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4 browsers that will continue to support uBlock Origin and other ad blockers with Manifest V2
(www.xda-developers.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Does Firefox use “manifest v2”? When reading all the frothing news about this stuff, I assumed the “manifest” thing was a Chromium thing.
If I remember correctly, yes. There was a pain in the ass a few years ago when Firefox switched from their own add-on system to one that matched Chrome's, despite Firefox's being more powerful and mature. The goal was to make it easier to port Chromes (arguably) greater variety of add-ons to Firefox.
It was an unpopular decision and it was the start of a downward decline for Firefox. People that had their browser "just the way I like it" found themselves starting fresh essentially, and without some of their favourite add-ons.
Damn. That means they are once again on a divergent path.
How so? They can support Manifest v2 and v3 simultaneously. It's a bit harder for their old add-on system since that add-on system had more hooks into the browser, but v3 is largely just a restriction, so there won't be much conflict there.
Ah, if it’s easy to just maintain both, and v3 is largely backwards compatible then I’m mistaken on how divergent v3 is.
Defanged/declawed v3 is a weird thing to have exist. It’s a bummer that Chrome got to set the standard. And then they took that and restricted things. This isn’t a healthy standard.
If FF ever drops V3, it'll be because they have extensions to bring parity to V2. There is maintenance overhead, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the old add-on vs V2 differences.