4 ms·

Firefox is the only sane option. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the alternatives. Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can t

Firefox is the only sane option. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the alternatives. Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking. Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.

OptionOfT 4mo ago
And sadly, Firefox on iOS is the only browser that doesn't have a the possibility to run an Adblocker. Safari can run uBlock Origin. Brave had one built-in. Hell, even Edge has Adblock Plus. Does Mozilla have a contract with Google to not build one in as part of the search contract?
- aleqs 4mo ago
  Firefox on Android supports ublock, not sure why it wouldn't support it on iOS
  - jmcphers 4mo ago
    It's because Apple does not allow Firefox to install an actual browser on iOS. Firefox on iOS is just a skinned version of WebKit/Safari. See 2.5.6: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#performance https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#per...
    - CharlesW 4mo ago
      > It's because Apple does not allow Firefox to install an actual browser on iOS. That's incorrect, and Firefox doesn't blame Apple for this. Many 3rd-party iOS browsers do ad blocking natively and/or via extensions. https://orionbrowser.com/platforms/ios https://orionbrowser.com/platforms/ios
    - dwaite 4mo ago
      This is not the cause though - other third-party browsers on iOS can do ad-blocking, and also can use system-installed extensions. They could also launch an alternative browser engine for iOS and iPadOS in the EU.
    - filoleg 4mo ago
      > Firefox on iOS is just a skinned version of WebKit/Safari So are Chrome, Brave, and Edge. And yet, they support ad-blocking extensions (and so does Safari).
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- 9999gold 4mo ago
  They allow extensions on the Android version. But yeah, on iOS I had to switch to Orion. It seems FF for iOS doesn’t get much attention.
- hoistbypetard 4mo ago
  What? https://www.firefox.com/en-US/mobile/focus/ https://www.firefox.com/en-US/mobile/focus/ The only thing I use Firefox on iOS for *is* its ad blocker.
  - qzw 4mo ago
    I use it on iOS daily and there’s no ad blocker. The page you linked only mentions tracking blocking. If you actually have ad blocking enabled, I’m sure a lot of us would love to hear how you did it.
    - pseudalopex 4mo ago
      Mozilla advertised Firefox Focus to block tracking and ads before. And it blocks some ads.[1] It is not possible to block tracking effectively without blocking some ads at least. They could have stopped to advertise ad blocking because people who wanted ad blocking wanted better. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557156
    - hoistbypetard 4mo ago
      It was originally pitched as a "distraction blocker" and it works in two modes. As a browser and as a content blocker, if you enable it in Safari's extension settings. I've still got it set up as a content blocking Safari extension (you find that in Settings -> Apps -> Safari -> Extensions) and it still seems to be blocking ads for me. Maybe not as many as it once did, but I just turned it off to see, and that made an unpleasant difference. I think I've been using it for 10 years (or so) now. It's my favorite thing Mozilla has done on iOS.
  - ScoobleDoodle 4mo ago
    This links to “Firefox Focus” which is different in the iOS App Store than “Firefox”. I had no idea. This Firefox Focus on iOS does effectively block adds on a recipe site unlike plain Firefox. I just did a cursory head to head test on the same recipe site url. Thank you for sharing this!
  - OptionOfT 4mo ago
- drnick1 4mo ago
  > iOS If free computing and user control are a priority for you, consider switching to GrapheneOS. You get better security than iOS, a UI/UX that does not assume you are mildly retarded, and full freedom to run any program from any source, including IronFox (a hardened Firefox fork).
sheept 4mo ago
As you alluded to, many Chromium forks (notable exception is Ungoogled) are backed by tech companies. There's already plenty of intentional changes they maintain in their forks, like Privacy Sandbox,[0] so I don't think preserving support for v2 is a large hurdle for them. [0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/10742158329613-What-does-Brave-remove-from-the-Chromium-engine https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/10742158329613-W...
- markstos 4mo ago
  Google described Manifest V2 as significant tech debt with new bugs still found there. Either they are lying or it's a non-trivial feature set to continue to support. So will be interesting to see how many other browsers actually do keep this support alive.
  - OkayPhysicist 4mo ago
