• paraphrand
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    26 days ago

    Does Firefox use “manifest v2”? When reading all the frothing news about this stuff, I assumed the “manifest” thing was a Chromium thing.

    • @BananaTrifleViolin
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      3626 days ago

      Firefox will support Manifest v3. However Mozilla will be implementing Manifest 3 differently so the routes Ublock and other extensions use to maintain privacy and block ads will still be available. Firefox will support both the original route and the new limited option Google is forcing on Chromium.

      Googles implementation deliberately locks out extensions by removing something called WebRequest, supposedly for security reasons but almost certainly actually for commercial reasons as they are not a neutral party. Google is a major ad and data broker.

      Apple will apparently also be adopting the same approach for Safari as Mozilla is for Firefox.

    • The Octonaut
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      2326 days ago

      If I remember correctly, yes. There was a pain in the ass a few years ago when Firefox switched from their own add-on system to one that matched Chrome’s, despite Firefox’s being more powerful and mature. The goal was to make it easier to port Chromes (arguably) greater variety of add-ons to Firefox.

      It was an unpopular decision and it was the start of a downward decline for Firefox. People that had their browser “just the way I like it” found themselves starting fresh essentially, and without some of their favourite add-ons.

      • paraphrand
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        -526 days ago

        Damn. That means they are once again on a divergent path.

        • @[email protected]
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          926 days ago

          How so? They can support Manifest v2 and v3 simultaneously. It’s a bit harder for their old add-on system since that add-on system had more hooks into the browser, but v3 is largely just a restriction, so there won’t be much conflict there.

          • paraphrand
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            26 days ago

            Ah, if it’s easy to just maintain both, and v3 is largely backwards compatible then I’m mistaken on how divergent v3 is.

            Defanged/declawed v3 is a weird thing to have exist. It’s a bummer that Chrome got to set the standard. And then they took that and restricted things. This isn’t a healthy standard.

            • @[email protected]
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              26 days ago

              If FF ever drops V3, it’ll be because they have extensions to bring parity to V2. There is maintenance overhead, but I doubt it’s anywhere close to the old add-on vs V2 differences.