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Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge
- indymike 5y agoI booted up Windows this weekend, and immediately was forced to login to my MS account, and it attempted to change my default browser. The solution was to reboot, pick Ubuntu from the Grub menu and to then delete the Windows partition and give the space to Ubuntu. I'm tired of fighting with computers I own that don't work for me.
- prince005 5y agoThe only reason I use Windows is to play games. So I don't mind any BS microsoft throws at me, because it is just ignored
- canadaduane 5y agoThis has been my response as well. I now understand why it's so important to contribute to free culture--whether operating systems or hardware. (Related aside: I'm very excited to be installing Pop!_OS on a frame.work laptop in a couple of weeks. I know it won't be perfect, but as a software engineer I intend to contribute to making things closer to perfect).
- noahtallen 5y agoI’ve been using PopOS for work and leisure and I’d say it’s closer to (my version of) perfect than mac or windows! Firstly, it’s super fast and snappy compared to windows on the same hardware (or the best Intel MBP available). And secondly, software support is really good these days, at least for my use case! (Web dev + gaming)
- thisiswater 5y agoHave you tried LTSC? It's a feature-stripped version of windows 10, which is far more user-friendly simply because it doesn't try to do much at all, while still providing security updates. I'm no expert and licensing is a bit complicated, but if you want a workable windows 10 environment I couldn't recommend it more highly.
- fartcannon 5y agoAs soon as enough of you switch to LTSC, Microsoft will start doing his there. The only way to win is not to play.
- blackearl 5y agoI don't think so. MS documentation references this article -https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/ltsc-what-is-it-and-when-should-it-be-used/ba-p/293181 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l... which states "The Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) is designed for Windows 10 devices and use cases where the key requirement is that functionality and features don’t change over time. Examples include medical systems (such as those used for MRI and CAT scans), industrial process controllers, and air traffic control devices." I know MS can behave like the bad guy at times, but "disabled hospital and air traffic control equipment" isn't the kind of bad any company intentionally aims for.
- fartcannon 5y agoIf it caught on, and everyone started using it? They absolutely would.
- therealdrag0 5y agoIt’s not going to catch on. Everyone in HN could switch and MS wouldn’t notice. Normal consumers don’t care enough to not submit to normal windows.
- fartcannon 5y agoDepends on how valuable that grouo becomes. Regular users maybe dont influence as strongly? Maybe educated users are a bigger threat to other parts of their market? Better to switch to something that respects your time.
- indymike 5y ago
- Waterluvian 5y agoI used Windows 10 for the first time in years and was taken aback by the fact that despite Firefox being my default browser, a ton of Microsofty things open in Edge anyways. For example: search a term in the start menu and get the magnifying glass options for looking up related terms. They all just open in Edge for me anyway.
- michannne 5y agoI don't get how a lot of the things in this thread are hostile or a problem, case in point this example. It's definitely an argument that Windows functions aren't very customizable, but at the end of the day it is a Microsoft product that integrates only with other Microsoft products.
- underscore_ku 5y agostop using Windows!! no one is forcing you to use Edge on Linux
- ffhhj 5y agoWhen my Mac died I moved to Windows to escape the resource hungry OS updates. When my laptop with Win 10 dies that will be the end of Windows for me. Windows 11 is.. yuck!
- sva_ 5y agoIt seems like there is a Linux version for it, if you do want it though. It's even on the AUR.
- JohnFen 5y agoI haven't used Windows since 98 at home, but my employer won't let me stop using Windows at work. Not everyone uses Windows willingly.
- lpcvoid 5y agoLeave it to Microsoft to be openly user-hostile in every way possible, knowing perfectly well that it won't hurt their market share one bit. I have no idea why people think this is a different Microsoft now than it was under Ballmer.
- walrus01 5y agoslightly less sweaty coked up ballmers on stage chanting DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
- _arvin 5y agoGuy is an embarrassment to the NBA and fans all across the world also. He just flat out sucks. Objectively. Money is all he has.
- AlexandrB 5y ago> Money is all he has Luckily for him, in a capitalism "meritocracy" that's all that matters.
- _arvin 5y agoHopefully not for long. Change usually happens when our hands are forced
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- smoldesu 5y agoSo we slap Microsoft's hand for trying to make people use their (free) browser, and let Apple continue to print money by monopolizing software and content distribution on their hardware? I think we just need more stringent consumer protections in general, but there's a slim chance of that happening when you're as much of a CIA/FBI lapdog as Apple.
