Not everything that isn't ublock is automatically bad.
No, but if a product fails to do the one thing it was made to do, it’s bad.
Especially if you just want an adblocker and not also all the other stuff it comes with
What else does uBlock Origin come with? Like, content filtering, yes, but that’s pretty fundamentally coupled with ad blocking.
Given the implication that uBO is bloated, I’d also love to know what other adblockers you’ve been using that are more performant and/or less resource-intensive than uBO. The benchmarks I’ve seen show uBO performing better than ABP, but those metrics are all several years old at this point.
Mozilla, the company behind Firefox and Thunderbird, has talked a lot in recent years about the unfair advantages that platforms give to their first-party web browsers. Platform Tilt is a new effort from Mozilla to show how Firefox and other third-party browsers stack up against Chrome on Android, Safari on iPhone, and other platform pairings.
Mozilla said in a blog post, "There’s a long history of companies leveraging their control of devices and operating systems to tilt the playing field in favor of their own browser. This tilt manifests in a variety of ways. For example: making it harder for a user to download and use a different browser, ignoring or resetting a user’s default browser preference, restricting capabilities to the first-party browser, or requiring the use of the first-party browser engine for third-party browsers."
Mozilla is now outlining these "tilts" in a new "Platform Tilt" issue tracker database, while encouraging other web browsers to publish their concerns in a similar fashion. The main purpose is to call more attention to how platforms like iOS and Windows favor their own web browser over the competition, which is useful information in the various antitrust legal actions against Apple, Microsoft, and other big tech companies.
There are ten issues listed with Apple, including the Apple App Store forbiding third-party browser engines, no option to import browser data on iPhone and iPad from other web browsers, and difficult beta testing. On Android, Mozilla points out it can't import browser data, some features open Chrome instead of the default web browser, and Google search results on Android are worse.
Mozilla also highlighted three issues with Microsoft. The process for setting the default browser on Windows is still difficult, and some Windows features forcibly open links in Edge instead of the default web browser. Microsoft also reverts the default browser to Edge during some Windows setup interactions. Most of those issues were recently made illegal by the European Union, but Microsoft is free to continue doing them in other regions, like the United States.
The new database is a bit like Mozilla's WebCompat project, which documents the problems that popular websites have in Firefox and other less-popular web browsers. However, instead of specific sites creating a worse experience for Firefox users, Platform Tilt is about software platforms creating a worse experience.
You can check out the full Platform Tilt database at the source link below. It will likely continue to be updated as Mozilla sorts through its issue trackers.
Hijacking top thread to say, if you haven't tried their new android browser, definitely check it out! Aiming to be largely compatible with desktop extensions, solid experience so far.
If anyone is curious it isn't too hard to setup Android Studio with adb to remove all these unwanted apps. Android can't forcibly open Chrome if its been removed.
11: It's the only browser on the market that is not either apple webkit or google chrome based. And it's in our best interest to keep said market healthy, with as many competing actors as possible.
If websites don't work on Firefox even if the user agent was changed to Chrome I recommend you to use a privacy preserving browser like ungoogled chromium.
It's a string that your browser sends to websites with information about the browser itself and your OS. Sometimes that info will be used to block functionality.
Years ago I tried to use TurboTax from Firefox on Ubuntu. It wouldn't work because only Internet Explorer on Windows was supported. I changed the user agent to make it appear as though I was using a supported setup, and it worked flawlessly.
I haven't actually needed to use one in a long time, but an extension search for "user agent switcher" should turn up something that can do it.
Easiest would be to install a plugin such as "User-Agent Switcher." This is the string of text that identifies what browser, version, and platform you're running to the server you're accessing.
There's a new feature inside Firefox that allows you to report webpages that are broken on Firefox but work in other browsers. Please use it. It's a great way to push for universal compatibility within browsers. It's usually the webpage developer's fault for using a non-orthodox technique that works exclusively on Chrome, but shouldn't be done for any sort of reasons, like compliance with web standards. But, it's possible for Firefox to derive intelligence from the reports and write workarounds.
