this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: "This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it." Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking "Manage extension" and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).

At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft's documentation, however, still says "TBD," so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of "unexpected changes" coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.

Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge's stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store

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[–] [email protected] 223 points 1 day ago (5 children)
[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's slowly turning, too. Start looking for something else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago

It's almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).

Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can't develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 day ago (3 children)

We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn't it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don't have one yet.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still

https://ladybird.org/

From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (3 children)

BSD licensed

Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.

(I almost just said "copyleft," but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Huh? The goal of the chromium project was to facilitate a corporate browser in the first place. It's why they don't have a more permissive license. They want to be able to use everyone else's work if anyone forks it.

Permissive license doesn't mean that corporations suddenly get the ability to completely change existing work for the worse, or change its' license. They can bloody well do that with GPL too if they own the project including contributions, so it doesn't matter if it's BSD or GPL, the only protection that the open source users have, in any case, is that licenses can't be changed retroactively, so if Firefox, Chromium or Ladybird went completely closed source and proprietary today, we'd still have the right to use the code as it was yesterday. Permissive licenses just mean that someone somewhere can create a closed source build without the permission of the person or company who owns the project and that doesn't particularly matter for anyone using Ladybird or any future open source derivatives. Permissive licenses are useful for libraries, but also for software that could be bundled as part of a bigger solution. Maybe you want to embed a web browser in your proprietary application and don't want to use webview because its' usability differs platform to platform.

Also why AGPLv3 and not GPLv3? I don't think the "A" part is even necessary here, that's needed more for server side applications, I.e if the end user is using online without the code running on their own computer, AGPL is the one to use.

Anyway, in the modern age, (A)GPL is used by a shit ton of corporate software. Oftentimes with an (A)GPL open core and a bunch of proprietary functionality not included in the core. I should know, I work with one example on a near daily basis. This way, nobody can just take their core functionality and develop a closed source alternative, while they can sell you an enterprise license for full functionality on their "open source" software.

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[–] [email protected] 248 points 1 day ago (15 children)
[–] [email protected] 131 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago (13 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Perfect time to check out AdGuard Home. Trivial to install locally. Probably took less than 3 minutes to install and get it operating. Hardest part was updating my router config. (Goddamn Google WiFi!)

Then you can focus on getting a better browser. Support libre software and check out LibreWolf.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Amarok? That was my favorite media player way back when

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Amarok is the other wolf. I know it looks deceptively similar.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

itsthesamepicture.bmp

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

I don't suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.

It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.

For people in [email protected] that's less of a problem but I wouldn't suggest it to my family members.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Mull is not maintained anymore. However there is a fork called IronFox.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well shit... Thanks for the heads up!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Regular Android Firefox has Ublock origins as well.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just in case you needed another reason not to use Edge.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago

Chrome* or Chromium based browsers*

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People actually use that thing?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

It's the number one browser to download other browsers, so yeah, sure!

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 day ago (27 children)
[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 day ago (14 children)

90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there's essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We're back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?

https://zen-browser.app/

Worth a look if you're a web power-user / developer sort of person

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

Zen's glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.

I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 day ago (7 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

I've looked it up and apparently there's a problem where if you open a new window with any amount of tabs and close it last, you will lose all your tabs on the first window. It's a big no for me, because I already had to restore last opened windows in Firefox many times, and I am pretty sure you previously could just press CTRL+SHIFT+T and it did reopen them, although I might misremember things.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?

What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we've learned since html/css was invented? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/css, have a new UI layout system that's simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Basically browsers are big because they are operating systems for web hosted applications with huge attack surfaces and lots of legacy compatibility requirements amassed over 3 decades.

A rewrite isn't the answer. Putting limits on browser functionality is. JavaScript was the turning point IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think it could be sensible to come out with a subset of modern web tech stack, and just use that. There could be even a lightweight web browser just for this subset. The problem is of course on agreeing with what would be included.

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