all my programs on a non-boot drive, and if so, how do I get a new Windows installation to recognize them? I realize this question is probably something I should Google, as it's more than I can reasonably expect anyone here to answer.
> Could I have also installed all my programs on a non-boot drive, and if so, how do I get a new Windows installation to recognise them?
Unfortunately the answer is likely "no" since so much ends up in the Windows registry that you'd lose most of the program's functionality and saved settings (depending on the program of course and how heavily it uses the registry).
Best thing to do is to use some external tool like clonezilla to image the drive(s) on occasion to back it up in a reliable way which is known to be restorable - you need to test your restores as well to validate regularly.
I usually just backup my user directory (%userprofile% is the shortcut), especially the program data in AppData. That contains all the config for most Windows programs. Then I just re-install the programs themselves on the new install, as and when I need them.
I'm backing all this up onto my NAS using UrBackup. Although, now I think about it, I should really test a restore.
Me too. I also tried Firefox on Android, and 1) couldn't import my desktop bookmarks, and 2) couldn't set my homepage. I set it to about:blank because I'm never going to the same page when I want to look at something in the browser.
So I went back to Brave. Which sucks in different ways, but I can live with it.
I had precisely the same experience with Firefox on Android (my nice new Galaxy tablet). It's the first browser ever I've tried on which you can't set a homepage - and I started with NCSA Mosaic. Presumably some developer doesn't do that and so believes that nobody else could or should want to do it either.
Then again, it will be interesting to see who this will play out long term. After all, Google is one of the largest, if not THE largest source of income for Mozilla. This grumpy person has seen many examples where bottom line always wins over principles™. But even if that happens, it might be amusing to see how it will be worded this time...
On Firefox/iOS, "Tracking Protection: Strict" seemed to do the job for me, too, but it now looks like The Grauniad (who I do donate to, dammit, hence part of the reason for not wanting to see spyware ads) now seems to have some ads leaking though somehow (my guess is that they have an on-site local script (not yet known to security filters) that checks whether the remote (known) spyware ad script loaded or not, and if not, hauls an ad into place somehow, the hard way?).
Yeah, but Brave Shields are built into the browser rather than being an extension, so they'll continue to get the necessary access to page contents no matter how much Google restricts access from extensions. I believe there are other chrome-based browser with similar features, though I haven't looked in any detail as Brave currently does all the blocking I require.
I recently switched from Opera to Brave on my personal devices and I'm very happy with it. Linked bookmarks and passwords work well.
However, lusers in work insist upon using Chrome. I'm considering switching them all to Brave and using a Chrome icon because they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
"If or when Chrome kills this extension, I will move to Firefox and never return," wrote someone posting under the name Henry A.
That comment seems slightly ironic to a (mostly former) Firefox user who went through Mozilla's switch to WebExtensions and the resulting loss of many much-loved Firefox add-ons. I guess there's an inherent conflict between the level of access given to browser extensions and the efforts of browser makers to control the performance and stability of their browsers.
> I can pretty much guarantee that there are now fully functional replacements for any extension you used to use.
Nope. Sorry. You lose.
For example, there was a very useful extension that set the layout and size of your add-bookmarks and downloads popups, so you could make it large enough to not have to scroll forever to find a folder, instead of the current "postage stamp theatre" of 5 or 6 items.
That died in the cull and has never returned.
There was also one that popped up a list of cookies when the URL matched a regexp. It was interesting to see .cn and .ru cookies on my bank's website.
That's never come back, either.
I could go on for a while.
You can still edit layout and size in userchrome.css. It got moved there when they switched to Quantum, not WebExtensions.
As for cookies, I'm pretty sure cookie editor does what you want. There's certainly nothing restricting that functionality in WebExtensions.
Also, "You lose"? What are you, 4?
Some functionality was removed along the way in FireFox too - I'm sure FTP extension I used stopped working due to fundamental FireFox changes (dropping FTP* support totally).
.. as I now use a desktop FTP client for transfers instead of being able to do it all via browser (albeit in my case via an extension, but using the inbuilt browser FTP functionality)
* I know FTP is insecure, but that's a feeble excuse for removing support, I'm fully capable of deciding what FTP sites I use (there's still plenty of IT scenarios where FTP is still the way to interact with some third party providers e.g. provider slowly & painfully giving API data transfer options but that offering currently lacks all the different internal objects supported by the FTP model).
A web site serving up thousands and thousands of lines of JavaScript from a variety of places is also (in my view) insecure & more of a concern than a FTP site that I know the provenance of.
