The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
I’ve looked it up and apparently there’s a problem where if you open a new window with any amount of tabs and close it last, you will lose all your tabs on the first window. It’s a big no for me, because I already had to restore last opened windows in Firefox many times, and I am pretty sure you previously could just press
CTRL+SHIFT+Tand it did reopen them, although I might misremember things.Just discovered them yesterday and made the switch!
How painless is it to carry over everything from Firefox?
Was super easy but my setup is pretty minimal.
Export bookmarks from Firefox, install favourite addons in the Floorp extension menu and lastly import bookmarks.
Most of the settings will be familiar and some features will be new like the workspaces and sidebar.
Hope your transfer goes smoothly!
Did they fix the issue of their license partially closed? Or is it still the same
Yes, actually, they made the source available again.
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Lol Microsoft really using their browser market share effectively
People actually use that thing?
Edge is actually pretty decent. Native vertical tabs, M365 SSO integration, native multiple profiles with quick switching, preinstalled on your work computer and will work with anything that “only works in chrome”
Obviously this is ignoring the obvious downsides such as assisting Microsoft’s search, browser and platform monopolies, tracking data sent to Microsoft, etc. etc.
It’s the number one browser to download other browsers, so yeah, sure!
Oh no, like I ever use Edgeplorer.
Ok
oh look at that. It’s ‘chromium based browsers are garbage o’clock.’
Me and my colleagues in tech call it the ‘Granny Browser’.
Either use Firefox/UBlock Origin or Brave. Brave’s native adblock is good enough you don’t need add-ons.
I dont know why people keep recommending brave.
its a fucking scummy fucking browser that has a history of stealing money, hijacking referal codes (like honey just got in deep trouble over), installing unnecessary software without consent and more.
Because it’s a good product.
They really only recommend it because the average joe doesn’t need to install UBO on it, I also removed it after the VPN service controversy.
My friends who are less tech literate swear by brave. I think it’s the way they market their browser… Some of Brave’s core audience don’t want to install a third party extension for adblock (either they don’t like third party or they just don’t know they can do it in other browsers)
Also on opening a new tab, they show the stats of how much data they saved and how much ads it blocked. Some people like seeing the number grow.
All this is my speculation. There may be some other reason for it being this popular.
My friends who are less tech literate swear by brave
I am entirely unshocked that people who don’t know shit, swear by bad products and scams.
There may be some other reason for it being this popular.
Because it just works fine and block ads by default, maybe? A wild guess, I know. /s
If it’s being heavily marketed, that’s a red flag.
Are you implying the crypto-bro browser with connections to a billionaire that runs the largest corporate intelligence agency in the world may not be the best choice of browser? That’s not the sort of attitude that generates value for the shareholders.
I dont know why people keep recommending brave.
Because it’s good.
its a fucking scummy fucking browser that has a history of stealing money, hijacking referal codes (like honey just got in deep trouble over), installing unnecessary software without consent and more.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
If you want to use the browser despite those controversies then that’s your choice, but be honest enough to admit they exist.
I don’t use brave and haven’t for a long time, but these things are well documented.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/brave-affiliate-links-autocomplete
These are negligible or even non-issues and it’s not like Mozilla didn’t have its fair share of controversies as well. In no way they are “better”, whatever this means.
Yeah, I peeked at your moderation history after posting, it’s OK, I see now this is the best I could have expected in answer. Good day to you!
Hes the kind of person that gets haughty and arrogant over warnings to be safe.
and the first person to start crying about “how did this happen, how could anybody let this happen, why didnt anyone stop this from happening!” the second they are personally fucked over by ignoring the repeated warnings they were given.
Firefox time
Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”
LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.
For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search.
Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads.
There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.
Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past.
In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option.
All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.
Yup. But FUD must be pumped out.
The Privacy Policy for a long time has been that they use your data for marketing. I’m honestly completely confused why people are always recommending it.
For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.
Thanks for the eli5
LibreWolf time too.
Zen is nice
Zen was amazing when they first came to light, but they keep changing how workflows work, and it destroyed the workflow I had.
For example, I am a browser minimalist. I don’t need workspaces, and I don’t have thousands of tabs open, because that’s insane to me, personally. I now have to see the ugly Default Workspace at the top of my tab bar every time I go to open or switch tabs. This was an option before, so it was perfectly fine. They’ve taken that option away, which is very much not okay. Options are good. They also messed around with the New Tab icon, making it to where I couldn’t move it to the bottom where I prefer it to be, instead putting it at the top, which is extra movement needed to get to the top… They later added that back in, but again, why the fuck are you just willy nilly taking options away from people? It should just be an OPTION.
