• persolb@lemmy.mlEnglish
        292·
        2 years ago

        I love it in theory… but it just broke so many websites I needed to use. And not always in obvious ways.

        • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
          6·
          1 year ago

          Then just put those sites on your trust list?

          You can go through all the sites the initial HTTP request calls out to and decide which ones get a pass. This is how I ensure sites like gstatic, googletagmanager, etc. don’t collect data even though the rest of the site works.

          If that’s too much, just open the flood gates for that site and trust everything there. At least it isn’t just sending all your data out by DEFAULT.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 year ago

            That still breaks a lot of sites. For example, Wikipedia gets broken if you click any link and then navigate back. NoScript is just crap. If you want to actually block scripts for something without breaking everything else, use DevTools.

            • Daniel@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              You can use Wikiless, an alternative frontend for Wikipedia which doesn’t have JavaScript, and LibRedirect.

            • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
              02·
              1 year ago

              I call bs. I am not experiencing that on mobile or desktop this behavior you’re describing. NoScript does not break Wikipedia.

        • gammasfor@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 year ago

          Yeah these days literally every website uses JavaScript in some format as modern reactive design is easier to do if you can execute client side code. Blocking JavaScript is a sledgehammer solution to the problem.

          • persolb@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            UBlock is much more reliable than no script in my experience. It’s also usually obvious when it breaks; no script sometimes isn’t obvious until you hit submit and notice none of what you typed actually got sent.

        • OfficerBribe@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          Same here. I used NoScript in the past and remembering whitelisting way too often so dumped it in the end. Now I just use uBlock with I think some built-in javascript block of known bad hosts.

      • vii@lemmy.ml
        8·
        2 years ago

        You can use Ublock Origin in advanced mode, which allows you to block, blacklist/whitelist scripts.

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        uBlock Origin can act as adblocker plus NoScript combined if you enable advanced mode.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 years ago

        IMO any of the forks are inherently weaker than the main and there’s nothing stopping you from making Firefox work exactly like whichever flavor of fork you prefer, but with security updates the day they come out.

    • Mikina@programming.dev
      75·
      2 years ago

      Add-ons are a pretty huge security risk, though. Someone was just posting an article about how tempting it is to sell out with your extension, and how many offers you actually get.

      And I’ve already been burned once, and it’s not pretty. Also nothing you can do against this.

      The best solution is actually not Firefox, but Mullvad. No need for extensions, based on Tor Browser and can be bundled with a VPN that’s full of other people using the same browser - so you have exactly the same fingerprint, and they can’t tell you apart. Not by extensions, not by IP.

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Based on his history it seems unlikely that gorhill, the creator of uBlock Origin would sell out.
        And if something did change, there would be enough news about it to notify you. (Like the extension Avast bought a while ago)

      • stillwater@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        It’s pretty shitty to lump uBlock Origin in with those other, shittier ad blockers blindly. After all, anyone who knew the first thing about ad blockers even back then knew that there were plenty of bad ones around but that uBO wasn’t one of them.

    • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
      4·
      2 years ago

      Been using FF for about 2 decades now and I have never seen a single good reason to switch.

      • EricKendrick@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Ditto. As much as people pretend Firefox is niche, it is the only browser with lineage back to the start of the web.

        • Dashmaybe@lemmygrad.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          Truly. I don’t get this new “switch to Firefox!!” hype, are the people writing this very young, or am I missing something? I’ve been using Firefox since beta, I’ve never seen a reason to switch since it’s always been the superior browser, why have people been running anything else in the first place?

  • AncientBlueberry@lemmy.world
    829·
    2 years ago

    Google accounts for some 80%+ of Mozilla’s revenue. Firefox struck a different kind of deal with the devil than chromium browsers, but Google is the one pulling the strings.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
      45·
      2 years ago

      Bit of a weird thought, but I wonder also if they see Mozilla as a sort of controlled opposition too? As in, keep Firefox around so they don’t get in trouble over antitrust or something like that?

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        502·
        2 years ago

        Mozilla.org is the corpse of Netscape that Google keeps animated so that it looks like they have competition when they really don’t.

        The existence of Firefox is something they can point to to say they’re not a monopoly. The fact that 80% of the revenue Firefox receives is from Google means that Google effectively controls them. Mozilla has to weigh every decision against the risk that it will cause Google to withdraw their funding. That severely restricts the choices they’re willing to consider.

        Firefox is only 5% of browsers, so it really doesn’t matter to Google if that 5% of users considers using a different search engine. Because of the Firefox user base, many of them will have already switched search engines, and because Google is such a dominant player, many others would switch back to Google if the browser used a different default. So, maybe 10% of that 5% would permanently switch search engines if Google stopped paying. Is that really worth billions per year? Probably not. But, pretending like you have competitors in the browser space and using that to push back on antitrust, that’s definitely worth billions per year.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
          14·
          2 years ago

          Google makes something like $100 Billion a year in search ad revenue. 5% of that is $5 Billion.

