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
Firefox time
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn’t it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don’t have one yet.
Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still
From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed
I agree. I’d even be willing to regularly donate to a foundation that would have this aim as their goal and have their acts matching their promises.
Although, not necessarily a new engine. Going from scratch is a good way to remake a lot of mistakes, while reusing old code is a good way to keep old debt. That’s not a decision I would like to have to take.
Why a new engine, Firefox is open source?!
Fork Firefox.
But good luck funding a team to keep up with commercial companies’ pace. It needs funding.
If Mozilla made a way to donate in a way that I KNEW it would go towards the maintenance of the browser, and not another crappy thing they’re trying to be profitable, I’d donate in a second. I spend about £30/month on OSS donations and I’d happily add £5/month to Mozilla if I trusted them not to misspend it.
It’s almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).
Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can’t develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?
Who fucking uses edge?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Edge wasn’t that bad honestly, I prefer it over chrome and use it when I need to test a site on that engine.
Firefox has been my daily driver for a decade but that doesn’t really change anything that I said.
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.
Did they fix the issue of their license partially closed? Or is it still the same
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!
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+T and it did reopen them, although I might misremember things.