    A trillion dollar company? Lying? That's beyond the pale. Google has never done anything against my interests. They're always sooooooo honest in their communications.
  - garlicderek 4mo ago
    oh, you sweet summer child
- jrm4 4mo ago
  "Backed by tech companies" Yup, huge red flag. Non-profit is the long-term way to go.
  - ranger_danger 4mo ago
    The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, but people still find creative ways to crap all over them for some reason. Someone else in this thread said they were "supporting the closed internet" by sending search queries to Google.
    - 4mo ago
rpdillon 4mo ago
Brave has an interesting approach where they have added core support for four key MV2 extensions to the core of the browser engine, bypassing MV3 entirely. > Update: As of v1.81, we host the following Manifest V2 (MV2) extensions on Brave’s backend: AdGuard, uBO, uMatrix, NoScript. These extensions operate independently from the equivalent versions that are currently present on the Chrome Web Store, and have to be downloaded separately. Users can download and enable these 4 extensions from the brave://settings/extensions/v2 page. https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
- throwatdem12311 4mo ago
  I just don’t see this being sustainable long term when you’re upstream is doing everything they can to sabotage you. This is a huge maintenance burden for Brave and eventually there might be a breaking change introduced by Google that just makes this approach no longer tenable. Mozilla is extremely friendly to content blockers, and does everything they can to make sure they are well supported as first class citizens.
  - insanitybit 4mo ago
    How is Google doing "everything they can to sabotage you"? MV2's deprecation timeline was set in 2021, slipping further repeatedly. This is after they had already started the plan in 2018. It's been nearly a decade.
    - Loquebantur 4mo ago
      Boiling you slowly still means they're boiling you. They don't boil you fast, because they can't: you would balk at that. In other words, taken together, they do all they can to boil you on that issue and kill ad-blockers.
      - insanitybit 4mo ago
        I feel like you can justify literally anything as "doing everything they can" if "they did it fast" and "they did it over the course of a decade, replaced the API, the API still supports ad blockers, etc" are treated the same way.
cute_boi 4mo ago
We can use helium. It works fine.
- maleldil 4mo ago
  Chromium-based, so it's a non-starter. If you care about the open web, you shouldn't use anything related to Chromium.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
ldom66 4mo ago
I see a lot of people saying that Firefox is not as good as Chrome. Do you have any examples of things Chrome does that Firefox doesn't? Genuinely curious, I have been alternating between Chrome and Firefox for the past two decades and last time I switched back to Firefox was 2 years ago, and I haven't had any performance/compability/feature concerns at all. (Full disclosure I use Zen, not vanilla Firefox)
- upfrog 4mo ago
  Two things that I noticed: - Firefox did crash on me more frequently. It wasn't a daily, or even a weekly thing, but it was more of a problem. - Firefox limits how small I can shrink my tabs in the tab bar. Chrome also has a limit, but it is much less restrictive. That last one was the killer difference for me. Firefox wants me to be able to see (at least part of) the title of each tab, even if that means I can't see all my tabs at once. I want to see all of my tabs at once, and I don't care if I can see the title - the favicon is enough. I did try configuring Firefox to let me shrink the tabs more, and even tried messing with its GTK configuration, but no luck. So I do feel a bit bad for using Brave instead of Firefox, but after months of dealing with Firefox's UI I lost patience.
  - buzer 4mo ago
    > - Firefox limits how small I can shrink my tabs in the tab bar. This can be changed via chrome/userChrome.css. Mine is: @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); .tabbrowser-tab { min-width: 3em !important; clip-width: 3em !important; } [uidensity="compact"]:root { --tab-min-height: 30px !important; --newtab-margin: -3px 0 -3px -3px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab { max-height: var(--tab-min-height) !important; } .tabs-newtab-button{ margin: var(--newtab-margin) !important; }
    - upfrog 4mo ago
      I don't remember if that exactly is line-for-line what I did, but I was at least doing something similar, and not having success.
munksbeer 4mo ago
I've just realised how infrequently I visit regular websites these days. Everything is trashed, popups, cookie requests, ads splattered everywhere. I read some blogs that get linked from hn. I read some reddit subs. And I use LLMs for "search" and questions. Whenever I do have to go back to the regular web it is horrible.

