Seems like Microsoft is just taking whatever Chromium releases and repackages it to show more ads and to make Bing the default search engine. In this case, it's just dropping support for Manifest V2 extensions, such as uBlock Origin, and moving to Manifest V3, which does not support extensions intercepting and blocking requests using blockingWebRequest.
Just three days ago, Mozilla reiterated [1] that Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2 alongside Manifest V3. So if you want a better web experience with uBlock Origin, Firefox is your only choice (or use Firefox forks that support it). While you're at it, note that "uBlock Origin works best on Firefox". [2]
Arc is a Chromium web browser that also includes uBlock Origin in the default install.
Orion is a WebKit web browser from the folks at Kagi that supports both Firefox and Chromium extensions (including on iPhones and iPads) and has zero telemetry, and I have the Firefox version of uBlock Origin installed.
Firefox is not the only option for people that want alternatives to Chrome that support uBlock Origin.
That's exactly what Edge is. It reminds me of the mobile operator branded versions of feature- and early smartphones: Same core functionality, more intrusive ads, delayed feature updates.
Indeed, Ive used firefox (since 2004) with uBlock (since 2015 or so) and have mac Mini(s) connected to TVs; use wireless mouse to enjoy the web from my couch or in my room. There are zero ads or popups seen.
On other TVs like my Roku i do pay for a few streaming services with ads and get bombarded with ads on that tv. But its a group tv that many use.
That is sad. I need multiple profiles for my work and I cannot use Firefox because the profile support is awful. Creating and managing profiles as well as switching profiles is so intuitive in Chrome, it just works. In Firefox it's extremely user hostile. Hearing that Microsoft will also remove uBlock from Edge makes me angry, because that will make my work-life so much more annoying.
Brave still works with ublock origin but every month or so they pull a windows and some new Brave feature I don’t want gets turned on or featured in some way.
I wonder how long they’ll maintain manifest v2 compatibility. Once they throw in the towel, Firefox will truly be the last stand.
Does anyone here know why the pay-to-browse model never really took off?
As in, suppose your daily browsing generates about $3 of monthly ad revenue [0]. Instead, you have a (digital) wallet linked to your browser, which could be pre-loaded with credit each month. For each website you visit you may decide to opt-out of ads by paying a fraction of your credits.
You could even have a system where you could pay for a model with light-ads (i.e. at most 1 ad per page, 10 seconds of ads per 30min of video), or pay more for zero ads.
I understand it's a difficult system to organize and is dependent on a strong network. But I'd expect there to be a solid small market by now.
Lots of individual websites have this option (e.g. Netflix, newspapers, Spotify, Youtube Premium) but there's nothing overarching.
There are also "upstream" options, like PiHole or NextDNS which block requests to ad/tracking/malicious domains at the network (local machine, router, etc.) level.
Can't say i have big problems using Edge in combination with a pihole, but i do agree that Firefox with the very nice plugins like uBlock origin does look so much better.
I mostly use Edge for accessing the big streaming websites and Firefox for everything else. Video runs somewhat better on Edge for me.
Use uBlock Origin Lite, it works fine and in some ways is more efficient than the regular extension. Most people won't notice much of a difference if anything.
Firefox is debatably less bearable than a Chromium based browser with uBlock Lite at least on Windows.
I'm slowly thinking that this might be the correct way forward. It's difficult, at least for me, because I am addicted to the internet, but recently I realized that I need to be more mindful about my internet time, simply because it became shit, and using it actually has hugely negative impact on my life. I'm not sure how to phrase it, but it's not "ah yeah I'll do that someday", but rather "ok, things are getting serious, I am making a decision and starting to follow though right now".
Well, with it, it is just barely bearable still, if you do not pull yourself back radically and are paranoidly picky. Crap with ad vs crap without ad is the typical choice nowadays. The web is murdered by those whose livelihood depend on it, like a virus. Leaving alone only tiny safe heavens like this.
Recently I've been asking myself, what do web browsers and the web look like in twenty years? I've been applying this to all "free" software (e.g., VSCode) released by the large tech companies who ultimately are incentivized by profit.
I really have no clue, but as far as I can see the answer is never better. More centralized, more bloated, more invasive, less choice, and less freedom.
I switched to Edge on my Windows machine for a while, because that meant that I didn’t need the disk space for an additional browser (same as when just using Safari on Mac) and it was reasonably pleasant and worked well. Guess that’s ending, I liked the DevTools in Firefox a bit more anyways.
It's a tradegy antitrust enforcement isn't forbidding advertising networks owning / having undue influence on browsers.
I think this is heading to a point where lot of power users are simply not updating their browsers any more.
Personally I'll take the miniscule chance of being infected with malware due to a security bug on an older version of Firefox over the inability to run uBlock Origin any day. I can recover from malware installation. I can not use the web without an ad blocker.
What I'll probably do is use an isolated sandbox environment for any web browsing I need absolute security (e.g. online banking/shopping).
> If you use the uBlock Origin extension in Google Chrome or Edge, you should probably start looking for alternative browsers or extensions—either way.
I've used Firefox on android for a while as android chrome hasn't had adblocking for a long time.
