Manifest v3 update: Vivaldi is future-proofed with its built-in functionality
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@rseiler : I have been using Adguard's service for several years, both on a desktop (Windows 11) and on Android devices. I bought a lifetime license that can be used on 9 devices.
At first I used a plugin connected to the browser, but now I use the Windows application and the Android application, so I don't have to use the browser plugin. In other words, the browser receives filtered data from the outset.
I am very satisfied with Adguard's service, I don't see any advertising, at most a popup window sometimes to turn off the advertising filter. But no ads really.
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so you have a year to develop your content blocker enough, I don't know the extent of your engines capabilities, architecture and such, but I'm sure gorhill will gladly point you in the right direction if you ask him for help. Also you may take a look at Shields as AFAIK that project is using similar algorithms and data structures to uBO and has a lot of power available, only not exposed in GUI, so within Vivaldi could shine, but you'd really have to push hard towards that goal, one year isn't a lot of time when you have to spend a lot of time merely on taming Chromium nonsense
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@preorian: most of the time gorhill spent would be R&D so reusing all that effort would save a lot of time, but I do agree one year is a pretty tight deadline for that anyway
unfortunately Firefox is gone since 2017, recently Mozilla started moving a bit into the right direction again, but even if they don't change the course it will take a lot of time to recover too
for all these past years I've always said: Vivaldi (and Brave for that matter) should've been built on top of Firefox codebase, so many problems were solved already there!
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@thewiley, don't understand me wrong, uBO until now is fine and trustworth, but in the future the version in the ChromeStore wil not be the same as it is now. Vivaldi can surrount, like also Firefox do, the restriction of Mv3, but not the restrictions of the extensions which are offered in the stores, there the uBO only will be an version "lite". The code in the Chromium base an be modified, but using extensions from the store won't be the same until now, that is the difference. Because this the need to make Vivaldi as much as possible independent from the Chrome Store in the near future, improving the own ad/trackerblocker and including an userscript manager will be the way because of the lack of an own store.
Don't confuse what is uBO until now with the uBO when it pass to v3. -
It seems I'll have to go through the same pain that I went through back in 2014, this time with no way out. Back when Opera switched to Chromium I was flip-flopping between Chrome and Firefox until I found out about Vivaldi, which I have been using for nearly a decade even before the 1.0 release, but it seems that it has became the very thing it was meant to fight against when it was first created.
First of all, this entire article is a PR fluff piece. It does not address the main issue, it gaslights Vivaldi's current userbase into believing that Manifest v2 going away isn't a bad thing, that it was actually a privacy issue and it upsells Vivaldi's built-in adblocker that is inferior to uBlock Origin which is the number one reason why people are worried about Manifest v2 deprecation, but also not the only one. It's tone-deaf at least and malicious at most.
Second of all, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, was staunchly anti-Google web browser monopoly back when he worked at Opera. When he started work on Vivaldi, he decided on Chromium as Firefox Quantum wasn't there yet. But once Firefox's engine became a viable option, Jon never took an attempt such as the Linux Mint developers took with LMDE to slowly decouple Vivaldi from Chromium at a slower, lower priority pace, and instead got stuck in this Stockholm syndrome of criticizing Google's decisions with Chromium while still using it for his product and avoiding taking up the effort to abandon it for the underdog alternative and the only real competitor once it was viable to do so.
Finally, this is Vivaldi's mission statement:
"We’re building a browser that is powerful, personal and private. A browser that adapts to you, not the other way around."
I believe this hasn't been the case for years. Vivaldi has had a very dubious relation to privacy, akin to that of Brendan Eich's Brave, and moving forward, I will have to adapt to Vivaldi the moment Manifest v2 extensions no longer work, not the other way around.
In Vivaldi's "About" page there are also these guiding principles:
"Respect each other, question everything, be creative and get things done."
Question everything. Indeed, Vivaldi Technologies has made some incredibly questionable decisions throughout the years, yet the community has seemingly always downplayed them in it's culture of toxic positivity, as is doing it right now with the most egregious decision and statement from Vivaldi Technologies to date.
At this point Vivaldi seems like the Apple of web browsers and it's unfortunate to see as there is no other browser like that on the market, but this ship has been collecting holes in the deck for a while, it's slowly sinking and the only way out is to jump on a lifeboat. I wished this day would never come again, but alas, it has. The ability to successfully block ads overweighs all the UI/UX benefits for which I stayed with Vivaldi for all these years, and the truth is no other ad blocker will be as good as uBlock Origin.
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"Vivaldi’s goal to make bad ads sad continues, regardless." I think that is a typo. Perhaps you meant "saga" instead of "sad". You should correct immediately it is confusing to read.