          It’s odd that people think Google is incredibly worried about having too large of a market share in the browser market (which they don’t make any money from) yet their 92% market share in searches is not concerning at all in terms of the potential for regulation.

          The truth is nobody does anti-trust anymore (though they definitely should) and the big corporations aren’t worried at all about it. Google makes Chrome, Android, and pays Mozilla because they want to maintain dominance in the search market. Which is the thing they make money form. What they pay Mozilla is a drop in the bucket compared to what they pay Apple to be the default search engine on their devices.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            2 years ago

            Google doesn’t directly make money from their browser, but controlling their browser means they lock in the thing that drives their revenues. They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t. We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers, something they could only consider if they lock down the entire browser market.

            • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I disagree.

              Google doesn’t “control” mozilla in that way.

              They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t.

              They could do this even if they weren’t funding mozilla. Ad’s aren’t exactly reliant on bleeding edge web standards anyway. You’re thinking about tracking tech, which they don’t have any input in for firefox.

              We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers

              Well yes, and mozilla was quite vocal in their opposition, demonstrating that Google doesn’t have much control over them.

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          531·
          2 years ago

          I see that as an okay compromise. Anyone who cares will also know how to change it easily.

          • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
            191·
            2 years ago

            And I actually wouldn’t have a problem with using google for searches if it weren’t for the fact they constantly do the captcha thing when I’m connecting via VPN. Captchas for a simple google search.

            I’m not against google making money off of a good product, but they’ve enshittified it too much to be considered good now.

          • archchan@lemmy.ml
            12·
            2 years ago

            A lot of people don’t bother with changing defaults and corpos like Google, Microsoft, and the likes are well aware of this which is why Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars per year to be the default search engine.

            I understand the compromise at the surface level but the implications just result in Google gaining more power and data, making it harder for “alternatives” to replace it over time which puts us all in an a bad situation when they decide to pull shit like WEI.

            • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              7·
              2 years ago

              That’s a good point, though I still think the average person is already entrenched in Google. Being the default on an alternative browser isn’t really going to make the difference to the average, uncaring individual.

              In a perfect world it wouldn’t be necessary but on the bright side Google search is already doing enough itself to make the average person want to try something else.

  • boeman@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 years ago

    This feels weird to say… I really think Microsoft should’ve stuck with trident / edgehtml.

      • boeman@lemmy.world
        191·
        1 year ago

        Diversity. MS had made great strides with EdgeHTML, but it was still pretty bad

        But at least opening the browser didn’t take all my ram.

        • Daniel@lemmy.mlEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          And also at the very least you had another option. Which, in my opinion, wasn’t that bad, at least it could’ve been if they just gave up on Bing and MSN.

          • boeman@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            No way, they can’t give up on bing. They do that and all we have is Google for searches. We need the competition. For MSN, it’s all about content now, I kinda like that branding… It makes it easier to see that I don’t want to see it.

      • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
        1·
        1 year ago

        It was actually one of the most W3C compliant browsers there is, more so than chromium based ones. Unfortunately google’s near monopoly has made websites focus on working in chrome, not on standards.

    • Zeragamba@lemmy.ca
      5·
      1 year ago

      As a web developer, EdgeHTML was the source of so many bugs, including a few that were regressions, and it didn’t seem like Microsoft dedicated enough resources to the Edge project.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
    422·
    2 years ago

    Mozilla doesn’t make it as easy to use the Firefox / Gecko engine in other projects, which doesn’t help for adoption.

    • fuzzzerd@programming.dev
      6·
      2 years ago

      I’m way out of the loop, but is the issue that they actively make it difficult to use the rendering engine or is it that the cost to modularize it isn’t worth the payoff to Firefox itself? A subtle but important distinction IMO. I always felt it was the second, but maybe I was being dense?

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        Back in the days it was possible to use Firefox engine to create apps. It was called XUL. Heck, Firefox itself was just a XUL app! But then they decided it wasn’t worth it for whatever reason and now their engine is tightly integrated.

        • terkaz@discuss.online
          1·
          1 year ago

          I believe it might be still possible with UXP - a hard fork made for Pale Moon project.

          Pale Moon is based on a derivative of the Gecko rendering engine (Goanna) and builds on a hard fork of the Mozilla code (mozilla-central) called UXP, a XUL-focused application platform that provides the underpinnings of several XUL applications including Pale Moon. This means that the core rendering functions for Pale Moon may differ from Firefox (and other browsers) and websites may display slightly different in this browser.

      • planish@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        They don’t try to make it difficult, but they make code changes that make it clear they have no concern for anyone who might be trying to use the engine anywhere other than in a retail build of Firefox, without providing things like deprecation warnings or upgrade paths.

