Comment by Multicomp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Multicomp | Hacker News Reader

It is such a bummer to me that Firefox is implementing MV3 and deprecating MV2[1]. Internet Explorer 6 never left, it just became Google Chrome*.

Vivaldi? Killed, Chrome clone. Edge? Killed, Chrome clone. Brave? Killed, Chrome clone. Firefox? Technically a separate engine and in theory among the last hopes, but so sclerotic it follows Chrome in almost all of its decisions. (Can MV2 be kept as a stable basic-security-maintenance-only API? Probably not) Safari? Can be gone around on desktop (my grandparents use Chrome because of Google prompts), has a stranglehold on mobile, but that has its own problems, and likely once users can ~sideload~ install software (potentially from other app stores), there will be a Chrome surge on mobile, forcing manifest V3 over there too, and the ad trackers will win the war.

Or maybe they already have? More likely, I personally am tiring of the cat and mouse game between the spyware makers and devs that fight for the users.

[1] UPDATE: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi... PREVIOUSLY: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/06/08/manifest-v3-firef...

* In the sense that one browser implementation, and not W3C or WHATWG web standards, drives the web browser market. Chrome is much more evergreen than IE.

Mozilla is not implementing[1] any of the Mv3 restrictions against ad blockers (i.e. WebRequest).

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...

I stand corrected in a big way. I'm very pleased that Firefox is doing this, I need to go make my other doom-gloom be less doom-gloomy now.

I'm glad they're making changes, but I'd advise everyone to keep a close watch on what they end up implementing and what potential security and privacy risks may be introduced.

It seems like I'm having to disable something or other with every major update of firefox lately, and as long as they continue to let me disable risky features I'll keep using it. Nothing strikes a better balance between useful and secure like hardened a firefox install, but it takes a lot of vigilance and a willingness to add or modify hundreds of about:config options (after installing https://github.com/earthlng/aboutconfig)

I don't think they've come out to support other extensions that will be killed in the crossfire however, such as ViolentMonkey or TamperMonkey.

https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey/issues/1555

https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644

The only thing we have so far is a google rep stating that they'll "reaffirm that we plan to support userscript managers in Maniest V3 before the Manifest V2 deprecation"[0] back in May, which fills me with no hope at all that they won't simply be killed.

0: https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644#issu...

Isn't this a better link for Firefox, since it covers their reasoning and where they're not following Chrome?

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...

Yes, this is. duck.com search didn't surface that one on my first SERP so will update my post to reflect. Thanks!

> Vivaldi? Killed, Chrome clone. ... Brave? Killed, Chrome clone.

Brave and Vivaldi have always been built on Chromium, because that was the easiest way for them to get started as new browsers. There wasn't some pre-Chromium version of either that was killed.*

Also its just simply the best engine on the market.

Is it the best or does it just _seem_ to be the best as most web content is only tested on Chrome, or Chrome and mobile Safari perhaps?

Hate to say it, but I used to have the job of testing on Firefox and (at least at the time) no, Chrome was the best.

The number of irritating little performance regressions we'd hit when doing anything interesting with the DOM in Firefox was notable (as in, we noted it in the bug-tracker ;) ). Broadly speaking, I began to assume Mozilla didn't have enough real-world integration tests back-stopping changes to their rendering engine.

I haven't tested in a few years so that information is stale.

Its technologically better.

Especially when talking about security.

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

Not true.

Firefox is vastly better in terms of rendering quality for scaled and/or transformed raster images. Chrome always sacrifices quality for performance, with no way to choose.

Firefox's SVG support is also miles ahead, both in rendering quality and features.

It's the best engine for building your own browser on top of, which is the main thing someone building a browser cares about. This is something the Chrome team has prioritized, and Firefox has not.

This is only a part of a browser engine.

Security? Website isolation? Performance? And many other things are just simply better in chromium.

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

Yes Google is abusing its influence on chromium, but one must admit, its simply the best engine out there.

Chrome has crap image rendering. Chrome has sub-par SVG support. Chrome has a host of issues and bugs with media selectors and imagesets not updating dynamically when changing zoom levels.

So no, one must not admit it is "simply the best engine out there". Not by a long shot.

This is only a section of what a browser does.

The features, the speed, the security, are all better on chromium.

> There wasn't some pre-Chromium version of either that was killed.*

Not true. Brave was initially based on Gecko https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/

The Gecko-based version was a prototype that didn't even make it to a public preview release. It was a very early attempt that didn't work out.

What you call "Chrome clones" are in fact based on Chromium, but aren't Chrome. The difference is not huge as they all use the same rendering engine, but appart from that they're free to do other things. Brave for instance comes with full-on adblock built-in.

Vivaldi has been using MV3 for more than a year now and the adblocker works fine.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/ad-blocker-vivaldi-browser/

I'm glad it does. I was mixing/matching my arguments a bit. I don't want to use Chrome both because (MV3 by Chrome is super locked down) and (Blink browser engine monoculture is bad for web durability), so when I said Vivaldi was a dead Chrome clone, I was referring more to the latter than the former.

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