22 ms·

uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

438 points by Ayesh 4y ago

berry_sortoro 4y ago
I am curious of Brave that has a build in Adblocker that is based on uBlock Origin AFAIK but build partially in Rust I believe. If that is closer to the Chromium's core code and not merely dependent on what web extensions offer in Chromium. Maybe they can make things happen that are possible only in Firefox though extensions that way.
- arwineap 4y ago
  Maybe they can, but if they did, they would probably be shouting it from the rooftops as their pinnacle feature
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  I think Brave is interestingly positioned, they sort of sound like a dream come true from a technical perspective, chromium with manifest v3 but still with fully functioning adblocking. But I mean Brave has PLENTY of skeletons in its closet and is a dark horse that really doesn't seem to have the momentum. Firefox had TONS more momentum and they're still hardly relevant nowadays.
  - berry_sortoro 4y ago
    Well I do not have the numbers on Brave, and they themselves do not have them because it identifies as Chrome with its user agent AFAIK. So there are actually no stats on market share! I would bet Brave has the same if not MOVE "momentum" as Firefox. Mozilla's things the old monetization model of the web should stay that way. They think ad blocking is bad, that is why they will never offer it by default. They also think the web should be even more censored than Big Tech wants. Used to be a big FX fan, but: 1. The above. And they were in bed with Google from day 1. 2. Chromium is just faster. 3. I am a web dev, and it feels extremely silly to use a browser engine that nobody uses as a browser. Not sure when I made my switch to Brave, but it was like 1 or 2 years ago. I was holding strong on Firefox. Their Servo was promising, but then they ran out of money and laid off the staff working on it. Brave also has their BAT going, that I find utterly stupid if not a straight scam. They advertise "no ads - no tracking" that is true by default. But then they want you to sign up for their stupid token to "get paid to look at ads that TRACK YOU" it's kind of hilarious how they market this shit. They do more or less exactly what Google is doing, except that the advertisers will probably get the real names of people who are this BAT BS. But the funny thing is they do not care, they get behavioral data of all kinds of browsing habits and that is EXACTLY what they want. Brave sells it as this great "privacy" thing, yet you have to give them your data for the payouts, so they know exactly who you are I am pretty sure. Not done it, will never do it but with all the Crypto regulation and KYC and so on they're just building a tiny "competitor" to Google that more or less does the same thing, maybe a little bit more privacy-friendly. I detest this idea. But a small community of people is all over this crap. Anyway, I stop my rant. Just deactivate the symbol for display on the address bar, thankfully they have a setting for that. Without BAT Brave is a great Browser.
    - faeriechangling 4y ago
      >I would bet Brave has the same if not MOVE "momentum" as Firefox. Five years after Firefox officially released, it was used by a third of the internet. People had a religious fervour around Firefox, Microsoft was the great satan for unleashing IE6 upon the planet, it was a great evil for sites to not support Firefox or god forbid actively block Firefox user agents. For about two straight years Firefox after release absolutely slaughtered IE in almost every way (extensions, tabs, customization, performance, web standards), it was still clearly the best browser for the next two years, and Chrome had to create a bleeding-edge world-class browser and promote it with a gigantic large scale global ad campaign before Firefox started to falter. By contrast, brave was released 6 years ago I've never seen a non-tech person use Brave in my life. It's biggest technical advantage seems to be a souped up adblocker. It really doesn't compare to Firefox's momentum.
metadat 4y ago
No doubt, why would uBlock performance be any kind of priority for Chromium or WebKit?
- freediver 4y ago
  It is for Orion browser (WebKit based)
- foepys 4y ago
  It's not just performance, it's functionality. Chrome does not block requests reliably at startup when opening saved tabs and doesn't allow CNAME uncloaking. Adding something along the lines of CNAME 60 puppies analytics.google.com. to the DNS config is enough to fool uBlock Origin on Chrome and requires a special rule.
webmobdev 4y ago
Surprised about Tor Browser though - it's basically Firefox ESR with some tweaks with the Tor package bundled (that can be deleted). Performance should have been the same. And since they also prioritise privacy (more than Mozilla) I figured it is a better bet for uBlock Origin - wonder which tweak causes that slight difference between it and Firefox? Also, what about the new Orion (Beta) browser based on Safari / WebKit? If I remember right, they claimed they had made changes to WebKit to support uBlock Origin better and properly than either Safari or Chrome.
- kadoban 4y ago
  I wonder if it's something like the default settings of Tor Browser already prevent some ads that uBO also would have blocked, so that just makes the numbers worse for uBO, even if the user isn't seeing any more ads. Only other theories I can come up with would be Tor Browser interfering with uBO functioning optimally, or its version of FF not being new enough to work optimally with uBO.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  I believe that test was taken after CNAME-based blocking became available in Firefox but before it made its way to Tor browser (which, at least at the time, was based on Firefox ESR). I suspect a modern run of the test would show the browsers as similar.
