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Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

don't usually flex with tech but isn't uMatrix [1] just a little bit harder to learn and a million times more satisfying? at least on my often-used systems, I have a hard time imagining loading a website without being able to control the third party content in a matrix these days.

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/

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Isn't uMatrix no longer maintained (possibly aside from security updates)?

https://www.reddit.com/r/uMatrix/comments/onp0c6/umatrix_142...

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Last update 2 months ago, and it's a security fix, so yeah seems fine to continue use.

Building both uMatrix, and uBlock (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock) can't be easy.. maybe the features some of us enjoy in uMatrix will come across.

ublock can block everything umatrix can but reverse is not true. It had been the case from beginning but people are not aware. So I find ublock much more satisfying.

Is this downvoted because it's untrue? I've never used (and never found a need for) uMatrix, but I'm curious.

I think it might be true, but it's a lot harder to do uMatrix things in uBO, because the 'advanced mode' just gives you allow/disallow per domain, not the er matrix at CSS/image/media/scripts/XHR/frames/other granularity.

I think you can get that granular in the manual/text based rules edit of uBO in settings, but I stopped looking into it / considering switching fully at that point (I'd always used it in simple mode in addition to uMatrix, just to block cosmetic DOM stuff that uMatrix doesn't do) since I need it to be far easier and quicker than that, as it is jn uMatrix.

So switching to nuTensor (a light-touch security/necessary FF updates only sort of fork) has been on my to-do list.

Scripts, image and frames can be blocked.

* * 1p-script block

* * 3p block

* * 3p-frame block

* * 3p-script block

* * image block

* * inline-script block

CSS, media can be blocked if it has extension:

*.css

*.webm

*.mp4

*.mp3

*.aac

I don't like gifs, so I used to block it through *.gif, which I'm not sure if umatrix can do.

As I said, only in the manual rext entry rules in settings.

In uMatrix that's one click in the appropriate column per domain's row, in the toolbar drop-down.

Scripts, image and frames can be blocked with one click in ublock too.

One and not the others?

My uMatrix default is all cookies blocked; third-party media, scripts, XHR, frames, other blocked. Of course I often then have to allow some third-party script, and I can do so in one click without also allowing XHR or frames to/from that domain.

uBO doesn't allow that (in the toolbar UI, 'advanced'/'more' mode), because it's missing the columns from the 'matrix', so you either allow/block a domain wholesale.

Yes, uBO in it's current state can do everything uMatrix can do. I don't think this was true "from the beginning" but it is true now.

I don't really recommend it for anyone other than very bored devs, but it is very satisfying at times. The effort-to-utility ratio is honestly quite bad. Most of the *actually useful* functionality is redundant now with newer uBlock features.

I love the seratonin rush of one-click "disable 1p CSS" on an ugly website, or figuring out how to fuck with a clever-but-stupid paywall for the first time. :)

Also, the uMatrix UX is absolutely brilliant (that genius 2.5D green/red matrix).

> one-click "disable 1p CSS"

this is built in to firefox since it was netscape navigator, under view -> page style -> no style.

even the menu items have barely changed since then: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/net7_encoding.gif

Didn't they delete the Encoding options with the last version?

uMatrix is great, link for the chromium users: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...

If you want to avoid ads and tracking, the last browser you should use is Google Chrome. Google has been deliberately crippling Chrome so that ad blockers don't work properly.

Are you talking about the limit on how many rules an ad blocker can use? That didn't have much of an effect on Chrome, but it did on Safari

I'm gonna need sources if you're talking about something else

- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

- https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158

- https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/googles_browser_exten...

- https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterpr...

Not much harder to learn but so much more work..

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