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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Is Chrome still planning on rolling out manifest v3, which kills uBlock Origin?

I imagine that would boost Firefox growth.

Edit: Answering my own question...yup, it's in canary as of November 1st. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins...

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Here is the post from an extension developer invited in the latest Mozilla workshop with info on the plans for Mozilla for manifest v3

https://gist.github.com/Lusito/dd6b76b93f83267903619103745cc...

The key passage:

"Google wants to drop support for blocking WebRequests, which will cripple certain extensions, others might not even work at all. Mozilla is not going to follow this destructive path."

Are there definite plans for uBlock Origin not to support new blocking API?

I believe so: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

And: https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1134127701583904770?s=20

To expand on your comment a little: The new API means uBlock Origin cannot do useful things that it does now. gorhill/Raymond is not refusing to implement a new API, he is refusing to nerf uBlock Origin.

That's a stance I like very much. And it is good news for Firefox for sure, since the roughly 30% (last I checked) of users that use privacy-enhancing extensions are being handed a very good incentive to switch.

Thanks. uBlock Origin has a unique author who does not bend with "acceptable ads" nonsense and it's a shame to lose that addon. Hopefully something similar will emerge. I think that Chrome developers have a good reason to abandon old API, because Apple did something similar with Safari approach to ad blocking. Also it's a good thing if more users will migrate from Chrome. While I, myself, use it and love it, I think that healthy competition benefits everyone.

>Hopefully something similar will emerge

Nothing similar will ever emerge, because the only reason Gorhill isn't supporting development on Chrome is due to the API changes that means that uBlock literally cannot function anymore. There will never be a new uBlock, or anything similar, on Chrome without some kind of exploit or Chrome backtracking on the manifest changes.

Nothing similar can emerge for Chrome. You can't do hueristics or "right click to block" with a static declarative list. Also, the list is limited in size.

Unless you're on AD:

> The blocking version of the Web Request API remains available for managed extensions because of the deep integrations that enterprises may have between their software suites and Chrome.

Guess that leaves corporate Mac and Linux users in the lurch.

I’m pretty sure my org uses managed extensions. I’m on a Mac and I get “some settings are managed by your organization” or whatever, and we’ve installed at least one chrome extension from a local domain site.

Come to think of it it's a great opportunity to move more people off chrome.

Make sure proper ad blocking only works in firefox and make google choke on their evil policies masked with performance concerns.

Also less development overhead, when one does not need to develop for Chrome any longer. Seems like a sweet deal to take. With a more focused development, we might see more improvements for the code of the Firefox extension.

gorhill will not "make uBO less than what it is now".

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

When is that planned going public?

I may have to rush an extension...

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