OptionOfT 4mo ago

And sadly, Firefox on iOS is the only browser that doesn't have a the possibility to run an Adblocker. Safari can run uBlock Origin. Brave had one built-in. Hell, even Edge has Adblock Plus. Does Mozilla have a contract with Google to not build one in as part of the search contract?

aleqs 4mo ago
Firefox on Android supports ublock, not sure why it wouldn't support it on iOS
- jmcphers 4mo ago
  It's because Apple does not allow Firefox to install an actual browser on iOS. Firefox on iOS is just a skinned version of WebKit/Safari. See 2.5.6: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#performance https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#per...
  - CharlesW 4mo ago
    > It's because Apple does not allow Firefox to install an actual browser on iOS. That's incorrect, and Firefox doesn't blame Apple for this. Many 3rd-party iOS browsers do ad blocking natively and/or via extensions. https://orionbrowser.com/platforms/ios https://orionbrowser.com/platforms/ios
  - dwaite 4mo ago
    This is not the cause though - other third-party browsers on iOS can do ad-blocking, and also can use system-installed extensions. They could also launch an alternative browser engine for iOS and iPadOS in the EU.
  - filoleg 4mo ago
    > Firefox on iOS is just a skinned version of WebKit/Safari So are Chrome, Brave, and Edge. And yet, they support ad-blocking extensions (and so does Safari).
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
9999gold 4mo ago
They allow extensions on the Android version. But yeah, on iOS I had to switch to Orion. It seems FF for iOS doesn’t get much attention.
hoistbypetard 4mo ago
What? https://www.firefox.com/en-US/mobile/focus/ https://www.firefox.com/en-US/mobile/focus/ The only thing I use Firefox on iOS for *is* its ad blocker.
- qzw 4mo ago
  I use it on iOS daily and there’s no ad blocker. The page you linked only mentions tracking blocking. If you actually have ad blocking enabled, I’m sure a lot of us would love to hear how you did it.
  - pseudalopex 4mo ago
    Mozilla advertised Firefox Focus to block tracking and ads before. And it blocks some ads.[1] It is not possible to block tracking effectively without blocking some ads at least. They could have stopped to advertise ad blocking because people who wanted ad blocking wanted better. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557156
  - hoistbypetard 4mo ago
    It was originally pitched as a "distraction blocker" and it works in two modes. As a browser and as a content blocker, if you enable it in Safari's extension settings. I've still got it set up as a content blocking Safari extension (you find that in Settings -> Apps -> Safari -> Extensions) and it still seems to be blocking ads for me. Maybe not as many as it once did, but I just turned it off to see, and that made an unpleasant difference. I think I've been using it for 10 years (or so) now. It's my favorite thing Mozilla has done on iOS.
- ScoobleDoodle 4mo ago
  This links to “Firefox Focus” which is different in the iOS App Store than “Firefox”. I had no idea. This Firefox Focus on iOS does effectively block adds on a recipe site unlike plain Firefox. I just did a cursory head to head test on the same recipe site url. Thank you for sharing this!
- OptionOfT 4mo ago
drnick1 4mo ago
> iOS If free computing and user control are a priority for you, consider switching to GrapheneOS. You get better security than iOS, a UI/UX that does not assume you are mildly retarded, and full freedom to run any program from any source, including IronFox (a hardened Firefox fork).

sheept 4mo ago

As you alluded to, many Chromium forks (notable exception is Ungoogled) are backed by tech companies. There's already plenty of intentional changes they maintain in their forks, like Privacy Sandbox,[0] so I don't think preserving support for v2 is a large hurdle for them. [0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/10742158329613-What-does-Brave-remove-from-the-Chromium-engine https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/10742158329613-W...