"fully functional replacements for any [Firefox] extension you used to use"
Hmm, yes, but also no. I still really miss RequestPolicy, which let you choose (in a nice, simple and intuitive way) what remote content you would allow, on a per-site basis, making it the perfect yin to NoScript's yang. But the move to WebExtensions killed it dead, sadly.
I think(?) you can sort of bash uBlock Origin into doing something similar in advanced mode, but, for all the useful core functionality it has, I'm afraid to say it sadly has the most fugly (yo, WebExtensions, again) and confusing "interface" (You are in a maze of unlabelled coloured squares, all not quite alike) known to humanity, to the extent that I have never dared tinker with this, in case an inadvertent wrong move børks everything…
From the looks of it that's doing what uMatrix does, which is discontinued by Raymond Hill because he claims uBlock Origin does the same thing (it doesn't) but it still works fine.
According to that website there is a new version though (requestpolicycontinued.github.io).
Firefox with UBO and NoScript. Former user of Pale Moon after Australis but code changes eventually killed my extensions so back to FF. MX Linux has in its menu "Adblock -- blocks adverts via /etc/hosts file" Between that and the browser I see NO ads.
Frustrated with code changes that blow up the customisations I've set to make the browser work the way I want. I really miss Tab Mix Plus.
I hope the uBO dev carries on supporting the manifest V2 version for Firefox and doesn't ditch it once Google kills manifest V2 in Chrome.
Personally I think the dev should be recommending current uBO chrome users to switch to Firefox with uBO and ditch Chrome entirely rather than just move to uBO lite. As the lite version is never going to be able to do all that the manifest v2 version can.
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... never used Chrome. Firefox on Linux and Android.
Same here.
Have used uBlock since I found it, many years ago.
Very useful.
Have it installed on my Linux WS, x86 netbook and on an Android 4.4.4 tablet rescued from getting dumped in a tip.
Cleaned up most of the bloat and now runs Fennec 68.5 with the uBlock legacy extension.
.
I dumped Firefox when they introduced that Australis nonsense and haven't been back except for one uncooperative web site.
Palemoon, Duckduckgo and Adblock Latitude do the job for me. Now I'm a Linux user so have no idea how it is on Windows or Mac but if you are looking for alternatives these three might suit you as well.
I just use AdBlock Plus on Firefox and it works great. I almost never see an advertisement.
It's very effective on YouTube too. I sometimes see one or two second ad clips but that's about it. Google completely ruined the YouTube experience with their ads and it's effectively unusable without an ad-blocker.
I wonder how long Firefox can hold out. Remember that Google helps to bankroll it, to help against anti-trust regs. Personally, ANY Ad that gets though to me is a signal to boycott the company/firm concerned. Don't expect me to purchase anything, but do expect me to vehemently slag you off to people I meet.
> Remember that Google helps to bankroll it, to help against anti-trust regs.
...Which kind of answers your question: Firefox can hold out as long as Chrome risks being called a monopoly.
Obviously it just needs some politician to declare monopolies as "healthy American business practices" and Firefox goes to meet Netscape. Any day now.
My view of ads is ambiguous. As a consumer and internet user I hate them as much as any other bloke. But as a company owner I see them as essential to bring my wares under the attention of potential customers.
Advertisements are indispensable in a capitalist society because they foster competition and better / cheaper products. In a socialist communist society ads weren't needed because you could only buy one type of car, one type of TV, one type of stereo etc. etc.
Yeah, nothing wrong with advertising at all—when it is done sensibly, with at least a nod towards being a courteous presence on someone's monitor. There are sites that handle their ads perfectly well, e.g. a strip of statics down one side of the page, with links. They are there if I want to take an interest, easily ignored if I don't.
But then there are the other kind of 'ads' inflicted on us by people for whom 'courteous' is an unknown concept, let alone a welcome one.
'Money grubbers' have a lot to answer for.
> Advertisements are indispensable in a capitalist society
Maybe......... though since advertisers have now moved on to directly tracking me, invading my privacy and are busy sniffing my Y-fronts trying to work out what I had for breakfast, the entire industry can just fsck off and follow the advice given to it by Bill Hicks.
"In a socialist communist society ads weren't needed because you could only buy one type of car, one type of TV, one type of stereo etc. etc."
I don't think you ever read more than two headlines about any socialist state, if you think they literally have a single type of of everything :D
... on any device except the occasional intranet site that mandated it.
Went from Mosaic -> Netscape -> Firefox.
Not a single problem with it on my current phone, raft of extensions installed, incl uBlock, just works.
Plus it syncs bookmarks with my PC.