- walrus01 5y agoMicrosoft doing exactly the same thing they were, twenty plus years ago, with the IE vs Netscape browser wars. At least they're consistent about being hostile. And now, of course, their main competition is Chrome and Google. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=netscape+microsoft+lawsuit https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=netscap... I would encourage anyone who doesn't use Windows 10 on a regular basis to take a look at what the 'defaults' are that Microsoft steers people towards on a brand new Win10 Home installation. Including the creation of a Microsoft account, bing, edge, all the telemetry turned on, etc. Just... Yuck.
- wpietri 5y agoMonopolies don't see themselves like a normal business, one that has to compete for customers by serving them well. Instead, their thinking is more like a cattle rancher: the users are their property, to pen and milk as they see fit.
- the_snooze 5y agoBetween hostile defaults, dark patterns in opting-out and unsubscribing, and persistent surveillance, a lot of consumer-facing tech these days is taking on what an obsessive abusive partner would do. I can't help but wonder if these systems are a reflection of who those designers are as people.
- basilgohar 5y agoThe psychopathy is not due to the developers nor the designers, but rather, the perverse incentives that bring profits to shareholders. You're looking too close at the end-result. It's the fact that it's legal to profit from these kind of behavior that is the real cause of all of this. But consumer protection online is all but absent, and the "strongest" effort so far, GDPR, was implemented so annoyingly and in your face that most folks' experience with it is a net negative, so future motions will be shot down more easily with wide praise.
- 5y ago
- gespadas 5y agoMicrosoft, there's no need to do this. I already use Edge because its features and quality, don't make me regret it.
- _arvin 5y agoWell said. I use Edge in my Windows 11 VM (for Fidelity Active Trader Pro) and I like Edge a lot. Might reconsider now.
- anttiharju 5y agoI even use it on my Debian 11 install and android! It's pretty good.
- brnt 5y agoIt's just about the chattiest browser that you can find. I cant't fathom why a Debian user would settle for it.
- anttiharju 5y agoIt's a weird choice, yeah. I have to do most of my university work on Windows anyway so I'm not too worried about the telemetry. Edge is the closest to a cross-platform "it just works" experience I've had. All bookmarks sync between my android phone, windows and Debian. Plus I don't have to keep messing with the about:config after a clean install to disable whatever new UI features or services Mozilla has introduced in the latest Firefox update. My only complaint is that Edge doesn't always respect my choice of search engine, for example the new tab search field at least used to redirect everything to Bing. But these can be worked around for now with relatively little effort.
- manderley 5y agoWhat quality? A buggy version of Chrome (the start page has been broken multiple times, for example) with tons of half-baked extra features?
- 5y ago
- marcodiego 5y agoMeet the new microsoft.
- JohnFen 5y ago...same as the old Microsoft.
- bhedgeoser 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJmY37wR7bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJmY37wR7bo
- JohnFen 5y agoThe more I learn about Windows 11, the more I think it's not fit for purpose.
- leodriesch 5y agoIt’s very uncool of Microsoft to avoid the users default browser and search engine choices, but I also don’t like Brave intercepting it, especially with their financial incentives with brave search. Imagine if Google would do the same. The outcry would be a lot higher, because Google is a bigger company. But in this case Brave is very similar to Google, just a lot smaller.
- undecisive 5y agoYeah, but most people are fine with (or at least resigned to) capitalism. What they object to is a lack of choice - especially when their choice is being actively subverted by a huge monopolistic entity (that said, if/when this feature does land, opt-in is definitely the way to go for Brave to show themselves to be completely non-scummy)
- KeepFlying 5y agoBut doesn't the interception just make it so when a URL fires for the first time you get a browser picker? Or do they force set it when you set your browser default? If it's the former then I'm totally in favor because there's a choice at least.
- bsclifton 5y agoIt's something you need to manually configure. We would like to have an option for Windows folks that want to enable - but it would always be off by default (opt-in). It's understood that enabling this is going against the OS defined behavior Worth noting that in order to offer a toggle, we'd need to get around the default protection (same as Firefox w/ setting default browser). People can only currently use this by going to the `Defaults` handler in Windows and replacing Edge themselves
- WallyFunk 5y agoThe old joke: I only use Microsoft Edge to download Chrome or Firefox
- lakkal 5y agoI used to say that IE was just the first stage of the Mozilla/Firefox installer.
- birdman3131 5y agoFirst and only website for Edge is ninite.com
- judge2020 5y agoUsed to use Ninite but it's done some weird installs a few times. WinDirStat was nowhere to be found in my start menu once, and 7-Zip once had no start menu entry nor desktop icon, just the files in Program Files. Nowadays I just download each installer separately which also allows me to manage what options I check in each of them.