anotherhue 4y ago
Unfortunately a great deal of the web works best on chromium. I use FF every day for reasons such as TFA, but it's getting harder and harder. On the same (old-ish) machine Brave runs rings around FF in basic web performance. Maybe the EU can fork Firefox?
- denkmoon 4y ago
  I never run into websites that don't work properly in Firefox that isn't a consequence of one of my addons. Do you encounter them commonly?
  - anotherhue 4y ago
    Indeed and almost always for that reason. It's more the performance that hurts me, perhaps my 'many tabs' style is better handled with the chromium process model.
    - Ayesh 4y ago
      I have Firefox containers and Simple Tab Groups extension installed, which keeps my tabs in the browser, but automatically suspends them when they are not visible. This was my sweet spot for tabs, because I do not have to bookmark them permanently, and I can instantly switch to my "workspace" anytime. I experience the opposite of you with Chrome struggling with several tabs. At around 30 tabs, Chrome absolutely throttles my moderately powerful 8 core 16 thread CPU laptop with 24GB RAM, while Firefox has no issues with it. Firefox doesn't even sweat even if I have those tabs open with Spotify and Gmail, one that presumably uses hardware DRM decryption, and the other websockets for email and chat, plus whatever tracking Google wants to do.
    - foepys 4y ago
      A friend of mine has over 3,000 open in a vanilla Firefox at this very moment. Firefox restores the tabs on each restart without loading them and suspends inactive tabs automatically.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
toastal 4y ago
It's great to see Fx capabilities optimized for instead of trying to reach a common denominator. Firefox's forks offer some of the best privacy options (Tor, LibreWolf) too for the uBlock audience. Hopefully this can help shepherd folks back to Gecko as I know a many have little interest in browsing without adblock.
ncr100 4y ago
Firefox has been my daily driver for a few years. I'll keep using it for that. It's fast, compatible, and reliable.
- beagle3 4y ago
  The new offline translations feature is also a great addition - it is not as good as Google Translate, but it is very good, and it is offline and completely local.
  - spl0i7 4y ago
    wait, firefox can translate without extensions?
    - kelnos 4y ago
      It does require an extension, but that extension is written and maintained by Mozilla themselves. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-trans...)
      - sohkamyung 4y ago
        You can use it on-line directly without the extension [1] [1] https://mozilla.github.io/translate/ https://mozilla.github.io/translate/
    - input_sh 4y ago
      They've been developing a (first-party) extension that already supports about a dozen languages and does translations completely client-side: https://browser.mt/ https://browser.mt/ I'm assuming it's gonna merge into Firefox once they're satisfied with it. Also EU supported its early development, which I think is quite cool: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825303 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825303
  - toastal 4y ago
    Eh. Translations don't cover like any languages in Asia so it's not even been worth the bytes to download to me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ehsankia 4y ago
Do we yet know what the status of uBlock or a uBlock fork for Manifest V3 is? I know it won't be able to have all the same features, but it certainly will be doable, but have the authors fully set their minds up about not converting their extension? Has anyone decided to fork it and do it? I don't really care about all the fight about Chrome vs Firefox, I just want to know if someone will port uBlock to MV3.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > I don't really care about all the fight about Chrome vs Firefox And this is why Google has the ability to force things like Manifest V3 down people's throats. Glad I stopped using Chrome years ago.
  - ehsankia 4y ago
    The fact that I don't want to partake in childish browser wars is the reason Chrome has larger user share? Apple has the exact same limitation on Safari yet no one claims "Apple forced Declarative API down people's throat" and actually praise them for the privacy it brings. I'm perfectly fine with extensions not being able to snoop of every single request I make. It's fine for you to disagree. If anything, it sounds like people here trying to shove their preference of Firefox down everyone's throat.
    - darknavi 4y ago
      I wouldn't say your browser complacency is _why_ Chrome can do this, but it is a large sign of _how_ they can shove their weight around. Most people use chrome and don't care.
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  Personally I'm not going to worry about switching until the old API is deprecated, but it should be very simple to write an adblocker for Manifest v3. You could put together an MVP by plugging EasyList into the new APIs in probably ten minutes. Obviously a fully-featured blocker requires a lot more time than that though. I'd actually expect a small performance increase because the browser is preloading the block list, rather than querying it every time. uBlock does provide some other feature like disabling network pre-fetching, and I'm not sure if those can be fully replicated. But I tend to prefer the performance improvement of pre-fetching anyway.
fireattack 4y ago
