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Comment by somehnacct3757 | Hacker News Reader

I do think there's a bit of sour grapes. You can only use the MV2 version until January. After that the main point to using the MV3 extension will be that it exists.

I sort of like the idea of UBO Minus, regardless of whether they do a full MV3 version of UBO later. It's more private than UBO could ever be. If it's enough, it's actually quite a nice extension.

Methinks a competitor ad blocker leaning into MV3 and claiming the 'first MV3 ad blocker' title last week was a glass of cold water for UBO devs. MV3 is happening, and usershare is at risk.

But, in addition to all that, I also think the main objective of MV3 is to hamstring ad blockers. Very very elegantly hamstring ad blockers.

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> usershare is at risk

My impression from way back in the uMatrix days was that marketshare is not a concern for gorhill and that the u* family are a labor of love to improve the internet for everyone.

A dilemma as old as art, isn't it? Will you stay true to your most profound convictions, even if it consigns your work to obscurity? Or will you compromise, gaining more attention and influence, but for a lesser artifact?

We wouldn't be having this conversation if uBlock was a Firefox-only extension. It would have no momentum and no traction, barely any feedback, and nobody would care what gorhill had to say about improving the internet.

Some folks still use uMatrix and wish uBlock had an advanced advanced mode to replace it :)

I do keep using uMatrix. Its matrix UI is a nearly perfect. I also use uBlock Origin and I can't understand how to achieve the same results with the mini-matrix in its UI. ++ -- ??? It lacks the columns that explain what you're blocking or allowing. I read the documentation more than once and I still don't understand how to use it. Maybe I lack the incentive because uMatrix still works and it's so much better at that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26284124

TL;DR: There is no proper UI, and it’s only usable if you either use the uM tables infrequently or feel like writing rules by hand all the time.

Agreed, what takes seconds now (click square or row, click to reload, repeat until it works well enough) would be going to take minutes, possibly large fractions of an hour. A two orders of magnitude change for the worse means that it's unusable. It's not life and death, where one adapts no matter what.

>click square or row, click to reload, repeat until it works well enough

Don't guess. uBO comes with a dashboard just like uM did that shows you exactly what's being blocked. It's usually very obvious what important script is being blocked whose domain you need to allow, what PUA symbols font is being blocked, etc.

>take minutes, possibly large fractions of an hour

Switching to the other window where you have the uBO list open and copy-pasting a line takes about as long as clicking the uM browser button, eyeballing the table and finding the right cell to click.

Your initial setup is going to take long. After that you'll a) get better at it, and b) you won't need to update it as often. I started doing this two years ago and these days I edit less than 2 lines per month on average. My list has rules for ~80 domains and is ~400 lines long, not counting whitespace and comments.

In any case, I'm not trying to convince you. I keep seeing people thinking that uBO can't do things that uM can, so I post that link to let them know that it can do those things except for cookies. Whether you want to use that info, or you think it's not worth it and you want to keep using uM, is something you decide for yourself.

My point is that the uM UI is obvious and I never understood how the uBO overview works. This should be telling something about UX design (or the amount of time that people can put into these projects, after all they have a life like everybody else.)

Today I learned that the GUI is read only and I have to write rules by hand. I'm a fan of command line and textual configuration files, except the few cases where a complex configuration GUI is quicker to use. uM is a great example of such cases.

> Your initial setup is going to take long

So I'll postpone it to when uM won't work anymore :-)

But actually reading again the guide at https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu... it seems that it can be done with a mouse. It didn't work for me because of ctrl ctrl doesn't work (I'm resisting fingerprinting on Firefox) and filterAuthorMode was False.

I think I can create allow rules with a mouse now. Unfortunately it seems that they allow everything from that site. For granular control I'm back to writing rules.

By the way, it seems that the ++ and -- in the overview are a kind of histogram. The numbers as in uM are much more informative and they won't puzzle people like me. I thought they were targets for clicking or to allow / block the site. We're back to my initial assessment of the two UXes.

Anyway, both uBO and uM are really useful so I won't complain too much. I'll keep using uM as long as it works because it's easier to use. I'll switch to that functionality of uBo when there won't be other alternatives. I remember that I switched to uM from NoScript because of some changes there. I couldn't do anymore what I was used to do. I read years ago that maybe they fixed that, so I could check how it works but not now.

I was already using uBo for adblocking and content filtering.

>Today I learned that the GUI is read only and I have to write rules by hand.

You've reached an incorrect conclusion.

>But actually reading again the guide at https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu... it seems that it can be done with a mouse.

Your link is about dynamic filters. My comments are not.

> I started doing this two years ago and these days I edit less than 2 lines per month on average.

I visit more new domains that need adjustment per week than you apparently do per month. That’s what I meant, it’s probably okay if you rarely need it. The issues start if you frequently do.

I also often experiment which blocked domain is making issues, sometimes requiring 4-5 rounds till I have it set up the way I want it to.

Yeah, it depends on your browsing habits. The domains in my list are the ones I visit reguarly.

For one-offs like HN submissions or search results or whatever, I either deal with the default level of broken-ness of the site, or I use a different browser that has a less strict uBO ruleset and is configured to delete cache, history, etc on exit.

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