Mozilla has defeated Microsoft’s default browser protections in Windows

Specifically, they had chosen a window size that placed the "default web browser" selector conveniently scrolled off the bottom. It would never be scrolled into view by default, even if the defaults control panel had been explicitly opened for the purpose of setting a default browser.

haven't had a Windows machine for a couple years so I'm wondering - is there still a registry and are protocols still registered in it? I'm obviously not thinking about everyday users going through that to change permissions, just thinking about me.

I mean, the average user has been capable of installing and using alternative browsers for a significant period of time. Most folks exist as some shade of gray between your Grandma with an Ask toolbar and the "HN elites." If anything, I think there is often an underestimation of what regular users understand and are willing to do with their tech (to improve their experience, privacy, etc.) If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems. See what browsers they use, what adblockers they configure, etc. I predict you'd be surprised.

I rarely meet this "average user" who is often discussed on HN; this person who isn't interested in using non-standard software, who doesn't care at all about their privacy, who will use only the easiest and cheapest solution possible, etc. Dark patterns don't just work on these "average users," they work on plenty who even work in tech. I click "Accept All" on the cookie banner on this one-off website if it's the fastest way to read the contents, I will put off changing default apps if I have to hunt for the correct settings, heck I've been charged for subscriptions an extra month because I put off dealing with the hassle of cancelling the thing.

I think this "average user" is constructed in the collective imagination because it makes implementing user-hostile design choices a little more conscionable if you view your users as tech illiterate morons. Considering the state of the industry, one where dark patterns and user hostility permeate nearly every design choice, it doesn't surprise me that HN, a subset of this industry, holds this dim view of its users.

I don't understand your complaint about Firefox's dark mode; I've been using it for years and I don't remember any pure black elements. And as far as extensions, Firefox may be missing a couple minor APIs but it's the only browser that doesn't block the important ones (e.g. the ones uBlock Origin needs) so ad companies can make more money.

It was removed from the core browser because they reached the point where it could be entirely implemented in an extension, and also wasn’t as popular as they’d hoped. … it should then be noted that it can no longer be perfectly implemented in a WebExtensions world; there are some compromises that need to be made, comparatively minor is my impression but I don’t use it (I used Panorama at first, but found before long that multiple windows and Tree Style Tab was more useful to me).

> An extension system that could actually deeply modify the UI (thanks to XUL), which is now gone (and has been replaced with a partial WebExtension implementation).

Replaced for entirely legitimate performance reasons, even if you ignore the security and maintainability arguments. As with many things, it’s a balance. So long as userChrome.css still works, I’m fairly OK with where things lie.

> Firefox OS, Positron, Prism

Sigh. Yeah. I’d count XULRunner here too. I won’t comment on Firefox OS or Prism, but I believe a substantial reason in the killing of XULRunner and Positron is that they were too hard to maintain and held progress on Firefox back.

> Almost everything Mozilla thought of, half-assed, and then killed, Edge has succeeded

It’s funny how these things go: an early implementer before its time, and then later something else reinvents much the same thing but actually succeeds at it. The first two examples of this that my mind always springs to are actually both Microsoft: HTA, which was basically Electron lite, but in 1999; and tablet PCs in the mid-2000s, that quite flopped because the hardware wasn’t quite right yet, and so Microsoft abandoned the space and licked their wounds for another decade before returning (with the iPad and Android tablets having occupied the space, including things like ASUS’s Eee Pad Transformers).

And the related phenomenon of cycles like how OSes used to be all colour-customisable, then they steadily lost that, then eventually they all added dark modes back in again, treating it as something all new and never-before-seen.

> Dark themes

You’re subscribing to the common fallacy that dark themes are just one thing. The fact of the matter is that there are actually several substantially different types of dark modes. This is theory I’ve been mulling over for the last few years; I’ve vacillated between reckoning three and four types and exactly where to draw lines, but I’m currently going with four: ① æsthetic, which is fairly low contrast and certainly avoids true black and white; ② accessibility, which is high contrast in both colours and styles (that is, no gentle gradients, just harsh boundaries between colours), and uses true black and white—note here that light accessibility mode is much more likely to be useful than dark accessibility mode, but both have a place; ③ low-light, which uses true black and mostly fairly bright whites up to and including true white, but is not scared of in-between colours or actively trying for super-high contrast; and ④ power-saver, which is largely for things like OLED panels, where true black definitely uses less power and can look great, and certainly not for TN LCD panels where true black tends to look awful. Which type of dark mode is most appropriate depends on the user’s eyesight, the device screen type, the ambient lighting conditions, the nature of the content being presented, user preference, and power availability.

User Friendly, as long as by "friendly" you mean "actively sabotaging"

My experience with "normal" people; we the nerds told them to install chrome 10 years ago and now they are used to it.

Personally I use Firefox and have done since it came out as it's fast enough for me and I'm not a front-end dev so the dev tools suit my limited use.

Though, 99% of my VS code use is launched from terminal anyway, and I can always right-click. That said, the Win11 right-click menu buries most of the options.