In general, I don't find any noticeable performance issues using ubo on Chrome, but again I'm the "install it and forget it" type. I do encountered a weird specific performance bug that is when cosmetic filtering is enabled, some heavy sites become very lagging, even affecting typing [1][2]. It also happens with other ad blockers. Unfortunately the author was unable to reproduce it. [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1687 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1687 [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1292456 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=129245...
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
Perhaps we need to resume the old “tell friends and family to use firefox instead of $X”
- hosteur 4y ago
  Why would anyone stop telling them that?
  - EbNar 4y ago
    Because the browser people decide to use is none of your business? Just saying...
    - OJFord 4y ago
      That doesn't stop people telling me to 'Google' things, something I haven't done for about ten years.
- EbNar 4y ago
  No. Mozilla doesn't deserve this. They are purposely making Firefox worse with each stupid update. I'm not going to tell someone to use something that I think it sucks.
  - bjord 4y ago
    thanks for your input
  - thiagocsf 4y ago
    That’s a strong opinion. Would you elaborate?
    - EbNar 4y ago
msravi 4y ago
Some reasons to continue using firefox: 1. Containers! This is one of the biggest reasons to stick with Firefox. Along with the multi-account containers extension, you can restrict opening of specific domains to specific containers. Gives a huge privacy boost. 2. uBlock (origin) 3. uMatrix
- ManlyBread 4y ago
  4. On Android it has support for plugins. I have been using Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin for years without any issues.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Agreed, containers are great. I love them and wish they were a standard feature across browsers. Still some room for improvement though. It would be nice if the containers acted like an entirely different instance of a browser, with different settings, history, extensions, etc. With the current design it's still possible to accidently leaked details across containers by visiting something in the wrong one if you havent set up exclusive browsing for a particular site, and history is shared across containers. Would be nice to be able to export container settings as well as a lot of work can go into setting them up.
  - rroot 4y ago
    You get this functionality by using Firefox profiles. It's a separate browser instance with completely separated history, extension, ... It doesn't work like containers though, you can't open a new tab in a new profile.
    - commoner 4y ago
      If you use Firefox profiles regularly, you might enjoy the Profile Switcher for Firefox add-on, which provides a Chrome-like interface for loading and managing profiles in Firefox: - Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc... - Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
Is it possible to use uMatrix on Firefox mobile (e.g., Fennec) for Android yet. Why not. [Why use Android instead of iOS. Answer: NetGuard.]
- eloisius 4y ago
  Firefox on iOS is just UI chrome around webview. I use it because it syncs my tabs and bookmarks, but I don't expect any enhanced privacy over what Safari mobile offers.
  - Lukas_Skywalker 4y ago
    Important thing to add: Apple forces browsers on iOS to use the iOS webview. This is not Mozillas choice.
- foepys 4y ago
  uMatrix has been discontinued and will eventually break.
- sohkamyung 4y ago
  You can use uBO on Firefox Mobile on Android. Is that good enough?
- pieter_mj 4y ago
  On firefox nightly for Android, you can create an addon collection that will allow you to add uMatrix to the available addons. I've been using firefox nightly on Android for years without any noticeable downsides. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-addonsmozillaorg https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-add... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/collections/17310118/androidaddon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/collections/1731011...
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
isodev 4y ago
Interesting overview, but also incomplete - Safari is missing from the list of options. uBlock origin is unavailable on Safari, even though iOS/macOS offer a very powerful content blocking API.
- foepys 4y ago
  How many rules does the content blocking API support? 50,000? 100,000? The last time I looked this was a problem because I currently have over 200,000 active rules. Does it prevent CNAME shenanigans?
  - isodev 4y ago
    I don’t know… hence why it should have been included in the comparison.
  - nuker 4y ago
    > Does it prevent CNAME shenanigans? Yes. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/apples-safari-browser-blocks-cname-cloaking-in-big-sur-privacy-boost https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/apples-safari-browser...
- arepublicadoceu 4y ago
  > uBlock origin is unavailable on Safari, even though iOS/macOS offer a very powerful content blocking API. Please define 'powerful'. Until pretty recently iOS was unable to block youtube ads. I'm still getting popunder ads even though I use a really comprehensive block list on my iPhone. Safari blocking capabilities is just a "good enough" that most wont riot but definitely doesn't get even close to uBlock ballpark.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  Safari / webkit has some technical limitations. For uBlock Orgin on webkit, Orion is supposed to be the better alternative - https://browser.kagi.com/ https://browser.kagi.com/
- heresaPizza 4y ago
  Safari’s content blocking APIs are far from powerful. Content blockers provide the rules and safari blocks what it is told to. So you’re stuck with the (limited) features the browser exposes. Apple put limitations on what extensions can do, so uBlock would struggle on Mac and simply not work on mobile. Using its own engine (exactly the opposite of the Apple way), uBlock can handle the most complex websites and offer more features and customisation.