Anyway, I’ve had so many headaches with their approach to changing workflows that I don’t even recommend it to anyone any longer. I’m sure I’m just the crazy person who wants some of the offerings, while not being FORCED to use some of the others. :)
Yeah, I hate how projects become allergic to options. If you want to push your own agenda with new defaults, okay fine, but never ever remove options, let people keep it how they liked it.
Infinite options is bad design for a number of reasons. One is that when everyone’s experience is unique, troubleshooting is impossible. Two is that when you add an option, you have to support that option forever.
Options are expensive, at least if you want to keep your software working for a long period of time.
Then adding too many options is the problem, not having options in the first place.
I saw in their notes for the previous updates about the workspaces, which essentially said “workspaces are a major part of Zen, so you are no longer allowed to NOT use them”. When it was clearly a viable option before. So much for being customizable!
To be fair it’s still alpha software, things are basically guaranteed to change until they reach a stable state. I’ve enjoyed it so far though
You can remove that, i don’t see any workspaces
I have a feeling you might be one of those that turned their automatic updates off after an issue where they really, really fucked the UI up on Macs, or something like that. Or you might be a person who doesn’t like the auto updates anywhere.
I turned mine off for awhile, but don’t want to catch anything when a new FF release rolls out, so I turned them back on, especially since I rarely use the browser anymore due to said changes with no user options.
I’m on the latest version on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The option is gone, I’m afraid.
I’m on the latest version try installing this Zen Mod that lets you remove anything https://zen-browser.app/mods/ab9b529c-63d6-48c0-a59a-4a407c5c3129/
While I really appreciate you for helping, the fact that these were part of the core application, then taken away by the developers so that we rely on third parties to bring back, is my biggest gripe with the browser. The options were there, and they took them out. I would rather just go back to Firefox than deal with an always changing UI, and removal of options. :/
In floorp you can remove the workspace button from the top and disable them altogether I think.
Hopefully mainline Firefox can take some design notes from Zen
I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated… Intel Xe graphics.
Personally I keep a copy of chromium around just for Google meet. Everything else is on Firefox.
Same…
same
I used to just use Firefox for Google Meet, but it seems they broke it somewhere along the way. Probably on purpose.
If I needed ANY version of chrome around I would keep Vivaldi.
firefox is starting to enshittify, LIBREWOLF, or another might be better.
What’s Edge?
The thing you use once to download firefox, and then never again.
a chromium skin
The browser you use to download Firefox
The browser you use to download Firefox
Huh? Just type
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxinto PowerShell / cmd.
You don’t Edge?
Mine Linux don’t have it
Let me help you:
flatpak install flathub com.microsoft.Edge
Why would you do this to him
Because the best sort of shit post is one that’s also informative!
They get you really close but stop just before finishing.
🥵
Yeah, if you didn’t see that writing on the wall you need your eyes testing.
No Chrome browser will be maintained to keep using Manifest V2.
Use Firefox.
Mozilla sucks as well
We’re truly doomed
Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android
Regular Android Firefox has Ublock origins as well.
I don’t suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.
It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.
For people in [email protected] that’s less of a problem but I wouldn’t suggest it to my family members.
DivestOS has ceased maintaining Mull if I remember correctly. I use Ironfox on Android now.
Mull is not maintained anymore. However there is a fork called IronFox.
Well shit… Thanks for the heads up!
No problem!
What’s the advantage over regular Firefox?
Firefox is in the process of enshittifying.
You can think of it as a mobile version of LibreWolf. Strict security settings are default and Mozilla’s telemetry is disabled/removed. Also unlike regular Firefox, you can download it from F-Droid (currently you need their repo but it’ll be added officially soon, probably).
Are they doing their own development or are they still mostly reliant on Mozilla? The thing with all these forks is that I doubt they’d be able to continue development if Mozilla were to disappear, since they still rely heavily on Mozilla.
They are reliant. These forks are basically tweaked Firefox.
Yeah, FIrefox is a huge code base. If Mozilla disappears, some big developer group must take over the flag. Otherwise with only community effort, the development would be slowed down.
Who fucking uses edge?
Noobs who like to live on the edge
Sticking it to Sundar the creep while getting in bed with Satya the creep
My 73 years old father
On the rare occasion I want to stream movies while on my PC at 1080p, because most online movie services will only stream 1080p to Edge. Some times Chrome will be allowed to stream 1080p but it’s pretty hit or miss in my experience. On another note, basically no streaming services will stream movies to you in 4k on a PC, I’ve also found most streaming apps on my phone won’t give me 4k either, you can only really get 4k streaming to a smart TV… it’s pretty ridiculous.
Why let the streaming services tell you what you can or can’t watch videos on when you can just pirate everything?
Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can’t find 4k versions of movies on physical media.