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@supra107 using Quantum as a base would be worse than using Firefox before though as it makes customization much harder
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Everyone only talks about adblock, but there are a bunch of other extensions that have problems to work properly with manifest 3, or ones that have been working fine for years, but the developer has already abandoned them.
One such extension without which I can't imagine using the Internet is Stylus, but if Google doesn't do anything about it, it will be a problem:
https://github.com/openstyles/stylus/issues/1430 -
@despair1945 I think they meant "sad" and it makes sense that way !
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@rivedroite: Oh I see the intention. "Bad ads sad" is still a bit awkward IMO unless the kids use it differently these days. : )
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to me ads are only a welcome side effect, i would not mind a reasonable amount if they would come w/o tracking and privacy concerns. this is why i use uMatrix and have all 3rd party scripts disabled by default, i only enable what the website really needs to function. as most of the typical website's code does not even load, i am browsing much faster this way. so browsing with v3 will be slower not faster! but then again, speed is certainly not a serious concern any more these days. privacy/tracking is - for me at least. hope vivaldi reconsiders, potentially joining forces with others to keep v2 alive. otherwise i am afraid it will be next exit librewolf.
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@despair1945 I just saw it as a fun word play.
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Disappointing response. Vivaldi's adblocker has quite arcane settings (I only just now realized you can change the filter lists after going to see what settings it actually has). Until the built-in adblocker has feature parity with uBO's "My filters" option (and being editable in a text-field with error highlighting), it will not be a viable option for me, and I will be immensely disappointed and may leave for another browser. It would be far more beneficial to polish existing features (the feed reader is a pain to use and the things outlined above) than adding more or deprecating MV3.
It would also be appreciated if these shortcomings on Vivaldi's part would be acknowledged (and in a more substantial way) and the functionality be polished rather than publishing a PR piece.
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@catharticwaffle, yes, the Vivaldi blocker need some improvement, but it works reasonable well, for sure better in futures updates.
Respect other browsers, which one? There are not much options, most even don't have an inbuild adblocker, needing extensions for everything with the above mencioned upcomming problems. Other engine? Yes, but there are only three current engines out there (some exotic forks apart), WebKit, which is becomming outdated, Gecko, ok, but it is becomming more and more compatibility issues with an Webstandart optimied for the mayority engine Chromium.
The only question is, how Chromium browser and others will and can affort the change to Mv3.
Not so much options left.>Laptop ACER, AMD Ryzen, GPU AMD Radeon RAM 16GB, SSD 512GB -Win11 Home 64 v24H2| Vivaldi last stable|
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@Catweazle if the only thing you care about is the built-in adblocker, Brave has feature parity with uBO.
That being said, it's lacking in so many other ways. It's pretty much just Chrome without the Google stuff and with Brave's stuff thrown in (BAT/VPN/etc). It's not for me, but that's pretty much the only other Chromium browser I can think of that would meet the adblocker requirement.
The Vivaldi one works just fine for my uses. I imported a few lists and I never see ads. I have no reason to look elsewhere.
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@RiveDroite said in Manifest v3 update: Vivaldi is future-proofed with its built-in functionality:
Brave has feature parity with uBO
maybe it is possible to configure shields to achieve the same results, but the way to get there is so convoluted it's not feasible, especially on mobile where you can't just use inspector or other tools to get the right selector and element picker from uBO is crucial
and even on desktop easy toggles for different features and domains are what makes uBO such a great tool
power needs to be convenient to be useful -
This seems the most sensible and reliable approach. Been using the built-in ad blocker for months with no issues. Thanks Vivaldi
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Ich benutze den eingebauten Adblocker schon seit Jahren und habe Javascript auch auf den meisten Seiten deaktiviert. Funktioniert bei mir einwandfrei.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/javascript -
Do you have this setting?:
chrome://managementAnd this?:
chrome://policyIf not, you are late.
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Thankfully -as this has been known for quite some time- I have worked over the last few years on being psychologically, mentally and practically prepared for that moment that will soon come.
Vivaldi states in the blog "we plan to include more features to our tracker and ad blocker" so that sounds still promising somehow. I say if it doesn't offer feature parity with uBO, that last remaining % of me using Vivaldi (due to the poor tab management) will be zeroed.
Manifest 2 ends in June 2025 and together with it a (somehow independent) era. Funnily (or oddly) enough I joined this forum in June 25, 2015... maybe "the universe" planned this all along
, because it will most probably be:R.I.P. Vivaldi (June 2015-June 2025)
It was exciting and fun.
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