At some point there were more than 1 relevant browsers using Gecko, though. Somebody at Mozilla decided to gloriously triumph over allies by killing XULRunner and not offering a replacement.
Not sure if WebKit is such a bad choice in that context.
As it should be. But honestly unless there needs to be a change there is no reason to fork.
Most of the chromium forks are just branding and proprietary features they want built in, with brave being the only one that feels a little more aggressive in changes from the base.
Well, there are also the mobile variants of Firefox, which are more of their own thing.
IMO Mozilla limited itself a bit too much on Firefox. Which results it their web engine not attracting many developers for it outside Mozilla.
Embedding gecko in your own app was much easier in the past. This is now mostly taken over by CEF and WPE for Blink and WebKit respectively.
Also stuff like B2G (Boot 2 Gecko) or FirefoxOS are dead as well.
A goal of open source should be to be hacker friendly as well, were currently Blink/WebKit is leading. There are so many more projects around those engines than Gecko, which is sad.
Yes, I'm talking about that. I was using conkeror (Gecko-based browser with emacs-like controls, which is funny since for editing I've never learned emacs and use vi/vim) until it stopped being practical.
I feel like I'm going crazy since we kept preaching for years that this is the end goal and that this is what will happen with Google's anti-competitive practices. Just get shit on in the comment threads until recently.
It's not even a feel good I told you so because this just sucks.
Microsoft is the king of blowing a massive, industry-defining market lead in the fourth quarter due to unforced errors. Especially in the 21st century:
They were the default office suite, to the point where their trademark became the category name, and they even had SharePoint; but their stubborn refusal to get into the cloud document game handed off the top spot to Google Docs.
They were the king of K12 education by default, since Apple was so expensive and essentially the only factor that matters in K12 is price. Then they completely ignored Google offering really good deals on Chromebooks for a decade or more, and now Chrome OS is the dominant K12 platform.
They owned Skype, which was genericized as the popular verb meaning "to make a video call." But they ignored the opportunity that was the pandemic, and Zoom not only ate their lunch but took the genericized trademark crown.
They had Lync, which was the de facto messaging app that every Enterprise deployment used. But then they didn't update the app for a decade except to change the name to Skype for Business and then to Teams, while Slack ate their lunch.
And, as you mentioned, they had the top browser for both users and developers, but did nothing with it until Chrome got unattainably faster, easier to use, and more standards-compliant.
Xbox was never the singular market leader like these other things—they've always played ping-pong with PlayStation—but Microsoft owns Rare, an industry defining studio, and they've completely wasted them for years.
They never had dominance in the smartphone world, but they were poised for it with a well-liked and visually distinct platform in Windows Phone which they just abandoned.
To a certain extent, they had a sort of "goodwill dominance" in their operating system, which they frittered away on automatic updates and design overhauls and (more recently) AI that nobody was asking for.
They lost all these massive leads while they were chasing dominance in search, or video game livestreaming, or AI, or whatever. They always seem to be focusing on the thing that doesn't matter while their dominance just flutters away in the wind.
It's in their DNA. They completely missed the internet boat when it first took off in the early 2000s and played catch-up for years thereafter. You would think they would have learned and not made the same mistakes again that you have in your list, but nope. Maybe they were too busy fighting Linux.
This is not true. Firefox is not the only browser that's not based on Webkit.
There's Iceweasel, Waterfox, Pale Moon, Seamonkey and Librewolf. That they have a negligible portion of the market is one thing. But they're on the market, dammit!
But people still aren't getting it (despite increasingly obvious signs this is already causing problems that will soon get much worse), so I guess we need to keep saying it
I definitely get less sneers these days when I talk about things like this
Hell, you know what - I'm going to double down on your bright side - if the enshitification wasn't so public and rapid, it might've been too late before normal people started noticing
The article mentions that "Chrome [has a] more restrictive Manifest 3 plugin API", but doesn't go into any examples, when this one is the main one (and why Google brought in manifest v3 at all).