35mm 4y ago
Dear Single Page Application designers of HN, please stop writing sites which completely break if I use uBlock.
- parasti 4y ago
  Isn't this on uBlock? I still get the occasional report from Brave/uBlock users when I've accidentally included "ad" in a class name or ID, but I really don't believe that I should be working around that 100% of the time. If uBlock breaks the site, the problem is uBlock.
  - baxuz 4y ago
    No. A lot of sites have ad tracking added to their app bundles which aren't wrapped in a try/catch block. The tracking code is usually initialized first, before the rest of the code in the app bundle. So if the network request fails due to ad blocking, the tracking code breaks. And if it isn't caught, the rest of the code doesn't load.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      "Error handling is just expensive code bloat" -- PHB
  - jbm 4y ago
    Not the op but the point was for the benefit of the site dev. I'm sure you can understand that I would rather keep uBlock on than diagnose why it may have broken on your site. While you may be completely trustworthy, there is simply no way to know; I'll just click through.
- orthoxerox 4y ago
  I think they do that deliberately.
  - sureglymop 4y ago
    They do... Another thing is that they proxy analytics/ad traffic through their own servers to circumvent ad blockers. There are even fully fledged pre-built services just for this, see DataUnlocker.
spyremeown 4y ago
Yesterday I downloaded Firefox on my 2018 Macbook because Chrome slowed the thing down to an absolute crawl. What. A. Difference! Firefox is so snappy, and at one point it was using less CPU than iTerm2. Mozilla has received a lot of crapped these past years, as did Firefox, but throughout my life this software has been free and open for me to use. I thank the contributors a lot for it.
- quyleanh 4y ago
  Actually, the longer you use your browser, the slower it becomes. If you refresh other browsers, it will be fast again.
  - smcleod 4y ago
    That's not really the car with Firefox in my experience that is an issue that's common to chrome (and as such electron etc...). I haven't refreshed my Firefox in probably 5+ years and it's very snappy despite me having a lot of extensions installed.
    - timvisee 4y ago
      There does seem to be some internal limit to the history size though. My installation is also more than 5 years old, but I can't browse back more than ~6 months. This helps with performance for sure.
  - markx2 4y ago
    I have used FF for many many years and the way to keep it fast is, on exit, to delete all data.
  - rsolva 4y ago
    I have not experienced a noticable slow down over the last ten years of using Firefox, even on modest hardware from from the early 2010's. That said, this year I enabled clearing the browsing history and cache every time I close Firefox, which keeps my address bar clutter free and hyper responsive. Searching trough my bookmarks is instant! It keeps the browser lean and clean.
EbNar 4y ago
Well... Brave inbuilt adblocker has CNAME protection as well, so if uBO stops working on Chromium 'cause of MV3, changes for me would be minimal. I refuse to use Firefox in its current state, with that dumb interface and the continuous feature removal. Waht's more, after being a FF advocate and user for something like 20 years, I seriously think that Mozilla should disappear sooner than later.
- Markoff 4y ago
  Agreed, although I can't imagine surfing the internet without element picker, no other adblocker than ublock provides this feature. :-(
  - EbNar 4y ago
eleitl 4y ago
This is why I'm still runnung 68.11.0 on Android. The last usable Firefox version.
- simjue 4y ago
  What happend on newer versions?
  - bjoli 4y ago
    For me it is that it opens all "most visited sites" in new tabs. I usually go between 6-10 sites and use tabs mostly as a "read later". Sometime last year I started getting a lot of open tabs, and closing them one by one (to keep my read later tabs) is pretty darn annoying. I switched away from FF for that.
- brobinson 4y ago
  I wonder how many 0-/1-tap RCEs you are vulnerable to at this point. 10-20 or so?
- Markoff 4y ago
  why not just switch to Kiwi Browser which has proper extensions support unlike Firefox and is more customizable than Firefox?
bambax 4y ago
I have been using FF+uBlockO for years now as my primary browser and I have zero complaints; everything is fast and smooth; reader mode is essential and works on most text-heavy sites (substack breaks it sometimes).
_iyhy 4y ago
Sadly on iOS Firefox doesn't have the ability due to Apple restrictions.
- jonas-w 4y ago
  And because it isn't "really" firefox. Firefox is forced to use webkit, the same used in Safari.
fillipvt 4y ago
I'd love to use Firefox as my daily driver for work. But due to lack of some extensions I'm not able to, mainly Tag Manager and Optimize, both Google products.
pwpw 4y ago
It does work great, but for whatever reason, running Firefox on my Linux desktop eventually leads to CPU lockups and crashes. Using Chrome doesn't. I can't pinpoint what would be causing the issue, but it happens multiple times per day with Firefox. Even on a fresh install.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Is it the CPU or the display locking up? Could it be the video driver? If you have Nvidia or Radeon, try the other video driver.
  - pwpw 4y ago
    It's the CPU. I have NVIDIA and have tried both drivers. I can't pin down the cause or recreate it on demand, but it's always when I'm running Firefox. It's happening at least once per day now, which is frustrating, but I've sort of just accepted it after reinstalling Firefox, updating/switching drivers, and updating BIOS. Unfortunately I enjoy Firefox a lot more than Chrome!