- dvlsg 5y agoI'm still hoping winget[1] catches on so I can just utilize that for all the tools I typically use, but it seems like it's still a ways away from being fully ready. Still making progress, though. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli
- vxNsr 5y agoI use chocolatey + boxstarter these days, got a Gist that I can point it to to download everything and it’s all set up in like 20 min with no input from me.
- flixic 5y agoI'd like to hear Microsoft's explanation for this "feature".
- hacker_homie 5y agoI think it would be this 2nd last paragraph from the article. “ So, how did we get here? Until the release of iOS version 14 in September 2020, you couldn’t change the default web browser on iPhones and iPads. Google has many apps for iOS, including a shell for its Chrome browser. To tie all its apps together, Google introduced a googlechrome: URL scheme in February 2014. It could use these links to direct you from its Search or Mail app and over to Chrome instead of Apple’s Safari browser.” Google did it first and Microsoft would like to link from its settings app to its browser. I’m having a hard time deciding if these are the same thing or not?
- deanCommie 5y ago> I’m having a hard time deciding if these are the same thing or not? Well, obviously Microsoft would say they are. But any common sense evaluation of the situation would recognize that Google introduced their feature to get AROUND a limitation and offer customers choice (If you install Chrome on iOS you're saying you want that to be your browser), and Microsoft introduced the same feature to INTRODUCE a limitation (In spite of any other browsers installed, Microsoft is ignoring all signals and already supported protocol handling capabilities to force you into their browser). While a pedantic techie can read this and say it doesn't matter, the courts may see it differently.
- Spivak 5y agoI would assume because MS wants to have end-to-end quality control on links that are built-in to the OS. This is the kind of edge case that would bother me to no end if I was an OS vendor because any ole program can install itself as a protocol handler. The last thing I want is to have happen is clicking something in the OS opens in a broken browser or doesn’t open in a browser at all. And the only browser I know for sure is there and works the way I want is Edge or IE. The alternative is what Windows used to do is bundle (and still does) is open up its own window in an IE webview.
- supernovae 5y agoThe only time i see this link is when visiting a customers team site and its mostly because i refuse to install native teams apps just to join a call. I'm actually fine with having edge installed.. I have firefox and chrome too. There isn't a day that goes by when i Use edge that Google is spamming with with popups to switch to chrome or open in chrome or to try and auto-login with a google address.
- m-p-3 5y agoYou can make those Edge-only URL (using the "microsoft-edge:" protocol/URI handler) to open in your default browser using EdgeDeflector https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector
- dbg31415 5y agoReally easy way to fix a lot of that crap. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
- zamadatix 5y agoAlso be prepared for random shit to break e.g. disable Cortana and discover it's what did Start Menu indexing. OTOH if you already know what things are officially toggleable (e.g. tips and tricks in the Start Menu) and stick to those then the UI in this is much faster than going through Settings or gpedit manually.
- mmis1000 5y agoCortana never works in zh-TW but they still place the button there by default. Truly WTF. Why would ms put something not work at all to taskbar by default.
- smolgumball 5y agoI've started using Account Surfer on Windows to avoid this issue, as well as the general workflow issue of "I want to open any link I click in one of many browsers." The developer has also been very responsive to emails, bug reports and feature requests. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/account-surfer/9phvp9rjr7r7?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/account-surfer/9phvp9rjr7r...
- comeonseriously 5y agoJust wait. I thought Microsoft had changed, that they were different now. I guess not...
- Lev1a 5y agoTruth is... the game was rigged from the start...
- CyberShadow 5y agoDevil's advocate: if the link is in a Windows component, then it would somewhat make sense that clicking the link would open it in a first-party application which the OS vendor can control. If the association with http: URLs somehow got messed up (e.g. the default web browser got broken due to something outside Microsoft's control), you'd be in a worse situation than if the Control Panel etc. used a simpler but fully supported first party web browser.
- zamadatix 5y agoCore help links in Windows used to use an embedded version of the system browser (at the time IE) originally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help. If they wanted to do that today for the above reasons they could do the same with WebView2 which is the OS embedded version of Edge. Instead they are launching the external instance of Edge which can still be screwed up for reasons outside the OS's control (such as an experimental edge://flags option that causes a crash on launch).
- siproprio 5y ago> Brave Software is also considering taking things one step further. The company is planning to intercept Windows Search/Cortana links to Bing and redirect them to its users’ default search engine instead. Yes! THANK YOU! OH MY GOD THANK YOU BRAVE!! FINALLY!
- tempfs 5y agoWhy use MSFT-overlayed Chrome(aka Edge) at all instead of just using Chrome? Edge will always lag Chrome for security matters and MSFT will just be yet another surveillance layer within it. Just use Firefox folks. It's fast, secure-ish and leaves you only one threat actor to keep track of instead of two.