So the usual way of working is to use a text window (with a nicely juiced up set of environment variables) to go to a relevant directory. Uh, several directories are fairly easy also since a command line MARK A will set environment variable MARK.A to the directory name and command G A will make that directory current, for A, B, AB, C, ABC, .... Then with a directory current, use command K to run script K.REX to run KEDIT which right away displays the directory contents and right away gives me lots of ways to edit, manipulate, select lines in the display. Then one keystroke can view a file, that is, run my KEDIT macro VIEW.KEX which is pretty smart on what program to run to process that file.

I have, let's see, in my main collection of KEX macros 265 macros!

That process works for essentially all my typing for any and all reasons -- email, blog posts, macro writing, code writing, TeX word processing, PDF file reading, movie watching, etc. I'm thrilled, happy as a clam, especially with the Windows file system NTFS -- not so thrilled with some other aspects of Windows.

There's no irony here. Even if every single technically apt user sent their feedback to Microsoft at once, it would still be drowned out by the 99% of the general population that clicks through everything without reading or adjusting.

It's not even close, and we shouldn't be giving MS the benefit of the doubt anymore, considering what they've done to Windows in the last 10 years. They did it deliberately, while hiding behind "improving user experience" and "security".

It is really quite refreshing to have some of the freedom from the "old days" back. Honestly, I don't think I'll go back for private usage. Work is different, a) because employers provide hard- and software and b) because Office 365 is quite good for corporate use.

We could by changing who we vote for.

Public sector is long, long, long beyond corrupted. The only way forwards is to carefully migrate away from the infested wreckage into something built from the ground up.

It's like a code-base that's been hacked mercilessly, and was written in a dead language to boot.

You need, Idunno, maybe a bothersome cleric.

The only option app developers - including internal Microsoft ones - should have is open some OS settings app in a supported way, but the user has to accept the selection.

If this goes wrong, what is google going to think of open-source development. If the second biggest (I think) open source application turns out to have been a failure for the company backing it, what is that going to do to commercial open-source development?

I find this a scary prospect.

Hell, Linux even uses DRM (not the Direct Rendering Manager, Digital Rights Management) to check if your LKM is licensed properly to call those APIs. GPL-incompatible libraries only get to link to functions that are rough equivalents to syscalls.

This isn't completely accurate, if the app is being seen only in very small numbers the run button is hidden under "More Info" but when Smartscreen has seen your app enough that it can be more confident it's less harmful the "Run Anyway" button is surfaced.

However, the latest GitHub Copilot stuff, their agreement with OpenAI, return of their embrace, extend, extinguish tactics with GitHub, VSCode and other stuff undone everything.

It's their DNA now. All Microsoft Empire is built with crushing monopoly as their core value and driving force. Changing this requires more than changing a mere CEO and posting a "We Love Linux" banner.

The only really good thing they do is hardware.

Posted from my Debian 11 box using Microsoft Keyboard.

If Windows is going to have ads at the OS level, that I can't get rid of, I simply won't use it.

> Long term shareholders get the shaft when every decision is aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next quarter.

True

Never so succinctly have I seen described the economic problem of the modern age; endless growth for its own sake. Sure, it's motivated by profit, but society and global elites don't act as if there are significant downsides to an investment-driven economy. Rather, it's treated as a virtue, else we wouldn't all be buying into it, literally and figuratively, for the bare minimum of not losing our wealth.

> Halo on Steam

Hah, you don't hear much about Halo anymore. But it's entirely possible you may be able to play Halo on Steam on your Linux machine in the near future. Combat Evolved plays really well on my M1 Macbook through Parallels (even with Anniversary mode, given some settings tweaks) and Reach is playable but drops a lot of frames; if you ever get a Linux machine that runs on ARM then you can virtualize Windows for ARM in a way that blows away any x86_64 emulation I've seen in the past.

Of course most of the work to make that a reality isn't even because of Microsoft besides their compiling of Windows for ARM.

Besides that...

> xbox, windows, office, WSL, VSCode, Visual Studio, hololens, phones, laptops, Halo on Steam, etc.

Honestly, the only decent things you mentioned are Office, VSCode, and Halo, which are all things that just about any other company could have created. Office itself is begging for a viable alternative, but has been effectively grandfathered in to being a necessity for businesses. I mentioned Halo but not Xbox because, IMO, Xbox is an obsolete concept and Microsoft knows this.

There's GitHub, but it's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides to add "plans" for features that are already free as well as forms of prioritization for all things Windows.

I guess I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make besides that I kind of agree with you in the sense that M$ has been less problematic than other Big Tech in recent years. With Windows 11, now I'm not so sure.

There was that "crash your desktop" bug caused by an ad for Teams but longer ago there was OneDrive... DropBox, Box, Google and many others could make file sharing programs that could sync successfully, but somehow Microsoft couldn't.

To add injury to insult they made OneDrive the default way to save files in Microsoft Office, but sometimes a problem with OneDrive would mean YOU COULDN'T SAVE YOUR WORK AT ALL.

If you've had that experience ONCE you are NEVER going to use OneDrive ever.