markstos 4mo ago
Google described Manifest V2 as significant tech debt with new bugs still found there. Either they are lying or it's a non-trivial feature set to continue to support. So will be interesting to see how many other browsers actually do keep this support alive.
- OkayPhysicist 4mo ago
  A trillion dollar company? Lying? That's beyond the pale. Google has never done anything against my interests. They're always sooooooo honest in their communications.
- garlicderek 4mo ago
  oh, you sweet summer child
jrm4 4mo ago
"Backed by tech companies" Yup, huge red flag. Non-profit is the long-term way to go.
- ranger_danger 4mo ago
  The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, but people still find creative ways to crap all over them for some reason. Someone else in this thread said they were "supporting the closed internet" by sending search queries to Google.
  - 4mo ago

rpdillon 4mo ago

Brave has an interesting approach where they have added core support for four key MV2 extensions to the core of the browser engine, bypassing MV3 entirely. > Update: As of v1.81, we host the following Manifest V2 (MV2) extensions on Brave’s backend: AdGuard, uBO, uMatrix, NoScript. These extensions operate independently from the equivalent versions that are currently present on the Chrome Web Store, and have to be downloaded separately. Users can download and enable these 4 extensions from the brave://settings/extensions/v2 page. https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/

throwatdem12311 4mo ago
I just don’t see this being sustainable long term when you’re upstream is doing everything they can to sabotage you. This is a huge maintenance burden for Brave and eventually there might be a breaking change introduced by Google that just makes this approach no longer tenable. Mozilla is extremely friendly to content blockers, and does everything they can to make sure they are well supported as first class citizens.
- insanitybit 4mo ago
  How is Google doing "everything they can to sabotage you"? MV2's deprecation timeline was set in 2021, slipping further repeatedly. This is after they had already started the plan in 2018. It's been nearly a decade.
  - Loquebantur 4mo ago
    Boiling you slowly still means they're boiling you. They don't boil you fast, because they can't: you would balk at that. In other words, taken together, they do all they can to boil you on that issue and kill ad-blockers.
    - insanitybit 4mo ago
      I feel like you can justify literally anything as "doing everything they can" if "they did it fast" and "they did it over the course of a decade, replaced the API, the API still supports ad blockers, etc" are treated the same way.

cute_boi 4mo ago

We can use helium. It works fine.

maleldil 4mo ago
Chromium-based, so it's a non-starter. If you care about the open web, you shouldn't use anything related to Chromium.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

ldom66 4mo ago

I see a lot of people saying that Firefox is not as good as Chrome. Do you have any examples of things Chrome does that Firefox doesn't? Genuinely curious, I have been alternating between Chrome and Firefox for the past two decades and last time I switched back to Firefox was 2 years ago, and I haven't had any performance/compability/feature concerns at all. (Full disclosure I use Zen, not vanilla Firefox)

upfrog 4mo ago
Two things that I noticed: - Firefox did crash on me more frequently. It wasn't a daily, or even a weekly thing, but it was more of a problem. - Firefox limits how small I can shrink my tabs in the tab bar. Chrome also has a limit, but it is much less restrictive. That last one was the killer difference for me. Firefox wants me to be able to see (at least part of) the title of each tab, even if that means I can't see all my tabs at once. I want to see all of my tabs at once, and I don't care if I can see the title - the favicon is enough. I did try configuring Firefox to let me shrink the tabs more, and even tried messing with its GTK configuration, but no luck. So I do feel a bit bad for using Brave instead of Firefox, but after months of dealing with Firefox's UI I lost patience.
- buzer 4mo ago
  > - Firefox limits how small I can shrink my tabs in the tab bar. This can be changed via chrome/userChrome.css. Mine is: @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); .tabbrowser-tab { min-width: 3em !important; clip-width: 3em !important; } [uidensity="compact"]:root { --tab-min-height: 30px !important; --newtab-margin: -3px 0 -3px -3px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab { max-height: var(--tab-min-height) !important; } .tabs-newtab-button{ margin: var(--newtab-margin) !important; }
  - upfrog 4mo ago
    I don't remember if that exactly is line-for-line what I did, but I was at least doing something similar, and not having success.

munksbeer 4mo ago

I've just realised how infrequently I visit regular websites these days. Everything is trashed, popups, cookie requests, ads splattered everywhere. I read some blogs that get linked from hn. I read some reddit subs. And I use LLMs for "search" and questions. Whenever I do have to go back to the regular web it is horrible.