438 points by Ayesh 4y ago

I am curious of Brave that has a build in Adblocker that is based on uBlock Origin AFAIK but build partially in Rust I believe. If that is closer to the Chromium's core code and not merely dependent on what web extensions offer in Chromium. Maybe they can make things happen that are possible only in Firefox though extensions that way.

arwineap 4y ago
Maybe they can, but if they did, they would probably be shouting it from the rooftops as their pinnacle feature
faeriechangling 4y ago
I think Brave is interestingly positioned, they sort of sound like a dream come true from a technical perspective, chromium with manifest v3 but still with fully functioning adblocking. But I mean Brave has PLENTY of skeletons in its closet and is a dark horse that really doesn't seem to have the momentum. Firefox had TONS more momentum and they're still hardly relevant nowadays.
- berry_sortoro 4y ago
  Well I do not have the numbers on Brave, and they themselves do not have them because it identifies as Chrome with its user agent AFAIK. So there are actually no stats on market share! I would bet Brave has the same if not MOVE "momentum" as Firefox. Mozilla's things the old monetization model of the web should stay that way. They think ad blocking is bad, that is why they will never offer it by default. They also think the web should be even more censored than Big Tech wants. Used to be a big FX fan, but: 1. The above. And they were in bed with Google from day 1. 2. Chromium is just faster. 3. I am a web dev, and it feels extremely silly to use a browser engine that nobody uses as a browser. Not sure when I made my switch to Brave, but it was like 1 or 2 years ago. I was holding strong on Firefox. Their Servo was promising, but then they ran out of money and laid off the staff working on it. Brave also has their BAT going, that I find utterly stupid if not a straight scam. They advertise "no ads - no tracking" that is true by default. But then they want you to sign up for their stupid token to "get paid to look at ads that TRACK YOU" it's kind of hilarious how they market this shit. They do more or less exactly what Google is doing, except that the advertisers will probably get the real names of people who are this BAT BS. But the funny thing is they do not care, they get behavioral data of all kinds of browsing habits and that is EXACTLY what they want. Brave sells it as this great "privacy" thing, yet you have to give them your data for the payouts, so they know exactly who you are I am pretty sure. Not done it, will never do it but with all the Crypto regulation and KYC and so on they're just building a tiny "competitor" to Google that more or less does the same thing, maybe a little bit more privacy-friendly. I detest this idea. But a small community of people is all over this crap. Anyway, I stop my rant. Just deactivate the symbol for display on the address bar, thankfully they have a setting for that. Without BAT Brave is a great Browser.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    >I would bet Brave has the same if not MOVE "momentum" as Firefox. Five years after Firefox officially released, it was used by a third of the internet. People had a religious fervour around Firefox, Microsoft was the great satan for unleashing IE6 upon the planet, it was a great evil for sites to not support Firefox or god forbid actively block Firefox user agents. For about two straight years Firefox after release absolutely slaughtered IE in almost every way (extensions, tabs, customization, performance, web standards), it was still clearly the best browser for the next two years, and Chrome had to create a bleeding-edge world-class browser and promote it with a gigantic large scale global ad campaign before Firefox started to falter. By contrast, brave was released 6 years ago I've never seen a non-tech person use Brave in my life. It's biggest technical advantage seems to be a souped up adblocker. It really doesn't compare to Firefox's momentum.

metadat 4y ago

No doubt, why would uBlock performance be any kind of priority for Chromium or WebKit?

freediver 4y ago
It is for Orion browser (WebKit based)
foepys 4y ago
It's not just performance, it's functionality. Chrome does not block requests reliably at startup when opening saved tabs and doesn't allow CNAME uncloaking. Adding something along the lines of CNAME 60 puppies analytics.google.com. to the DNS config is enough to fool uBlock Origin on Chrome and requires a special rule.

webmobdev 4y ago

Surprised about Tor Browser though - it's basically Firefox ESR with some tweaks with the Tor package bundled (that can be deleted). Performance should have been the same. And since they also prioritise privacy (more than Mozilla) I figured it is a better bet for uBlock Origin - wonder which tweak causes that slight difference between it and Firefox? Also, what about the new Orion (Beta) browser based on Safari / WebKit? If I remember right, they claimed they had made changes to WebKit to support uBlock Origin better and properly than either Safari or Chrome.

kadoban 4y ago
I wonder if it's something like the default settings of Tor Browser already prevent some ads that uBO also would have blocked, so that just makes the numbers worse for uBO, even if the user isn't seeing any more ads. Only other theories I can come up with would be Tor Browser interfering with uBO functioning optimally, or its version of FF not being new enough to work optimally with uBO.
cmeacham98 4y ago
I believe that test was taken after CNAME-based blocking became available in Firefox but before it made its way to Tor browser (which, at least at the time, was based on Firefox ESR). I suspect a modern run of the test would show the browsers as similar.

