Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers
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it seems quite obvious that the users who will notice how crippled will be their privacy extensions once V3 will kill V2 are users of uBlock Origin and other similar extensions, people liking a granular control of what is going on.
If we look at the download numbers of these extensions - in Chrome, Firefox and Opera's extensions stores - we can notice that these users represent a very small niche, so IMHO the damage to the performance of the extensions brought by V3 is a side effect, it would be ridiculous to think that Google created a complex novelty like V3 to bother 20 millions users (at best)
At the same time that same niche of users - which for Chrome is a drop of water in an ocean - is vital for small companies like Vivaldi.
I guess Vivaldi needs to elevate the level of its internal ad-blocker to uBO levels, this is the only way not to lose users to Firefox.
Frankly I do not know what I will do myself, there are two browsers having features that I consider essential and both of them are chromium based browsers and Firefox cannot match those features.
Alas all of this was sadly predictable: who owns the engine owns the browser.MacOS - waiting for iOS
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@Hadden89 Yeah, I agree, it won't be easy.
But if keeping the code side by side might be possible, given that the Manifest mention which version is used. Branching here for old or new code could be easy.
I'm not optimistic, it's a big beast, and without a store, it might be moot, but in any case, it could be worth exploring it. And so, I was wondering if Vivaldi would explore that possibility too. -
@Catweazle ABP filters are not as flexible as we'd like, there's no GUI to create more complex filters and rules and it most likely can't uncloak CNAME so we still need improvements
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@Catweazle it's the worst engine for the simple reason: what is worth document renderer that can't even render sharp text and ends up with a blurry mess instead?
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@n8chavez external blocker would need to either block by hostnames or perform MITM that would stop some sites from loading at all due to certificate mismatch, that's not a viable solution
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@barbudo2005 there's no point in keeping support for the crippled Chromium variant of uBO, it's underpowered anyway so all the resources should be used to build a blocker that has WE uBO feature parity instead
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@Apocolypto with Firefox they had most of features done OOTB, with Chromium we still can't get toolbar config, extensions are EVEN MORE limited than in Quantum, text is blurry... that's not a feasible option, unfortunately it's too late to switch now
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@zakius: I haven't seen an ad in as long as I can remember, not one, ublock may have limits on chrome but for its basic purpose, blocking advertisements it isn't just good it's infallible, you see no ads, at all, ever, what more do you want?
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@julien_picalausa: - have always used uBlock Origin. Vivaldi's adblock just is not as good.
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@christiehmalry better efficiency and being less reliant on lists and more on general rules, being able to detect cloaked domains makes a difference
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If Firefox is keeping adblockers functional, would it make long term sense to base a version of Vivaldi under their engine, rather than Chrome's?
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@Aijo , no, see comments above. Change Vivaldi to Gecko would mean throwing away 7 years of development, because this required developing Vivaldi again from scratch. With a small company like Vivaldi it would be the end.
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@cqoicebordel: Probably not all of it. If it was just the API itself, it wouldn't be an issue, but there is underlying code and architecture that need to remain in place to allow keeping the API around. I suspect somethings will be rearchitectured in chromium once Manifest V2 is gone and then those parts of the API will be unmaintainable. webRequest just happens to be in a position where it doesn't look like the underlying architecture is likely to change.
Software developer at Vivaldi since January 2017.
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@julien_picalausa a question: Firefox users already experience websites not working or not working the proper way because they are optimized for chromium only, with FF "saving" V2 estensions this situation is not going to worsen? thanks
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@TalGarik Probably not. The extension API doesn't affect websites themselves, only extensions.
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Given that the Vivaldi team has already written plenty of custom software that interfaces with Chromium, has the team given any thought to implementing WebExtension support on top of Chromium? Aside from the adblocker issue, there are many other APIs included in WebExtensions that Chrome simply doesn't have, especially those used to interface with the sidebar which would be very interesting in Vivaldi.
Either way, if Vivaldi does go ahead and implement Manifest V3, I'm afraid I'll have to move back to Firefox. I'd really rather not, but ublock origin is simply the only trustworthy content blocker available, including the one in Vivaldi that "may or may not break" with a chromium update.
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@Daktyl said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:
implementing WebExtension support
WebExtensions won't be dropped. WebRequest blocking will (which is the main issue for blockers)
APIs [...] sidebar
Probably too soon. We need a Vivaldi store before.
implement Manifest V3
They could decide not to drop V2 until chromium allows it. The point is no more extensions for V2 exist in the store or keep the support until is not too hard to do.
I'm afraid I'll have to move back to Firefox.
There UBO and others could work after the deadline. My guess is several chromium will improve their blockers. But until the deadline comes all we say or we can do is pretty much theoretical.
Patience Is The Key To Get The Vivaldi Spree | Unsupported Extensions | Github | w11 + Kde Manjaro + Android 13
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@Hadden89 , Just because I use Portmaster on Desktop and Invizible Pro on Android, with these I am already well served against ads and trackers of any kind and more.
>Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz RAM 8GB, GPU 2+1 GB SSD 256GB -Win10 64 v22H2| Vivaldi last stable|
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Vivaldi doesn’t have WebExtension support currently. WebExtensions is the name given to Firefox’s extension apis. While initially based heavily on the Chrome manifest v2 apis to make it easier for developers, the WebExtensions apis go way further in what they allow: for instance, adding extension interaction with the sidebars.
If Vivaldi implemented WebExtension support, they wouldn’t need their own extension hub, as they could just use addons.Mozilla.org.
They wouldn’t even be the first 3rd party browser to add support. Gnome Web (aka Epiphany) browser is adding support in the next version to come out.
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I just want to say..
Julien Picalausa and the whole Vivaldi team - Thank you!
Just like this guy here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/xpcbs9/i_am_just_so_proud_and_happy_that_vivaldi_is/