- postalrat 5y agoI primarily use firefox but I would choose edge over chrome simply because microsoft isn't completely depending on ad revenue.
- kinjba11 5y agoBlink is Chrome's engine. Blink is not Chrome. The Brave browser also uses Blink, for instance. Microsoft has been in the browser business for a long time and takes security updates seriously, to the point of force-updating people's machines which people gripe about. Firefox is great yes, viva la resistance. Unfortunately I'm seeing more sites with quirks on Firefox so I tend to use both Firefox and Edge.
- tester34 5y ago>Edge will always lag Chrome for security matters What makes you think so? e.g https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Super-Duper-Secure-Mode/ https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Super-Duper-Sec...
- passivate 5y agoCan someone explain where these links are located? I don't think I've ever come across one.
- d2wa 5y agoNews and Interest (taskbar thingy in recent Win10), Widgets (samw thing in Win 11), the Settings app, help links scattered around the OS, Your Phone app, links sent from Android to your PC (Microsoft Phone Companion and Samsung Windows integration), etc.
- sabhiram 5y agoTalk about full circle. IE vs Netscape anyone?
- sli 5y agoAnyone who believes Microsoft has reformed and is in any way different now is the most foolish of fools. I'm not sorry to say it, because they have been taken to court for antitrust violations for this before but $100 says that won't happen again. Microsoft has simply learned how to avoid getting busted for their tactics. That is all.
- jeppester 5y agoI find it both amusing and worrying that MS has been able to get this narrative going that they got better and that we should forgive them for their past mistakes.
- jonathansampson 5y agoGreat write-up! I did want to share a brief response to the following, however: > The new implementations in Brave and Firefox follow the exact parsing logic I wrote for EdgeDeflector. It’s not the only way to parse them, it’s not the best way to parse them, but it’s the way every third-party implementation now parses them. Neither codebases attribute the code to EdgeDeflector, although both are clearly inspired by it. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with this.) With all due respect to the author, I don't believe this is an accurate statement. While the problem being solved (parsing a microsoft-edge: protocol string) is quite simple, there are still noticeable differences in how EdgeDeflector, Brave, and Firefox have chosen to tackle this process. EdgeDeflector (https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector/blob/469a0c8523c6bb7fb09ce8d93db432a99f2c1db7/EdgeDeflector/Program.cs#L54 https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector/blob/469a0c8523c6bb7fb...) checks to see not only that the string begins with "microsoft-edge:", but also that it does not contain any space character (" "). The latter check *is not* conducted by Brave (https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/8a93d29c45800719c9e9a76b575a1e5034a47aaf/browser/microsoft_edge_protocol_util.cc https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/8a93d29c45800719c9e...) or Firefox (https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/differential/changeset/?ref=4340483 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/differential/change...). EdgeDeflector performs an initial case-insensitive check for the protocol, while Brave and Firefox do not (both expect lower-case characters). There is a code path in EdgeDeflector where a case-sensitive check may also be conducted. EdgeDeflector and Brave both remove the "microsoft-edge:" prefix from the input, but Brave performs and additional check at this point. If the resulting string is empty, Brave stops attempting to extract a workable URL. EdgeDeflector performs no such empty-string test, instead proceeding to check whether the resulting string starts with "https:// https://" or "http:// http://" (a case-insensitive match). Firefox also proceeds to check whether the string starts with "https:" or "http:", but in a case-sensitive manner. Brave, on the other hand, proceeds to check whether the resulting string starts with a ? character. If the string doesn't start with a ? character, Brave attempts to parse the string as a URL and initiate navigation. If the string begins with a ? character, Brave removes that character and proceeds to split the string into chunks on occurrences of the & character. With the string split into chunks, Brave cycles over each piece looking for one that starts with "url=". If a match is found, Brave attempts to parse everything after the = character as a URL. If it succeeds, that URL is visited. Firefox and EdgeDeflector do take a similar approach in these later steps. While EdgeDeflector utilizes .NET's `HttpUtility.ParseQueryString` to parse and extract the URL value, Firefox passes the string to the URLSearchParams constructor, and retrieves the "url" parameter from the resulting object. Brave is the odd-man out on this step, opting instead to split the string, and cycle through to the nearest matching chunk. While there are similarities here and there (given the simplicity of the task itself), there are stark differences as well. One thing is certain, however, Brave and Firefox both explicitly refer to EdgeDeflector as leading this effort to restore liberty to users impacted by Microsoft's heavy-handed approach to shoehorning users back into Microsoft Edge.