Hey all, I was about to setup uBlock Origin in chromium, when I saw the notice that it may soon be ended due to not following best practices, etc. I looked this up and some articles and posts state that Chrome is discontinuing content blockers / ad blockers soon. Will this apply to the chromium app in Linux?
Other than for testing purposes, my usage of Chromium is for the ability to make some sites into webApps. I just like some to be isolated with their own window and icon. The standard response I see to pretty much anyone is that they should switch to Firefox and stop wanting the webApp. I saw some comments that Firefox does not and will not implement webApps due to some security issues (?? not sure why). I don’t understand how it is difficult just make a standalone window with a custom icon choice. I see no reason that has to compromise anything at all, but I am not a developer.
I’m getting off-track here. So, is Chromium going to go the way Google wants it to go for Chrome? It was my understanding that Chromium is kind of an offshoot and not just up to Google in terms of its course. Will we be able to use extensions that Google doesn’t want, and have to get them from a new repository instead of the chrome web store?
Any insight on this would be appreciated, thanks.
Edit: it appears the PWA support in Firefox is not ideal, see responses to this comment.
Chromium is not an offshoot of Chrome, it’s more of a precursor to Chrome, and it is completely controlled by Google. As such, it will also drop support for extensions that do not support Manifest v3.
If you want to enable PWA support in Firefox, it looks like this is possible (however the experience doesn’t seem to be great, see responses to this comment): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Installing
For other browser suggestions see, e.g. https://www.xda-developers.com/4-browsers-manifest-v2-ublock-origin/
They are deprecating the underlying technology(called manifest V2 or MV2 for short) and replacing it with a different one(MV3) that lacks some of the capabilities for some kind of adblocking.
So yeah, it’s pretty much dead on chromium. The developers of brave have commited to provide a best effort support for their browser though: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
Firefox on the other end has no intention of deprecating support for MV2 so any browsers based on that are fine. Keep in mind MV3 supports some adblocking and some Adblockers have already moved to it, it’s just a lesser extent.
So, is Chromium going to go the way Google wants it to go for Chrome? It was my understanding that Chromium is kind of an offshoot and not just up to Google in terms of its course.
I would be surprised if it doesn’t. Chromium isn’t an offshoot, it is the primary base of Chrome; it is a Google project at its core, and they essentially fund and build upon the open source efforts of the community to make Chrome.
Ah ok. So they just want to eliminate the entire concept of ad blocking. Kinda desperate act.
If ever there was a good case to abandon Chrome, it’s these actions.
I would have less problem with advertising if it wasn’t multiple, full-coverage, 30-sec video ads in a row alongside malvertisements that only get caught after a user reports them. If they’re gonna serve me garbage, I don’t have to let them shove it in my face.