anotherhue 4y ago

Unfortunately a great deal of the web works best on chromium. I use FF every day for reasons such as TFA, but it's getting harder and harder. On the same (old-ish) machine Brave runs rings around FF in basic web performance. Maybe the EU can fork Firefox?

denkmoon 4y ago
I never run into websites that don't work properly in Firefox that isn't a consequence of one of my addons. Do you encounter them commonly?
- anotherhue 4y ago
  Indeed and almost always for that reason. It's more the performance that hurts me, perhaps my 'many tabs' style is better handled with the chromium process model.
  - Ayesh 4y ago
    I have Firefox containers and Simple Tab Groups extension installed, which keeps my tabs in the browser, but automatically suspends them when they are not visible. This was my sweet spot for tabs, because I do not have to bookmark them permanently, and I can instantly switch to my "workspace" anytime. I experience the opposite of you with Chrome struggling with several tabs. At around 30 tabs, Chrome absolutely throttles my moderately powerful 8 core 16 thread CPU laptop with 24GB RAM, while Firefox has no issues with it. Firefox doesn't even sweat even if I have those tabs open with Spotify and Gmail, one that presumably uses hardware DRM decryption, and the other websockets for email and chat, plus whatever tracking Google wants to do.
  - foepys 4y ago
    A friend of mine has over 3,000 open in a vanilla Firefox at this very moment. Firefox restores the tabs on each restart without loading them and suspends inactive tabs automatically.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

toastal 4y ago

It's great to see Fx capabilities optimized for instead of trying to reach a common denominator. Firefox's forks offer some of the best privacy options (Tor, LibreWolf) too for the uBlock audience. Hopefully this can help shepherd folks back to Gecko as I know a many have little interest in browsing without adblock.

ncr100 4y ago

Firefox has been my daily driver for a few years. I'll keep using it for that. It's fast, compatible, and reliable.

beagle3 4y ago
The new offline translations feature is also a great addition - it is not as good as Google Translate, but it is very good, and it is offline and completely local.
- spl0i7 4y ago
  wait, firefox can translate without extensions?
  - kelnos 4y ago
    It does require an extension, but that extension is written and maintained by Mozilla themselves. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-trans...)
    - sohkamyung 4y ago
      You can use it on-line directly without the extension [1] [1] https://mozilla.github.io/translate/ https://mozilla.github.io/translate/
  - input_sh 4y ago
    They've been developing a (first-party) extension that already supports about a dozen languages and does translations completely client-side: https://browser.mt/ https://browser.mt/ I'm assuming it's gonna merge into Firefox once they're satisfied with it. Also EU supported its early development, which I think is quite cool: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825303 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/825303
- toastal 4y ago
  Eh. Translations don't cover like any languages in Asia so it's not even been worth the bytes to download to me.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ehsankia 4y ago

Do we yet know what the status of uBlock or a uBlock fork for Manifest V3 is? I know it won't be able to have all the same features, but it certainly will be doable, but have the authors fully set their minds up about not converting their extension? Has anyone decided to fork it and do it? I don't really care about all the fight about Chrome vs Firefox, I just want to know if someone will port uBlock to MV3.

kelnos 4y ago
> I don't really care about all the fight about Chrome vs Firefox And this is why Google has the ability to force things like Manifest V3 down people's throats. Glad I stopped using Chrome years ago.
- ehsankia 4y ago
  The fact that I don't want to partake in childish browser wars is the reason Chrome has larger user share? Apple has the exact same limitation on Safari yet no one claims "Apple forced Declarative API down people's throat" and actually praise them for the privacy it brings. I'm perfectly fine with extensions not being able to snoop of every single request I make. It's fine for you to disagree. If anything, it sounds like people here trying to shove their preference of Firefox down everyone's throat.
  - darknavi 4y ago
    I wouldn't say your browser complacency is _why_ Chrome can do this, but it is a large sign of _how_ they can shove their weight around. Most people use chrome and don't care.
SquareWheel 4y ago
Personally I'm not going to worry about switching until the old API is deprecated, but it should be very simple to write an adblocker for Manifest v3. You could put together an MVP by plugging EasyList into the new APIs in probably ten minutes. Obviously a fully-featured blocker requires a lot more time than that though. I'd actually expect a small performance increase because the browser is preloading the block list, rather than querying it every time. uBlock does provide some other feature like disabling network pre-fetching, and I'm not sure if those can be fully replicated. But I tend to prefer the performance improvement of pre-fetching anyway.

fireattack 4y ago

In general, I don't find any noticeable performance issues using ubo on Chrome, but again I'm the "install it and forget it" type. I do encountered a weird specific performance bug that is when cosmetic filtering is enabled, some heavy sites become very lagging, even affecting typing [1][2]. It also happens with other ad blockers. Unfortunately the author was unable to reproduce it. [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1687 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1687 [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1292456 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=129245...