Am pretty anti-google these days but it'll take some time to untangle myself from the ecosystem.
Anyway, I've largely moved back to Firefox on the desktop too, swapped a few icons about so my muscle memory now opens Firefox instead of Chrome and it's been totally painless. An easy win.
I'm going to be honest, but this is a really weird way for Microsoft to announce Edge is EOL and they can't afford to even hire two or three more developers to perma-fork Chrome and bring the rest of the Chromium community under one roof, away from Google (who is an extremely bad steward of the project).
Shame that Microsoft just chose to no longer have a real browser. Oh well, long live MSIE I guess.
Thorium (https://thorium.rocks/) is a fork of Chromium that maintains a patchset that reverses functional and UI regressions introduced by Google (such as the tabs and menu styling from the 2023 refresh). The author has committed to maintain manifest V2 support for as long as possible.
Honest question since I am not exactly of a skill level that really understands what goes on under the hood of popular browsers, but I am baffled as to why people are so resistant to just switching to Firefox.
Every time this conversation comes up here and elsewhere, you get a huge swath of comments decrying Mozilla or suggesting Brave instead, which is Chrome in a trenchcoat last I checked. I've used all sorts of browsers over the years, and I keep returning to Firefox, at this point being able to configure it for good level of privacy in less than a minute with each install on a new machine.
My experience is perhaps skewed, but I view Google and Microsoft as modern enemies of the Web I want to see happen, perhaps having started off the hero, but living long enough to see themselves become the villain. Their products seem actively and aggressively hostile to users and compliant with websites that demand we use them for "best experience" which, by now we should all know means harvesting our data.
Again, I have some ignorance here that needs to be rectified, but where are the true apples to apples comparisons of all browsers so that users can use to evaluate which is best? I don't mean just surface level features and marketing woo, but what's happening at the code level that allows the developer or websites we visit to treat us like data thralls. Where are the resources to learn about that in these discussions?
The internet is unusable without uBlock. At this point I don't have a browser preference, I only have a uBlock preference. I'll use whatever browser that has good uBlock support.
The current boat I am on is relying on Firefox for most of my devices: Windows Laptops, Android Phones/Tablets with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set over DNS mode for all of the devices in my family.
For iDevices relying on Orion Browser paired with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set up. As good as Safari but without the annoyances of Plugins. Their compatablity mode seems to work on sites where Safari seems to have issues.
Ungoggled Chromium for sites that seem to break on both Firefox and Orion, unfortunately there are loads out there. It's a shame that Firefox isn't as effecient with Battery Consumption as Orion is.
I think that we'll need to adopt network-level filtering if we want to outsmart the browsers. I haven't looked back since adopting NextDNS and configuring my router to filter all traffic through it. It does a great job of stripping ads out of all my devices connected to it, and that's something I don't mind paying a few bucks for a year (I think it's like $19/year).
[+] [-] AnonC|1 year ago|reply
Just three days ago, Mozilla reiterated [1] that Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2 alongside Manifest V3. So if you want a better web experience with uBlock Origin, Firefox is your only choice (or use Firefox forks that support it). While you're at it, note that "uBlock Origin works best on Firefox". [2]
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifes...
[2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
[+] [-] spacephysics|1 year ago|reply
https://www.osnews.com/story/141825/mozilla-deletes-promise-...
[+] [-] SllX|1 year ago|reply
Orion is a WebKit web browser from the folks at Kagi that supports both Firefox and Chromium extensions (including on iPhones and iPads) and has zero telemetry, and I have the Firefox version of uBlock Origin installed.
Firefox is not the only option for people that want alternatives to Chrome that support uBlock Origin.
[+] [-] nout|1 year ago|reply
Another browser option is Brave, but you have to disable the altcoins stuff :/
[+] [-] pyeri|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lxgr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iamkonstantin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|1 year ago|reply
On other TVs like my Roku i do pay for a few streaming services with ads and get bombarded with ads on that tv. But its a group tv that many use.
[+] [-] 7bit|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|1 year ago|reply
Stand up against the browser hegemony*, choose WebKit with support for UBlock Origin:
https://kagi.com/orion/
---
* Tongue in cheek, of course. Long live Firefox.
[+] [-] pbronez|1 year ago|reply
- integrated screen shot, which includes a “full webpage” option that handles scrolling for you
- Split View, which lets you open two webpages side by side within a single tab
I use both of these daily and get a decent productivity boost from them.
[+] [-] throwaway019254|1 year ago|reply
Too bad a lot of websites just don't work with Firefox. It seems web devs are not testing with Firefox anymore.
[+] [-] gamedever|1 year ago|reply
I see people complaining, I don't see concrete examples, only panic
[+] [-] bastard_op|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tomohawk|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jbverschoor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerpy|1 year ago|reply
I wonder how long they’ll maintain manifest v2 compatibility. Once they throw in the towel, Firefox will truly be the last stand.
[+] [-] NoLinkToMe|1 year ago|reply
As in, suppose your daily browsing generates about $3 of monthly ad revenue [0]. Instead, you have a (digital) wallet linked to your browser, which could be pre-loaded with credit each month. For each website you visit you may decide to opt-out of ads by paying a fraction of your credits.