Also, I tend to buy digital and don’t watch subscription services much.
you can buy a normal physical version then pirate the 4K file
If the disk is going to be unused/thrown out anyway - why not buy a digital copy? Its only job would be corresponding to a usable file you download anyway… I do that with Steam games.
Archive the physical copy for the inevitable shutdown. No one can stop an old disc player plugged into a dumb tv.
But no one can take a file from my hard drives either. No need for it to be on a low-capacity disk when a thing half the size of a DVD box can fit orders of magnitude more.
If you rely so much on buying digital, be ready for a surprise later on down the line.
Corps. All of the bells and whistles it has ties into the corps tenant which includes isolation of things like sync’d profiles, seamless sso, favorites, extensions, etc
Since it’s all under the tenant, all of that data is subject to the same privacy and policies the corp and MS agreed to, which makes it easy to work with other companies that have their own client policy requirements.
MS also makes it easy to control and harden all of their products including Edge using policy controls from a single UI.
You can’t do any of this with Firefox without extra effort.
Yeah the level of control Active Directory can have over Edge is unparalleled. The entire industry would move to a more secure browser and can be centrally managed with Active Directory if something existed.
Chrome has admx templates for AD that give you the same level of control.
90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there’s essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We’re back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.
Did you know Wayne Gretzky and his brother hole the record for highest scoring brother duo in the NHL?
That comment reads the same way.
Uuuuh… being a web dev in those days… You essentially first built support for proper browsers, then it was time to make things look and work as they should (or close to it) in IE.
Yup. Software developer here for a small company. We use a Windows. Chrome for testing applications and edge is just there. We are all in on Microsoft, server is C# .Net, running on azure with teams and outlook and office.
I do use Firefox though but I’m the only one out of 7.
I’m also a software developer and I’ve never touched any of that professionally. There’s a lot more diversity of ecosystems out there, bud.
I know there are but my employer is amazing and the work life balance is great. Don’t care enough to try and change our tech stack, but I hold no ill will towards anyone who does care enough.
It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery. I haven’t seen a “best viewed in Chrome” for a decade or two.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
bleeding edge fuckery
Aka shit not compliant with web standards.
It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery.
Yet. I lived through the first browser war (Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer) and I’d estimate we’re right about the year 2000 ish. At that time both browsers were still active and reasonably well supported but it was clear that IE was going to win and somewhere in the IE6 / IE7 (2004 / 2006) time frame is when the real fuckery started. Since Edge started using Chromium in 2018(ish) we’re basically following the same schedule from two decades ago.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
Sadly this is the same thing we said back then too and we (IT & the tech community) pushed hard to get people to leave IE and adopt Chrome.
Don’t forget Safari. On iOS it is the only usable browser currently with everything else just being a reskin of Safari. There are a lot of iOS users.
That is set to change but only in the European Union.
That is set to change but only in the European Union.
And I believe Mozilla isn’t planning on porting proper Firefox to iOS. Chromium is more likely to come over.
If Chromium manages to take much of the market share Safari has (like if Apple decides to ever make non-safari browsers a thing outside of the EU), it’s game over for browser engine diversity. Safari is currently in second place in market share behind Chrome, followed by another Chromium browser, Edge. Firefox is so low, it’s a rounding error.
I’ve had some mandatory training sites specifically disallow Firefox. But I’ve also had some that only work on Firefox, so it evens out.
I’ve found Gmail really hates firefox, especially with VPN. I have to use one of those masking extensions. I’ve found that its basically locked me out of my student email.
Hmm I haven’t had any issues with my university gmail, I wonder if it’s that specific college?
They might be using a third party authenticator to control access. My own job does that. Though I’ve been told we’re moving to Outlook soon.
Edge wasn’t that bad honestly, I prefer it over chrome and use it when I need to test a site on that engine.
Ive been firefox for a long while now
Firefox has been my daily driver for a decade but that doesn’t really change anything that I said.
x2
I do when shitty devs don’t test in firefox and things are broken.
People.
What a bunch of bastards.
My company has blocked all other web browsers, so lots of us sadly.
probably wanted to monitor your every move, because the others one might shield your identity.
I like it’s pdf viewer interface. It’s less cluttered than Adobe, and it’s markup is a little better than Firefox.
My workplace configures edge and chrome by default, were very office365 integrated and support chrome for some dates specific thing.
Now i am privileged with local admin powers so i have firefox. Still the integrations with edge run deep so i still have to use it lots of times. There are plans for copilot which is one of the dummest llm bots (opinion) but is again catered to edge.
I will however never use chrome (anymore). Google was the second tech giant i dropped after facebook. They cannot redeem themselves for destroying the web (opinion). I rarely use search engines anymore but i rather use bing and bing sucks. (duckduck is also based on bing)
Sorry for the rant, but that was relieving. Arch btw.
