Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
pcworld.com852 points by DemiGuru 13 hours ago
852 points by DemiGuru 13 hours ago
Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They don't do it for every extension, but they do so for a wide selection of popular options.
> Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality and user experience. After receiving Recommended status, safety standards are maintained through automated checks, monitoring, and periodic technical reviews
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
Complete, authoritative list of Firefox extensions officially recommended by Mozilla.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Some quite informative discussion on Firefox subreddit when I discovered and posted the above list there a few months ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1pyvx2v/complete_a...
The Recommended Extensions program description: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
I seem to remember TamperMonkey being on there but not ViolentMonkey, which I didn't agree with. However, I see neither of them on there. Both are available but not recommended. I wonder what is going on with that.
Probably just resources. Mozilla has to vet each update to give them the "recommended" badge and so they probably focus on the most popular extensions
They should have vetted ViolentMonkey instead of TamperMonkey the last time around.
That's pretty cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't see where it says 'on every update' unless you're referring to the automated checks?
I've always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.
Automated checks are done for every extension on every update. But their recommend extensions they feature on the Extension store, they do other extensive checks for each update.
what permissions do you suggest?
I'd like a way to easily specify exactly what sites an extension can run on. There are extensions that I'd like to run on a subset - often just one or two sites - without giving them access do anything else. For that matter, a way to only activate an extension as a one-off when I click it and on no other tabs.
What about container specific permissions? If they implemented that it would be enough for me since I tend to split up my services by type (eg: shopping, banking, work, hack) so enabling an extensive on a specific set of containers would rock. Right now I think the only control we have is over private tabs/windows?
I'm using an extension that does exactly that¹, actually every update of the extension is mostly about then supporting more websites and asking permission to access those.
So maybe more developers could do a all sites and manually select sites option?
¹BPC extension
The extension can declare which websites it can access, but the other commenter was looking for the ability for the user to declare which websites it can access.
> Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.
Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.
Websites already can barely be assed to care about supporting Firefox users, doing adblocking by default is a great way to get websites to start putting up banners that say "our website does not work with your browser, please switch to Chrome" en-masse.
And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can't enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn't work they're not going to appreciate Mozilla for protecting them, they're going to be pissed that it doesn't work.
Brave has native ad-block and anti finger-printing, enabled by default, and the web works excellently as in I don't know of a single site that doesn't work with it.
Websites blocking Firefox because of ad blocking has happened before:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070817224229/http://whyfirefox...
> start putting up banners that say "our website does not work with your browser, please switch to Chrome"
That's how IE 6 was killed.
It was killed by a lawsuit, mostly.
Also FE devs using all new Chrome shinny APIs, and their Electron junk are also to blame, and they aren't going to throw their toys away.
With a normal Firefox on desktop on Linux, I get unsolvable recaptchas all the time, especially on cloudflare pages.
Ironically, if I fake instead a chromium to be on Windows (UA and Sec-CH headers), I am allowed most of the time even though my TCP fingerprint must mismatch then.
It's annoying to see what the normal web has become. Can't even read news anymore.
Ironically, all these bot defenses make it easier for bots to scrape their website, but make it harder for actual users to use them.
The only bot defense web app firewall that still works with Firefox seems to be Anubis. Pretty much all others autoflag Linux users as bot users, which feels insane if you think about less web developers must know about how botnets work.
> With a normal Firefox on desktop on Linux, I get unsolvable recaptchas all the time, especially on cloudflare pages.
I get this with Chrome on MacOS.
I'm becoming more convinced that Cloudflare is the bane of the internet.
The level of mental gymnastics in this thread denying the extent to which companies like Google (and their puppets like Mozilla) control the internet is too damn high.
Fortunately if projects like Ladybird gain enough momentum, websites might be forced to cater to it. Time will tell.
You know you can make a browser based on Firefox's core and don't need to make a new one from scratch that'll never get past Cloudflare?
> You know you can make a browser based on Firefox's core
If you want to inherit all of Firefox's flaws, I suppose.
> and don't need to make a new one from scratch that'll never get past Cloudflare?
Considering Cloudflare is a sponsor of Ladybird, something tells me they're going to grant an exception for it.
Sadly Cloudflare's browser detector is the main barrier to using Servo for most websites, so they're not the angel they seem
What flaws exactly?
People on here love to moan about Firefox because Mozilla did one thing at some point in the existence of the company they didn't like. But then just cede the Internet to Google and chromium clones because at some point when they were a crappy junior JS dev, Chrome had some better tooling over Firebug so they just got used to testing in one browser. Maybe they also like to remember how Firefox, a decade ago, couldn't handle 1000 tab sessions.
I hope Firefox keeps up the fight but HN loves to crap all over them for not being perfect.
Can’t speak for all users, but at least as of about six months ago, there appears to be a bug in Firefox in NixOS where the shader cache doesn’t appear to be able to write properly, and as such video acceleration doesn’t work. It became most evident when I was trying to watch 360-degree videos in Immich.
Entirely possible that this is an issue specific to NixOS or my machine, but because of that issue I switched over to Brave.
I would like to go back to Firefox at some point. Maybe I’ll see if I can make a patch to fix video acceleration on NixOS.
the obvious thing to do is keep using firefox as your daily driver, and load up the other browser as needed for the video etc.
I'm being tongue-in-cheek here because it seems most people just give up on safari/firefox if one thing doesn't work and go to some chromium-based browser as their default driver. That's sad.