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Off-topic: I really wish uMatrix was brought to life again. It had such a beautifully simple and efficient UI. uBO's filetring is close, but... not the same. B

Off-topic: I really wish uMatrix was brought to life again. It had such a beautifully simple and efficient UI. uBO's filetring is close, but... not the same. Big thank you to gorhill (and co.) for making the net useable!

tgv 4y ago
Is uMatrix dead then? I'm using it (in Firefox).
- pmontra 4y ago
  I'm also using it. It's not maintained. It might stop working with any of the next browser updates and has been like that for years. I've been told that uBO can do the same things and I started looking into it weeks ago, then got stuck. The UI of uMatrix is so much better than the one of uBO at selecting the scripts to run and block that it could become a case study in interaction design.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    Just to confirm, uBO can do the same things, mostly (and I've switched to it myself), but the UI is not on the same level when trying to block css / images / scripts separately. uMatrix really is an incredible UI achievement.
    - ri0t 4y ago
      It's always a little minigame of not activating too much but still getting a working site. Fishy things get painted red, hopefully good things get painted green - reload and try again, if it didn't work. I sure hope, some maintainers pop up and keep this thing alive!
      - squarefoot 4y ago
        Both extensions are FOSS, so anyone with enough time and skills could say extend the uBO engine with the more powerful uMatrix interface, where the latter could be accessed through an "expert" option for more granularity, then submit the result to gorhill for evaluation, so that he would have a single codebase to maintain.
        freedomben 4y ago
        Do you actually know that gorhill would be open to receiving that work, or are you just guessing? That's an enormous amount of work (for someone totally unfamiliar with the codebase that would have to learn) to undertake on the off chance that it would be accepted.
        squarefoot 4y ago
        Just guessing of course; I'm sure the amount of work involved would be significant, but I also wouldn't underestimate the power of teamwork on the Internet, especially when something so important (I''d dare to say vital these days) as a content blocker is involved. As for the implicit "then why don't you do the work yourself?" - Heh, I wish I had both the skills and capacity to focus on a project of such complexity.
  - enriquto 4y ago
    > It might stop working with any of the next browser updates That's the day many of us will stop updating our browsers.
  - pavon 4y ago
    uBO can also do things that uMatrix can't (on Firefox at least) - like CNAME uncloaking[1]. This is where a resource is hosted/maintained on third-party servers, but is addressed using a first-party subdomain. As a completely hypothetical example, instead of loading content from homedepot.disqus.com, you load it from disqus.homedepot.com. The relationship between Home Depot and Disqus and the privacy implications are similar in both cases, but uMatrix would consider the former to be third-party content and the later to be first-party. uBO however will treat both as third-party content (when CNAME uncloaking is enabled). Enabling this in uBO really opened my eyes to how fuzzy the distinction between first-party and third-party is. Sites can have all types of business arrangements with different privacy implications, ranging from relatively harmless (hosting), to moderate (CDN), to invasive (ad tracking). uMatrix and other blockers have used the domain name as a proxy-variable to measure whether something should be trusted or not, but it is increasing becoming a poor metric. With CNAME uncloaking enabled, maintaining default deny, and allow only what is needed approach becomes quite a bit more work, as it ends up blocking a bunch of necessary content. But without you are allowing a fair bit of tracking you shouldn't. After a few months of trying to use uBO like uMatrix, I found that using the curated deny-lists was a more tractable approach than maintaining my own allow-list, and thus don't miss the uMatrix interface as much as I expected. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#uncloak-canonical-names https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...
a_bored_husky 4y ago
The day uMatrix stops working will be a very sad one and I'm not sure what to do at that point. Web browsing without it sucks so bad.
moneywoes 4y ago
How is it different
LightHugger 4y ago
I wish umatrix's UI would just be an option inside ublock origin. Press the box, UI appears. It's too great.
- jjav 4y ago
  > I wish umatrix's UI would just be an option inside ublock origin. Press the box, UI appears. It's too great. Yes, very much. I'd love to be able to contribute money somewhere to make this happen! UBO seems to work ok as long as you don't need to tweak anything, but then falls apart. The uMatrix UI is so much superior, I can't ever imagine being able to live without it.
TechBro8615 4y ago
I also want to take this opportunity to thank the faceless and relentless contributors who maintain the blocking lists. Thanks to their efforts, I don't need to know how to add manual rules or really do anything more advanced than install uBlock Origin to safely browse the web.