Then there was that time that OneNote was a pretty good product but Microsoft killed it by inserting at least five icons on and around your desktop (practically up your nose) signalling that it is absolute garbage that they're trying to force up your A*.

Google kills products after the launch, but Microsoft kills them in the process of launch with it's internal advertising.

Microsoft has all kinds of ways they do vertical lockin, it is not has overt as say Apple, but do not think for a second that the company that promoted Embrace, Extend, Extinguish does not have methods to lock in users

It’s the same manager mistakes over and over again.

This is not true. Public companies are only required to be honest with shareholders, no more or less. The shareholders are free to invest elsewhere if the don't like how a company is run, or to exercise whatever voting rights they bought with the shares.

Congress hasn't exactly been a hotbed of anti-trust activity over the past 40 years. I wouldn't take the absence of action here as anything particularly meaningful.

> Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom

Removed not by antivirus you can disable, removed by an OS update.

Chrome, as in Blink and V8, is banned by Apple from running on iOS.

They haven't prevented people from installing untaxed software, but they have made it a scary and difficult process for the average user, and made it very difficult for anyone to sell software without giving Apple/Google a cut.

So in a weird way, I agree that it's unfair that Microsoft can't do unfair things while all the other companies are doing unfair things. That puts them at a competitive disadvantage!

They've been shy about it because of their history, but I predict Microsoft will eventually lock Windows down in the same way Apple and Google lock down their operating systems. Or, knowing Microsoft, they'll probably take it as far as they possibly can.

So where's the interest in slapping billion dollar fines on Google for bundling Chrome and Google Search with Android? They own the majority market share for both mobile operating systems, web browsers, and search engines.

I guess they probably get away with it because they bundle it with Google Play Services instead of Android, but you could make an argument that GPS is fundamentally a part of Android given it is necessary to provide the features generally associated with the OS. It's not rock-solid, but it's at least a better argument than any of the other big-tech monopoly cases the US has been pursuing.

There are more aggressive techniques available that cannot be turned off very easily. TrustedInstaller is the first one that comes to mind. If you cant politely ask the registry, you can always nuke edge from orbit.

I hope Firefox keeps pushing down this route. Make your installation process as inflammatory as possible. I would encourage a "Remove all existing web browsers" checkbox in the final pane of the installation process - Default selected, of course. Give them a proper taste of their own medicine.

If you search for the string: "User Choice set via Windows User Experience", you'll find the GUID used to calculate the hash.

That's how it used to work (and how it works with non-browser associations) before the more recent Edge-pushing dark patterns.

https://www.itsupportguides.com/wp-content/uploads/Windows10...

But what Microsoft has done here is push their own product in the name of protection. That's much more malicious. To argue whether it is a protection because they call it one is semantics.

Installing an extension is a common practice performed by many people who possess little-to-no "computer skills." (for lack of a better way to put it.) Just about anyone can search for an extension, perform a few clicks, and install it. And this used to be a popular method for those who disliked UI changes Mozilla foisted upon them so that they could easily return to a UI they enjoyed. Unfortunately, the UI modifications that can now be made with extensions are minimal. Users are encouraged to modify userChrome.css instead. While this may seem trivial and perhaps preferred by some in the HN demographic, this effectively takes it out of the mainstream. Most users are not going to find their FF profile folder, create a chrome folder (which doesn't exist by default), and start coding css to make their browser look different. Nor are they going to have any idea that there are projects on github which would provide solutions for them. But let's say, for argument's sake that one did go to the trouble. Would you like to move the tabs below the address bar? Good luck with that. And then watch your css no longer work when Mozilla makes further changes making your modifications ineffective. There is one project that does manage to move the tabs below the address bar but it leaves a blank area above the address bar where the tabs would be. Mozilla has dug in on their tab bar dogma, user preference be damned. We're seeing it again with proton. It seems to be universally reviled, but guess what: you're gettin' it whether you like it or not. Want to use your operating system's printer dialog box instead of FireFox's incomplete and buggy one? Too bad. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1322589?page=2#a...

I also understand that people create derivatives of open source projects as an intellectual pursuit, which is wonderful. However, I used Waterfox as an example. Indeed, Waterfox appears to have begun its existence in much the way you describe. But fast-forward to now, on their website's main page, they trumpet their tab bar thus: "Fan-tab-u-lous - Everyone likes to use their browser in a specific way." And indeed, in the preferences there is a simple way to set the position of the tab bar. Why would that be so hard for Mozilla to do in Firefox? Why? They also highlight, "Limited Data Collection," "No Telemetry," and "The most extension support of any browser." Do you not think it safe to infer that this may be their current raison d'être and how they would like to differentiate themselves from Firefox?

Yes, I know there are alternative projects. My criticism is directed primarily toward the Firefox UI team. It is a mystery to me why an organization that expends so much energy and money marketing itself in an attempt to get new users, regularly angering its existing users to the point where they want to bail. This article is nice explainer: https://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/its-cheaper-to-keep-em.htm...

https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/12/181257/ask-slashdot...