No interest in Chrome whatsoever.
I've said this before, and been downvoted, but I'll say it again.
Google wants Chrome to be a secure content delivery platform, so they can fully control and monetise the web, just like a cable TV company. They've locked down the network side by making everything https, now they're locking down the browser so you can't tamper with the content. They've turned their search engine into a curated portal (you'll only get your site seen if you pay them or they think it's good enough to be included). What next? I suspect further tightening of certificates so that "unapproved" ones get some kind of subtle warning, then less subtle, then blocked by default?
We're all dooooomed....
> and been downvoted
Yes, there are some Chrome evangelists around here. You can count them by the downvotes on every Chrome-critic post.
Anyway, I for one agree with your analysis. Google tries to do what Microsoft had already tried decades ago, to become the gatekeeper for all Internet commerce. It's like protection business, but 100% legal ("Nice little e-commerce website you have here. It would be a pity if your prospective clients couldn't reach it...").
My company has standardised on Chrome as the corp browser of choice, we don't have any script blockers or ad-blockers, it's a mess every time you try to use a browser on any site outside the company to look something up, it's the most stupid decision. We're an MS shop, I could understand them forcing Edge on us but they want all these plugins to support IE6 pages from old apps and only want to manage one corp browser, hope all the IE6 compat plugins break and force them to reassess.
The problem is the web is an open platform. Someone, anyone could come up with a better internet search engine tomorrow and Google would quickly lose market share. Just like happened with Alta Vista (remember them?) in the late 90's when Google appeared.
Google isn't infallible. They make mistakes like everyone else and there will be consequences when they do. Hopefully they'll react and correct their mistakes before they fade away.
I never used Chrome and never plan to. As a general rule I avoid any Google products wherever possible.
I used Firefox for a long time but got frustrated at the number of connections it was making behind the scenes. Tried Brave but didn’t care for its ad handling (back when Brave allowed certain ads to come through).
My most recent default browser is Mullvad which comes with uBlock Origin. I use DuckDuckGo browser with its marvelous Duck Player when I want to watch a YT video without all the ads and distractions.
both on windows and linux.
And ublock on both
Nary an ad to be seen.. especially on youtube where I have the habit of listening to long concerts and dont want some 30 second unskippable ad for some stupid web/phone game in the middle of Siegfreid's funeral march.
m$ you listening here?... no because they're just as bad wanting us to view 'jolly jackpots spin game' at a volume so loud you can still hear it with your speakers set to '0'
"As an IT administrator, uBlock Origin is a requirement for our users," wrote one individual posting under the name Kendoka on Monday. "As a personal user, I hereby swear to uninstall Chrome the day ad blockers are removed."
As an IT administrator, why is s/he using Chrome in the first place?
Google can't lock down the web using Chrome if there are still lots of people not using Chrome. That means all the Apple folks with Safari and all the Windows folks with Edge are helping to prevent Google from changing all of its web properties to say "sorry, you need our secure browser to access this site." The days of "best viewed with" are thankfully behind us.
And that's good. At home I use Brave; at work I use "ungoogled chromium" (corporate policy doesn't allow Brave because it's got a Tor client in it). Google removes the ability to use ad blockers in their browser, the correct response is to not use their browser.
I briefly used Edge but it became so difficult to avoid having it display the MSN propaganda site that they blew their chance to have me as a user.
Google is digging a hole for itself from which it won't be easy to claw out. If ad blocking is adversely affected I see droves of users leaving for Firefox or other web browsers.
I suspect that already 20% of users will switch without even waiting to see the results of Manifest V3 on ad-blocking. The rest will flee depending on the effectiveness of Manifest V3 ad-blockers that remain on Chrome.
firefox is finished in medium term, why, recent actions (actions ALWAYS speak louder then words)
1) installed last update, it reticked the two studies boxes which i explicetly unticked before.... absolutely gobsmacked they "did a microsoft", so much so i had to update two others striaght away to confirm it had actually happened !!
2) Opted you in, in the previous update, to the new web ad tick box, without any mention in release notes of this new system
3) Recent disclosure ..... that firefox is not blocking all third party cookies even after you tick the box "block third party cookies" - steve gibson has a brilliant down and dirty analysis of this on todays security now podcast
The time for passive resistance has been and gone.
There is now a definite market for an advert-blocker that will play very hardball. As in, never sending a single byte to certain sites, nor loading anything at all from them; and not just blocking cookies, but falsifying them.
If someone is trying to eat me -- and it's not as though they are even pretending anymore -- then I have no obligation not to make them sick.
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