    • exu@feditown.comEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Chromium/Electron is just super easy to integrate. Afaik Mozilla wanted to make Firefox more easily embedable as well, but that project was killed.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 years ago

        Robert Bork:

        He also became an influential antitrust scholar, arguing that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers and that antitrust law should focus on consumer welfare rather than on ensuring competition.

      • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        Have you tried developing your own web browser?

        The Web has become so complex, you need a huge team of talented developers to keep up with it, and for that you need a lot of money.

        • Voli@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          How hard can’t it be just put scrum on GitHub and let it work from there

  • lewegee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    2 years ago

    Be sure to install AdNauseam on your Firefox to really go full “fuck you” to google.

    • Mikina@programming.dev
      2·
      2 years ago

      Unfortunately, if you have properly set up Firefox, i.e with arkenfox user.js or by using Librewolf, it doesn’t work :/ It still blocks adds without issues, but it’s not visiting them.

      Or if you’re running PiHole - same issue. Is there a way how to make PiHole actually go though all those clicks? I guess it would be hard to figure out what’s an ad and what’s telemetry.

      • Unforeseen@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 years ago

        PiHole is doing DNS resolution only, it doesn’t have any way to know what the link is, its not sent that data.

    • arglebargle@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      AdNauseam

      Note that AdNauseam no longer recommends Firefox

      Sigh. I believe this is simply because of the removal from Firefox mobile

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
    19·
    1 year ago

    Safari still uses the WebKit engine… right?

    Google Chrome used to use WebKit before switching to their own weird engine that a whole bunch of other browsers now use.

    • nonearther@lemmy.mlEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      When Google forked from WebKit to create Blink, they had genuine reasons for it.

      Apple was stalling any progress of web by stalling new features in WebKit. They wanted to push their native apps and get big cut from developers’ money.

      Google had to fork and progress web dev further.

      And unfortunately for us, Google folks are greedy assholes who stop at nothing to own everything web even if they have to bend everything.

      WEI is a perfect example.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        Apple was stalling any progress of web by stalling new features in WebKit. They wanted to push their native apps and get big cut from developers’ money.

        I mean, whatever their reasons, for World Wide Web of hypertext pages the list of necessary features shouldn’t be so long.

        So a good thing.

        Anyway, that battle is long lost, so I’m just slowly moving my “internet reading” needs into Gemini. Friends I can’t move, though.

        • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          If most of what you want out of the web is browsing static web pages, halting development of standards is fine. But if you want to expose capabilities through the browser like location that are available on new platforms instead of relying on platform-specific apps, you’re going to need new features.

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            I don’t want that. WWW is not intended for that.

            If you want that, there’s been Flash and Java applets at least allowing whatever you’d like.

            That was the correct way to put cross-platform applications into webpages.

            Don’t tell me about security problems in those, these are present in any piece of software and fixed with new versions, just like with the browser itself.

            • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I don’t want that. WWW is not intended for that.

              Okay, then links awaits you. I’d rather use something that enables powerful in-browser web applications while not relying on a host of proprietary bug ridden plugins.

              • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
                1·
                1 year ago

                Okay, then links awaits you.

                It’s a client for the same broken thing.

                while not relying on a host of proprietary bug ridden plugins

                This is utter bullshit.

                Obfuscated JS is not any less proprietary or bug-ridden than Java bytecode.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        Named as such because, like Weeping Angels, if you blink you’ll be sent back to a society without enforcement of antitrust laws

        • Zeragamba@lemmy.ca
          11·
          1 year ago

          I don’t understand this argument about antitrust laws. As far as i know Google hasn’t done anything to block other companies from making their own search engines or browsers. Nor does Value and Steam, nor Microsoft and Windows.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            WEI checks if your browser and system is “genuine” and “unmodified” before letting you access any content “protected” by it, which inevitably leads to smaller and custom mods that don’t fit their predetermined criteria for “genuineness” being locked out, which in turn forces you to use Google (and Microsoft and Apple, they’re in on it too) products in order to access certain content and eventually the entire internet, just as surely as it’s almost completely impossible to avoid their Google Analytics malware.

            And before you say “that’s a ridiculous slippery slope fallacy! That’ll never happen!”, Logitech is already requiring you to go to a website that will only open in Chromium browsers in order to pair devices with the Logitech Unifying Receiver.

      • Catweazle@social.vivaldi.net
        1·
        1 year ago

        @notenoughbutter @Resol, and WebKit is a fork from KHtml made by the German KDE.
        Blink is the most used engine, because it’s the most compatible with current web standarts, even somewhat more than Gecko. If Apple’s Safari insist in it’s WebKit, the most outdated engine, it’s become the new IE in a near Future.

  • hi_its_me@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    Honest question… I get that Chrome has a bunch questionable privacy practices that sends data back to Google, but do the chromium based browsers do that as well? My understanding is that Chromium is just the rendering engine. How is it bad?

    Also, if Google implements their bullshit DRM features, I wonder if the derivative browsers will be able to disable it. I believe I saw that Brave said they won’t use it.