Firefox: Manifest v3 update

i am not sure if this thread is the right place to discuss about mozillas or firefox future.

and i dont care... about what they will do. it will start as an experiment, that's why it is only available in developer or nightly. Currently there exist only few alpha stage webextensions where authors collect experiences from us.

from
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/

And that's what they ever told us.

Although there are authors where might doom-mongers in case of firefox, for chrome they do not have any chance to escape otherwise google will end those extensions.

 

Yes, Firefox have said that they will continue to support adblockers like uBlock, so they won't limit their abilities. I really wonder how Vivaldi and Edge will respond to this since they are based on Chromium and Firefox is obviously not.

 

Edge is going to closely follow Google steps and remove support for API that uBlock relies on.
I hope that Vivaldi and/or Brave will try to support it. It will be additional burden and cost for them unfortunately.

 

Vivaldi,Brave and certain other browsers will rely on their built in ad blockers rather than trying to tackle manifest V3.

Unfortunately some websites that rely on ad revenue employ algorithms that easily detect these ad blockers,I read a few forums hosted on Pro Boards and when trying to use Brave get constant pop up screens with "can we talk" regarding disabling my ad blocker.

Using vanilla Chromium with UBlock installed I never see pop up screens,so there is still much work to be done with these built in ad blockers regarding detection.

 

That's possible. I'm not familiar with Vivaldi but I use sometimes use Brave. Its adblocker ist not bad but it misses several important features of uBO like Dynamic Filtering and a logger. Hence it's not really an alternative.

 

I don't believe that is true as the manifest api is built within chromium itself and will require changes to the chromium code from the individual browser developers.I don't believe vivaldi has developers who can do this.

 

you should "believe". the manifest api is part of the browser coding. an extension is just a bunch of javascript and other inactive files which need to be executed from a browser, so its limited by browser - in any way and straight.

the vivaldi built in adblocker - from my certain view - is only a built-in extension too. and yes, you can include extensions into any browser, simplest way is to see in firefox when you extract omni.ja - you will find the complete collection of search engines as extension.

Mozilla announced that they will support MV3, but not going to deprecate MV2 like google will do. Mozilla is also able not to limit MV3 like google will do. so if extensions switch to MV3 they are able to determine if they are used in chrome or firefox and can extend the rule set.
and currently you and i only talk about adblockers which are the only known extension with a lot of lists and thus rules.

if other vendors based on chromium are able to extend the MV3 capabilities the extension need to find out.

 

I can't find anything on the web, where Mozilla promises that.
On the contrary, on the Mozilla blog, I read:

(emphasis mine)

If unmaintained extensions will stop working in the future, it would be a great loss...
The extension "Open With", which I use a lot, comes to mind (the developer doesn't answer any issues on GitHub any more).

Guess I'll then have to use Firefox ESR and after that an old unsupported Firefox version or Pale Moon...

 

And so it begins ...

 

sure you cant, but thats also written in the linked article:

seriously? i'll see you quitting firefox sooner than later with this wrong atttude.

the meaning behind is that ESR will become MV3 after one year it was stable in the regular finals.

google is phasing out MV2 extensions right now, no new submissions allowed, only MV3 now. mozilla will do same but later when MV3 went stable. i would bet that the over next version of esr, (not 102) in 2023 will get MV3 and maybe 3 months before new MV2 extensions are not allowed.

about your intention leaving final builds towards esr and then leaving.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
PM is a *** bad joke. it already has so many issues, concerning engine, javascript, webpages, vulnerable "legacy" extensions, webextensions. it is based on the old code, not rust, and with MV3 they insert a new unfinished and very questionable task.

you care a lot about security as long you write here in wilders, but your announcement will drive you into more trouble than you can foresee now. mozilla is keeping its releases, but AMO will be no fortune for you. when MV3 arrives and authors wont step-up such extensions with MV2 will be forced to phase out, or author removes it from AMO.
this already happened to PM, only few extensions survived, the two big packages with legacy extensions are rare and hard to find. the packages are small, but its content weights ~2TB.
if you dont keep your extensions offline you would be out of luck.

 

I realize all of that, but my statement was written with anger in my mind.

My concern is, that Mozilla will follow Google and prevent already installed MV2 extensions from loading. Then I'll have to adapt somehow.
In the worst case, I can always use an older Firefox in a VM snapshot for use of these extensions.

 

I don't want to worry about MV3 for now.
At the limit I will use a DNS that can also do ADS blocking.
To be checked in this case cosmetic filters not possible by DNS.

 

Welcome to my world ^^
i know those situations more you can bear.
we need to sit and wait, or trial it out with the given option if possible.
and as i wrote it only concerns mostly the filtering extensions.
"open with" should not harmed from MV3 from my understanding.

you mentioned that MV2 will be abandoned, yes (i was wrong) it will, but mozilla currently do not plan to remove the used api behind webfiltering - unless they find another way to remove limitations where google has.

in fact we can see how chrome (or edge) will perform with MV3 and if it comes as expected some users will return to firefox again.

 

Well, that's good to hear. Hope they will not hard block it anyway.

Then we'll have to see what happens to the functionality of e.g. uMatrix.
I still use it, despite that it's not maintained (uBO in medium or hard mode is far from intuitive for me ).

 

Try using Hard Mode + TLD by Kees1958:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thr...etup-these-days.111264/page-1678#post-3083053

 

Doesn't that potentially let trough to much from nasty domains outside EU and US, that are not covered by his list?

 

Replace "it" with "nl" of course.

 

(offtopic)
I understand.

But I mean for example nooping all "*.com" would let through e.g. "1008691.com", which is Chinese (Emotet malware)...
(that domain is currently found on the "Online Malicious URL Blocklist", but you get the point )

 

maybe regex can help you out
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/689
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Regular-expression-based-filters

but i do not have any clue how to block [0-9].com domains.

 

Hm, what's so difficult to use Dynamic Filtering the way I suggested?

 

If I recall correctly, it IS possible to block certain functions in Chromium, so in theory Vivaldi and Brave might be able to keep supporting ad-blockers like uBlock without limiting them. I don't expect that Edge will go this far.

Correct, Vivaldi's built-in ad blocker is very basic. Plus it also misses the element picker. I wonder if uBlock will stop working correctly once these limitations are implemented in Chromium, if so it would be a problem to me, but I doubt I will switch to Firefox, but others might.

 

A nice article from Adguard concerning Mozilla's ongoing commitment to work with Manifest v.3 without compromising ad-blockers' capabilities. One of the current concerns is limiting the amt. of rules one can implement in a MV3 browser ad-blocker.

https://adguard.com/en/blog/firefox-manifestv3-chrome-adblocking.html