Edit: I exaggerated, of course. Below this are some downsides that individuals have experienced. But personally, my experience using Firefox on desktop for Mac has been all upside. If everybody who can just tries it out, you might be surprised at how friction-free the change is.
Agreed, and it seems like Firefox has recently made an effort to accommodate the extension more, as it seems to run even better than it used to and is now a recommended extension
You haven't tried Vivaldi then. It has the best tab management features of any browser by leaps and bounds, it saddens me they chose Chromium over Gecko given that manifest v3 is coming.
It gives me anxiety, it's way too overcrowded and cluttered. I use Tree Style Tab. It does one thing, it does it well, it doesn't overcomplicate it, it works with me.
I will say it took me some time to get used to it, but it also is a lot easier to use than it used to, they made a lot of things better in the last update
I think it's one of those things that you have to sit down and test out and really figure out. Tree style tabs are also good though. I definitely think it's where sideberry got their inspiration
Oh hell yeah... Thank you friend. I immediately downloaded it, and it took me all of 30 seconds to realize this is it
This is what I've been looking for, for years now. I even took a crack at it myself several years ago, but then I realized it wasn't possible without doing an extension (rather than a plug-in) if I wanted to do it right
You have mitigated one of most inconvenient recurring problems in my life. I'm working on a lemmy app right now, and I'm so grateful I'm going to move up the "mark user as friend" feature.
How would you like me to guild your username so I might recognize you in the future? Lit up border? Tiny crown on your avatar? A little lemmy gold symbol next to the score? I'm open to suggestion
Ah. That's part of Resist Fingerprinting mode, which (after checking about:config) I see Mull enables by default. Desktop Firefox does the same thing in that mode. You could always turn it off if you don't value that protection.
Hi. I'm on lemmy. I haven't switched. Why? Because there an insane amount of incorporation into Google. Email, my phone communicating to pc, passwords, auto fill, saved cookies, credit cards.
I want to switch. I want to get off chrome from what I've been reading regarding it's practices. But I'm so engraved and the undertaking of switching is not something I've committed to yet. Or might never. I already have a Google Home in my kitchen. I feel like privacy isn't something I have a privilege of anymore.
Oh man! Download KeePassXC, put your passwords on there, install the browser extension to use it in your browsers. You can back it up any way you want, including using Google Drive because the file is encrypted.
Some people don't want to sign up to a cloud provider or manage their own instance. KeePassXC offers a simple file that can be stored on your devices. It's easy to sync using your existing cloud accounts and encrypted.
They probably meant from a developer perspective. It's the only browser that's missing a lot of CSS/JS features and needs weird workarounds for the simplest things.
Apple has been suspected to intentionally slow down safari development in some key areas so it won't cannibalize the AppStore. Frustrated web devs, unable to get their web apps to work correctly on safari mobile, would publish their apps in the AppStore instead of using PWA.
That has been mostly solved by Apple in the most Apple way possible. They just forbade PWA on iOS. Period. Like, they still load on Safari, but you can't pin it as a pwa to your app drawer anymore.
I never had a lot of difference between both browsers (never got to use chrome much, admittedly), but even when it was supposedly "bad", Firefox never struck me as being especially slow.
I definitely noticed, before quantum (like 5 years ago) single page apps and frameworks like react were becoming a thing, and it was noticeably less snappy than chrome
After they announced the rewrite to better handle shadow doms and partial repaints, I switched for everything but development
Since then, they've done another rewrite, and the dev tools are closer, so I only open chrome when a site I have to use isn't working, or by client request
Anybody else having flaky behavior with youtube videos in Firefox lately? Like, only audio resuming but video freezing after rewinding? I'm wondering if this is intentional on the part of Google.
Given Google and YouTube's history of intentionally and maliciously disrupting other browsers that aren't chrome, it'll be a safe bet that it's intentional.
I think youtube makes itself terrible if you don't have premium. I have the problems you describe and others on both my desktop with FF or my chromebook with chrome.
howtogeek.com
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