At least Bing pays you to use them, so don’t feel bad
Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you’re a web power-user / developer sort of person
I use love the mod feature
Honestly this has been my daily driver for the past 6 months or so.
I really like it. The aesthetics are really modern, while still maintaining all the things I like about firefox.
Zen’s glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
Nonsense, you’re not opening them! You’re fetching them for viewing. It’s totally different!
Yeah, viewing a link without opening it is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
You just viewed a link without opening it.
I was concerned, but it’s not Wiki style.
It’s just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.
Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven’t fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven’t looked into disabling it.
Firefox based. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’mma give this a try.
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It’s desktop-only right now and feels like for the foreseeable future. Firefox sync works between Zen and Firefox so you can just run Firefox or one of the Android-specific versions of Firefox that support the generic/vanilla firefox sync.
I was thinking of maybe trying it for a few specific websites that I keep persistently on since I think it may work well for that. However, I was a bit concerned that logins and stuff won’t sync which might make it annoying. Having this sync seems pretty cool though, might try it out.
Why is there a sidebar for tabs? That seems wasteful for all the screen space it takes.
Edit: From what I see it tries to do everything that is a job of a window manager/desktop environment. There are various solutions to have workspaces, etc. that you can use globally, so I don’t understand why would anyone use this, unless you are on locked system like Windows or Mac.
Right, you don’t need extensions, because you don’t need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.
I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.
A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.
BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.
I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we’re basically running Doom in a word professor. I don’t know what a better system would look like, but I’d draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.
For flash I think you’re describing Ruffle
No, Ruffle is an alternative interpreter. I mean an alternative, FOSS, technology.
I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you’re talking about the recent news, that’s not what the updated privacy notice says.
Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say “btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party.” I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you’re talking about the most recent news about the Terms of Service, that is a gross misreading of what they said.
That’s not what that Firefox thing was about at all.
IIRC Vivaldi and Brave promised to prolong it for a year.
Test-driving them both now.
I imagine so, but the technical burden is at risk of growing over time as the upstream chromium may significantly deviate from or remove some of the functionality.
Why would anyone use anything but Brave anyway? Brave will still support manifest v2 shit.
Brave will support it until it becomes inconvenient or difficult to do so as the Chromium base keeps moving. The more time goes on, the more work it’ll be for Brave to maintain this forked functionality.
My guess is at some point Brave will discontinue V2 and say “just use the Brave inbuilt adblocker”.
Regardless, Brave have their own skeletons in the closet… crypto, the Windows installer installing other Brave applications during browser install without consent (that one is straight up malware behaviour. Reminds me of the days of software installing Internet Explorer toolbars without consent), injecting their affiliate links when nobody asked, a CEO who donated money to homophobic causes more than once.
E: my above theory was correct, sort of:
We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it’s still available in Chromium. We expect to drop support in June 2025, but we may maintain it longer or be forced to drop support for it sooner, depending on the precise nature of the changes to the code.
They are only committing to enabling the disabled Mv2 code in Chromium. Once it’s removed altogether, Brave probably won’t bother keeping it and maintaining it. Basically, if you want Mv2, only Firefox and its derivatives are committed to keeping it.
Fair, I love Brave too much tho. And I don’t care about Manifest V2. So, for me personally its great.
None of these small browsers can make significant changes to the original project. A browser nowadays is a super complex bloated thing that requires too much resources to maintain. If even M$ abandoned their engine to go with Chromium (because it was probably costing them a lot of resources to keep compatibility with the evolving standards, security fixes etc.) what hope is there for small companies? Arguably Apple’s Safari has significant differences compared to Chrome, but we’re talking about Apple…
People thinking this is a solution are gonna get disappointed eventually. For now, Firefox is the only alternative product that has been maintained for decades.
it’s very brave to say something like that here
Why? Brave is amazing!
brave is built on chromium and it also has crypto stuff, so people here hate it
True. Most of the negative comments about Chromium here are really obtuse. Looks like people feel the need to gain imaginary internet points by praising a mediocre browser made by a misguided Corp. such as Mozilla.
Save your time and avoid replying here. I wont’ reply back. I’m not interested in arguing. Just block me if you disagree and go on with your life.
people think of browsers and operating systems here like it’s a religion or something, it makes them crazy. google is a problem, but it’s not like mozilla isn’t going to pull the same crap when it gets big enough.
Let’s hope that Ladybird be better than Mozilla Firefox.
I would be curious if Ladybird is successful, maybe Microsoft, Apple or Brave will use it after leaving Chrome and WebKit.
Maybe, but even if it happens it’s going to take a lot of time. Let’s wait and see.
