this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Firefox

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20260243

Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled

Google Chrome is now encouraging uBlock Origin users who have updated to the latest version to switch to other ad blockers before Manifest v2 extensions are disabled.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Firefox has a lot of issues

I dunno... I mean, what are your expectations?

Ultimately I have actual problems in my life, my browser choice is an absolutely marginal decision I make when the actual goal is to visit a website that in itself is usually just a tiny component of something else - say ordering something, checking on a piece of information, etc etc.

It's kinda weird to even think so much about browsers - excluding when you are actively developing for/with them - that you recognize issues beyond a single big one like "Has no support for an adblocker". I can get behind that being big enough to matter in regards to which browser is usable or not.

But again, if you develop for Firefox or an addon for it, I can see why details matter and you'd probably have a long laundry list of issues, sure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I dunno… I mean, what are your expectations?

Honestly, some sites just don't want to work properly. Firefox is my main browser. For some reason, Dicks Sporting Goods has like a 50% success rate on whether the page wants to load correctly. I fire up Brave when I'm looking at their website.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So what you're saying is, you're not the target audience for the article.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but the article author is quite likely not the target audience for Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Sure, but the article author is quite likely not the target audience for Firefox.

I don't follow the relevance of that statement.

"People focus WAY TOO MUCH on space rockets! I don't care about them that much!"

"Ok, that means the article is not for you."

"Sure, but the article author is not the target audience for space rockets."

Okay?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean is it so difficult to understand? That's not meant in an insulting way, but maybe I'm considering the point to be more obvious than it is depending on perspective (so the problem is me, I mean).

Ultimately, this always comes up, and then there's so many related points. "Firefox keeps being made worse", "Wow look how Chrome owns everything and Google forces it down everyone's throat", "Look how MS pushes Edge", and they all have in common that they seemingly misunderstand how people - excluding a niche like those over here - utilize their web browser.

That is, they don't. Do you honestly think about the brand and the specifics of your hammer every time you hammer in a nail? You don't. It has a specific used: To hammer in a nail. Does it do that? Cool! Is it perfect? You don't actually notice, because your mind was on putting in a nail, not admiring the hammer, customizing it, or complaining about how the serial number is written the wrong way. Not only do these problems never cross your mind, evaluating the problem presence never crosses your mind: You could not realize the problem in the first place, as your context for the action never establishes a perspective where the hammer in itself could even have problems of its own.

Or to loop it back around to browsers: A browser is not a concept that most users actively create in their mind. In particular not when browsing to web pages. They tap that icon, but only because it is the action needed to create the outcome. All further points are not only irrelevant, they're not points in the first place. They cannot be. The context does not have space for points about the browser.

And it's this inability to grasp the not only invisibility but also sheer mental inexistance of browsers as a category of software in most users that very many hardcore users and privacy nuts seemingly struggle with. Which makes sense. We cannot not think about it. But likewise, everyone else cannot think about it. And that second group is orders of magnitude bigger. And they use whatever their system ships with, because that's how their phone or laptop, well, works. Sometimes you buy a device where the icon for accessing web content is different. Yeah. Doesn't matter, tap it or click it.

That's not me selling users for stupid, either, another sentiment I see a lot. They are trying to put in a nail, and their actual problem is locked behind that. They are trying to solve a problem, and their brain has neither space for points about their browser, not for points about the concept of a browser as a whole. Because what they need that tool for is in itself just a secondary step in trying to solve an actual problem. Say, looking up whether it was 300g or 500g of flour for the recipe they're half-remembering.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Everything you said, I've already known. Most people don't care about their browsers/ad-ridden smart TVs (yuck), spying phones, etc, etc.

But the article posted here is not for them. It's for the people who care.

And that's all I'm saying. You pretty much said at the beginning "Who cares?" for which I replied "Well, clearly not you, but other people do care."

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I see many people say to just use forks of Firefox. I use Librewolf myself. However, are such forks not very dependent on upstream Firefox not being completely enshittified? Will it be possible to keep the forks free of all new bullshit, or does that at any point become a too difficult/comprehensive task for the maintainers?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

At that point the forks will become its own thing and depart from Firefox.

Which is ironically and exactly how Firefox came to be.

Netscape fucked up Navigator, some folks forked Navigator and created Phoenix - which then was renamed to Firebird, then Firefox. And somewhere in that timeline the Mozilla foundation ditched Navigator in favor of the fork.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But is it viable? I know very little of browser development, but my impression is that it is a lot of work to develop and keep the browsers secure. If Librewolf separated completely from upstream Firefox, would they be able to keep the browser secure without significantly expanding their team?

I ask in earnest, as I said I know very little about this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

For Firefox forks, it's viable since the forks aren't doing all that much in the grand scheme of things. That isn't to say what they're doing is in any way bad, it's just that there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Firefox is a secure browser and already has 99% of the work done. Most changes which forks make can be done just by changing the config. Some unfortunately have to be made seperately, and that does require extensive testing. Some can even be lifted from other open-source projects.

Separating from source just isn't viable. Something nuclear would need to happen for any fork to decide to seperate from Firefox. If we just look at the Chromium side of things, Microsoft found it easier to switch to Chromium than to keep making IE/Edge from scratch, and Microsoft surely has a lot of resources to burn.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Librewolf works just fine, out of the box.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

You're being downvoted by clueless people.

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