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

Perhaps we need to resume the old “tell friends and family to use firefox instead of $X”

hosteur 4y ago
Why would anyone stop telling them that?
- EbNar 4y ago
  Because the browser people decide to use is none of your business? Just saying...
  - OJFord 4y ago
    That doesn't stop people telling me to 'Google' things, something I haven't done for about ten years.
EbNar 4y ago
No. Mozilla doesn't deserve this. They are purposely making Firefox worse with each stupid update. I'm not going to tell someone to use something that I think it sucks.
- bjord 4y ago
  thanks for your input
- thiagocsf 4y ago
  That’s a strong opinion. Would you elaborate?
  - EbNar 4y ago

msravi 4y ago

Some reasons to continue using firefox: 1. Containers! This is one of the biggest reasons to stick with Firefox. Along with the multi-account containers extension, you can restrict opening of specific domains to specific containers. Gives a huge privacy boost. 2. uBlock (origin) 3. uMatrix

ManlyBread 4y ago
4. On Android it has support for plugins. I have been using Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin for years without any issues.
colordrops 4y ago
Agreed, containers are great. I love them and wish they were a standard feature across browsers. Still some room for improvement though. It would be nice if the containers acted like an entirely different instance of a browser, with different settings, history, extensions, etc. With the current design it's still possible to accidently leaked details across containers by visiting something in the wrong one if you havent set up exclusive browsing for a particular site, and history is shared across containers. Would be nice to be able to export container settings as well as a lot of work can go into setting them up.
- rroot 4y ago
  You get this functionality by using Firefox profiles. It's a separate browser instance with completely separated history, extension, ... It doesn't work like containers though, you can't open a new tab in a new profile.
  - commoner 4y ago
    If you use Firefox profiles regularly, you might enjoy the Profile Switcher for Firefox add-on, which provides a Chrome-like interface for loading and managing profiles in Firefox: - Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc... - Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

Is it possible to use uMatrix on Firefox mobile (e.g., Fennec) for Android yet. Why not. [Why use Android instead of iOS. Answer: NetGuard.]

eloisius 4y ago
Firefox on iOS is just UI chrome around webview. I use it because it syncs my tabs and bookmarks, but I don't expect any enhanced privacy over what Safari mobile offers.
- Lukas_Skywalker 4y ago
  Important thing to add: Apple forces browsers on iOS to use the iOS webview. This is not Mozillas choice.
foepys 4y ago
uMatrix has been discontinued and will eventually break.
sohkamyung 4y ago
You can use uBO on Firefox Mobile on Android. Is that good enough?
pieter_mj 4y ago
On firefox nightly for Android, you can create an addon collection that will allow you to add uMatrix to the available addons. I've been using firefox nightly on Android for years without any noticeable downsides. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-addonsmozillaorg https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-add... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/collections/17310118/androidaddon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/collections/1731011...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

isodev 4y ago

Interesting overview, but also incomplete - Safari is missing from the list of options. uBlock origin is unavailable on Safari, even though iOS/macOS offer a very powerful content blocking API.

foepys 4y ago
How many rules does the content blocking API support? 50,000? 100,000? The last time I looked this was a problem because I currently have over 200,000 active rules. Does it prevent CNAME shenanigans?
- isodev 4y ago
  I don’t know… hence why it should have been included in the comparison.
- nuker 4y ago
  > Does it prevent CNAME shenanigans? Yes. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/apples-safari-browser-blocks-cname-cloaking-in-big-sur-privacy-boost https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/apples-safari-browser...
arepublicadoceu 4y ago
> uBlock origin is unavailable on Safari, even though iOS/macOS offer a very powerful content blocking API. Please define 'powerful'. Until pretty recently iOS was unable to block youtube ads. I'm still getting popunder ads even though I use a really comprehensive block list on my iPhone. Safari blocking capabilities is just a "good enough" that most wont riot but definitely doesn't get even close to uBlock ballpark.
webmobdev 4y ago
Safari / webkit has some technical limitations. For uBlock Orgin on webkit, Orion is supposed to be the better alternative - https://browser.kagi.com/ https://browser.kagi.com/
heresaPizza 4y ago
Safari’s content blocking APIs are far from powerful. Content blockers provide the rules and safari blocks what it is told to. So you’re stuck with the (limited) features the browser exposes. Apple put limitations on what extensions can do, so uBlock would struggle on Mac and simply not work on mobile. Using its own engine (exactly the opposite of the Apple way), uBlock can handle the most complex websites and offer more features and customisation.