tgv 4y ago

Is uMatrix dead then? I'm using it (in Firefox).

pmontra 4y ago
I'm also using it. It's not maintained. It might stop working with any of the next browser updates and has been like that for years. I've been told that uBO can do the same things and I started looking into it weeks ago, then got stuck. The UI of uMatrix is so much better than the one of uBO at selecting the scripts to run and block that it could become a case study in interaction design.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  Just to confirm, uBO can do the same things, mostly (and I've switched to it myself), but the UI is not on the same level when trying to block css / images / scripts separately. uMatrix really is an incredible UI achievement.
  - ri0t 4y ago
    It's always a little minigame of not activating too much but still getting a working site. Fishy things get painted red, hopefully good things get painted green - reload and try again, if it didn't work. I sure hope, some maintainers pop up and keep this thing alive!
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      Both extensions are FOSS, so anyone with enough time and skills could say extend the uBO engine with the more powerful uMatrix interface, where the latter could be accessed through an "expert" option for more granularity, then submit the result to gorhill for evaluation, so that he would have a single codebase to maintain.
      - freedomben 4y ago
        Do you actually know that gorhill would be open to receiving that work, or are you just guessing? That's an enormous amount of work (for someone totally unfamiliar with the codebase that would have to learn) to undertake on the off chance that it would be accepted.
        squarefoot 4y ago
        Just guessing of course; I'm sure the amount of work involved would be significant, but I also wouldn't underestimate the power of teamwork on the Internet, especially when something so important (I''d dare to say vital these days) as a content blocker is involved. As for the implicit "then why don't you do the work yourself?" - Heh, I wish I had both the skills and capacity to focus on a project of such complexity.
- enriquto 4y ago
  > It might stop working with any of the next browser updates That's the day many of us will stop updating our browsers.
- pavon 4y ago
  uBO can also do things that uMatrix can't (on Firefox at least) - like CNAME uncloaking[1]. This is where a resource is hosted/maintained on third-party servers, but is addressed using a first-party subdomain. As a completely hypothetical example, instead of loading content from homedepot.disqus.com, you load it from disqus.homedepot.com. The relationship between Home Depot and Disqus and the privacy implications are similar in both cases, but uMatrix would consider the former to be third-party content and the later to be first-party. uBO however will treat both as third-party content (when CNAME uncloaking is enabled). Enabling this in uBO really opened my eyes to how fuzzy the distinction between first-party and third-party is. Sites can have all types of business arrangements with different privacy implications, ranging from relatively harmless (hosting), to moderate (CDN), to invasive (ad tracking). uMatrix and other blockers have used the domain name as a proxy-variable to measure whether something should be trusted or not, but it is increasing becoming a poor metric. With CNAME uncloaking enabled, maintaining default deny, and allow only what is needed approach becomes quite a bit more work, as it ends up blocking a bunch of necessary content. But without you are allowing a fair bit of tracking you shouldn't. After a few months of trying to use uBO like uMatrix, I found that using the curated deny-lists was a more tractable approach than maintaining my own allow-list, and thus don't miss the uMatrix interface as much as I expected. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#uncloak-canonical-names https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...

a_bored_husky 4y ago

The day uMatrix stops working will be a very sad one and I'm not sure what to do at that point. Web browsing without it sucks so bad.

moneywoes 4y ago

How is it different

LightHugger 4y ago

I wish umatrix's UI would just be an option inside ublock origin. Press the box, UI appears. It's too great.

jjav 4y ago
> I wish umatrix's UI would just be an option inside ublock origin. Press the box, UI appears. It's too great. Yes, very much. I'd love to be able to contribute money somewhere to make this happen! UBO seems to work ok as long as you don't need to tweak anything, but then falls apart. The uMatrix UI is so much superior, I can't ever imagine being able to live without it.

TechBro8615 4y ago

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the faceless and relentless contributors who maintain the blocking lists. Thanks to their efforts, I don't need to know how to add manual rules or really do anything more advanced than install uBlock Origin to safely browse the web.