You could even have a system where you could pay for a model with light-ads (i.e. at most 1 ad per page, 10 seconds of ads per 30min of video), or pay more for zero ads.
I understand it's a difficult system to organize and is dependent on a strong network. But I'd expect there to be a solid small market by now.
Lots of individual websites have this option (e.g. Netflix, newspapers, Spotify, Youtube Premium) but there's nothing overarching.
[0] https://thenextweb.com/news/heres-how-much-money-you-made-go...
[+] [-] romanovcode|1 year ago|reply
[0] https://github.com/adguardteam
[+] [-] jessekv|1 year ago|reply
Although I wish more browsers made it easier to selectively enable it per site, like Orion.
[+] [-] tim333|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ethagnawl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] b3lvedere|1 year ago|reply
I mostly use Edge for accessing the big streaming websites and Firefox for everything else. Video runs somewhat better on Edge for me.
[+] [-] PKop|1 year ago|reply
Firefox is debatably less bearable than a Chromium based browser with uBlock Lite at least on Windows.
[+] [-] anal_reactor|1 year ago|reply
I'm slowly thinking that this might be the correct way forward. It's difficult, at least for me, because I am addicted to the internet, but recently I realized that I need to be more mindful about my internet time, simply because it became shit, and using it actually has hugely negative impact on my life. I'm not sure how to phrase it, but it's not "ah yeah I'll do that someday", but rather "ok, things are getting serious, I am making a decision and starting to follow though right now".
[+] [-] mihaaly|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] groggo|1 year ago|reply
My understanding is that adblockers: 1. block requests from certain domains 2. block elements matching certain criteria
Does this change just affect #1?
[+] [-] geor9e|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TiredOfLife|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] exe34|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bufo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] picafrost|1 year ago|reply
I really have no clue, but as far as I can see the answer is never better. More centralized, more bloated, more invasive, less choice, and less freedom.
[+] [-] KronisLV|1 year ago|reply
I switched to Edge on my Windows machine for a while, because that meant that I didn’t need the disk space for an additional browser (same as when just using Safari on Mac) and it was reasonably pleasant and worked well. Guess that’s ending, I liked the DevTools in Firefox a bit more anyways.
[+] [-] gorbachev|1 year ago|reply
I think this is heading to a point where lot of power users are simply not updating their browsers any more.
Personally I'll take the miniscule chance of being infected with malware due to a security bug on an older version of Firefox over the inability to run uBlock Origin any day. I can recover from malware installation. I can not use the web without an ad blocker.
What I'll probably do is use an isolated sandbox environment for any web browsing I need absolute security (e.g. online banking/shopping).
[+] [-] srmarm|1 year ago|reply
I've used Firefox on android for a while as android chrome hasn't had adblocking for a long time.
Am pretty anti-google these days but it'll take some time to untangle myself from the ecosystem.
Anyway, I've largely moved back to Firefox on the desktop too, swapped a few icons about so my muscle memory now opens Firefox instead of Chrome and it's been totally painless. An easy win.
[+] [-] DiabloD3|1 year ago|reply
Shame that Microsoft just chose to no longer have a real browser. Oh well, long live MSIE I guess.
[+] [-] Gormo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dadrian|1 year ago|reply
[1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
[+] [-] nanis|1 year ago|reply
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096
[+] [-] 0xEF|1 year ago|reply
Every time this conversation comes up here and elsewhere, you get a huge swath of comments decrying Mozilla or suggesting Brave instead, which is Chrome in a trenchcoat last I checked. I've used all sorts of browsers over the years, and I keep returning to Firefox, at this point being able to configure it for good level of privacy in less than a minute with each install on a new machine.
My experience is perhaps skewed, but I view Google and Microsoft as modern enemies of the Web I want to see happen, perhaps having started off the hero, but living long enough to see themselves become the villain. Their products seem actively and aggressively hostile to users and compliant with websites that demand we use them for "best experience" which, by now we should all know means harvesting our data.
Again, I have some ignorance here that needs to be rectified, but where are the true apples to apples comparisons of all browsers so that users can use to evaluate which is best? I don't mean just surface level features and marketing woo, but what's happening at the code level that allows the developer or websites we visit to treat us like data thralls. Where are the resources to learn about that in these discussions?
[+] [-] est|1 year ago|reply
Sadly they chose not.
[+] [-] buyucu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kleiba|1 year ago|reply
Together with the recent FF news, this is terrible news for the open, user-controlled web.
[+] [-] thecleaner|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] globular-toast|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zerr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zfg|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
[+] [-] HHalvi|1 year ago|reply
For iDevices relying on Orion Browser paired with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set up. As good as Safari but without the annoyances of Plugins. Their compatablity mode seems to work on sites where Safari seems to have issues.
Ungoggled Chromium for sites that seem to break on both Firefox and Orion, unfortunately there are loads out there. It's a shame that Firefox isn't as effecient with Battery Consumption as Orion is.
Brave/Edge just never cut it for me.
[+] [-] kadomony|1 year ago|reply
Check it out here: https://nextdns.io/