35mm 4y ago

Dear Single Page Application designers of HN, please stop writing sites which completely break if I use uBlock.

parasti 4y ago
Isn't this on uBlock? I still get the occasional report from Brave/uBlock users when I've accidentally included "ad" in a class name or ID, but I really don't believe that I should be working around that 100% of the time. If uBlock breaks the site, the problem is uBlock.
- baxuz 4y ago
  No. A lot of sites have ad tracking added to their app bundles which aren't wrapped in a try/catch block. The tracking code is usually initialized first, before the rest of the code in the app bundle. So if the network request fails due to ad blocking, the tracking code breaks. And if it isn't caught, the rest of the code doesn't load.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    "Error handling is just expensive code bloat" -- PHB
- jbm 4y ago
  Not the op but the point was for the benefit of the site dev. I'm sure you can understand that I would rather keep uBlock on than diagnose why it may have broken on your site. While you may be completely trustworthy, there is simply no way to know; I'll just click through.
orthoxerox 4y ago
I think they do that deliberately.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  They do... Another thing is that they proxy analytics/ad traffic through their own servers to circumvent ad blockers. There are even fully fledged pre-built services just for this, see DataUnlocker.

spyremeown 4y ago

Yesterday I downloaded Firefox on my 2018 Macbook because Chrome slowed the thing down to an absolute crawl. What. A. Difference! Firefox is so snappy, and at one point it was using less CPU than iTerm2. Mozilla has received a lot of crapped these past years, as did Firefox, but throughout my life this software has been free and open for me to use. I thank the contributors a lot for it.

quyleanh 4y ago
Actually, the longer you use your browser, the slower it becomes. If you refresh other browsers, it will be fast again.
- smcleod 4y ago
  That's not really the car with Firefox in my experience that is an issue that's common to chrome (and as such electron etc...). I haven't refreshed my Firefox in probably 5+ years and it's very snappy despite me having a lot of extensions installed.
  - timvisee 4y ago
    There does seem to be some internal limit to the history size though. My installation is also more than 5 years old, but I can't browse back more than ~6 months. This helps with performance for sure.
- markx2 4y ago
  I have used FF for many many years and the way to keep it fast is, on exit, to delete all data.
- rsolva 4y ago
  I have not experienced a noticable slow down over the last ten years of using Firefox, even on modest hardware from from the early 2010's. That said, this year I enabled clearing the browsing history and cache every time I close Firefox, which keeps my address bar clutter free and hyper responsive. Searching trough my bookmarks is instant! It keeps the browser lean and clean.

EbNar 4y ago

Well... Brave inbuilt adblocker has CNAME protection as well, so if uBO stops working on Chromium 'cause of MV3, changes for me would be minimal. I refuse to use Firefox in its current state, with that dumb interface and the continuous feature removal. Waht's more, after being a FF advocate and user for something like 20 years, I seriously think that Mozilla should disappear sooner than later.

Markoff 4y ago
Agreed, although I can't imagine surfing the internet without element picker, no other adblocker than ublock provides this feature. :-(
- EbNar 4y ago

eleitl 4y ago

This is why I'm still runnung 68.11.0 on Android. The last usable Firefox version.

simjue 4y ago
What happend on newer versions?
- bjoli 4y ago
  For me it is that it opens all "most visited sites" in new tabs. I usually go between 6-10 sites and use tabs mostly as a "read later". Sometime last year I started getting a lot of open tabs, and closing them one by one (to keep my read later tabs) is pretty darn annoying. I switched away from FF for that.
brobinson 4y ago
I wonder how many 0-/1-tap RCEs you are vulnerable to at this point. 10-20 or so?
Markoff 4y ago
why not just switch to Kiwi Browser which has proper extensions support unlike Firefox and is more customizable than Firefox?

bambax 4y ago

I have been using FF+uBlockO for years now as my primary browser and I have zero complaints; everything is fast and smooth; reader mode is essential and works on most text-heavy sites (substack breaks it sometimes).

_iyhy 4y ago

Sadly on iOS Firefox doesn't have the ability due to Apple restrictions.

jonas-w 4y ago
And because it isn't "really" firefox. Firefox is forced to use webkit, the same used in Safari.

fillipvt 4y ago

I'd love to use Firefox as my daily driver for work. But due to lack of some extensions I'm not able to, mainly Tag Manager and Optimize, both Google products.

pwpw 4y ago

It does work great, but for whatever reason, running Firefox on my Linux desktop eventually leads to CPU lockups and crashes. Using Chrome doesn't. I can't pinpoint what would be causing the issue, but it happens multiple times per day with Firefox. Even on a fresh install.

timbit42 4y ago
Is it the CPU or the display locking up? Could it be the video driver? If you have Nvidia or Radeon, try the other video driver.
- pwpw 4y ago
  It's the CPU. I have NVIDIA and have tried both drivers. I can't pin down the cause or recreate it on demand, but it's always when I'm running Firefox. It's happening at least once per day now, which is frustrating, but I've sort of just accepted it after reinstalling Firefox, updating/switching drivers, and updating BIOS. Unfortunately I enjoy Firefox a lot more than Chrome!