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Yeah this is a very awkward release, and not just because MV3 cripples the most important extensions (adblockers).
Firefox also hasn't released MV3 support yet so extensions that are cross-browser can't be MV3, which will be really annoying when Chrome no longer accepts MV2 extensions.
I ran into this just yesterday when I tried to release an extension that removes those stupid fixed banners that take up vertical screen space when you're trying to read an article (
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-floati...
,
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-floating-ba...
). I tried to convert it to MV3 only to test on Firefox and find out it doesn't support MV3 :(
I also run
which lets developers easily take payments in their extensions without writing their own backend or paying for server costs. A lot of the developers using ExtensionPay in their extensions default to using MV3 since that's what Google says they should do, despite its limitations. It's a really sad state of affairs.
Has Mozilla committed to supporting both versions into the future? Or do they intend to bend over?
Better questions is is Microsoft going to maintain v2 API in Blink/Chromium.
You can read the details here:
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...
TLDR: They're officially going to support MV3 but also not going to deprecate the network blocking APIs that Google is.
In January 2023, Chrome will stop running any manifest v2 extensions. I suspect that's about 99.9% of all extensions. This is going to be a huge loss.
Is there an easy way to run two profiles of firefox simultaneously? As it stands I use FF with a bunch of extensions that limit what it can do (uMatrix, cookie zappers, etc.) and then occasionally when I just want to quickly view something I open it in chromium (and I also use it for youtube). But if they're going to cripple ad blockers (among other things) I'd rather just do it all in firefox
> Is there an easy way to run two profiles of firefox simultaneously?
Start one of them with
firefox.exe -p profile_name -no-remote
I do this to run the beta and the stable version at the same time.
More details here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
thank you
Best solution i found is to have normal firefox + Firefox Developer Edition
They use separated profiles (you could sync them to same if you wanted)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
You can run:
firefox -no-remote -profile ./ff
It will create the folder and a new Firefox profile there
Optionally you can download Firefox portable
Create a shortcut to firefox using the command
firefox -P
whenever you launch it you'll be presented with a dialog to pick a profile or create a new one.
Fear of this delayed my starting work on Browser Routr; let's me intercept clicks to send some sites to other browser.
In hindsight I don't think I need Manifest v2 on Chrome. Though I do need it on Firefox because of some quirks in their navigation API. And it's possible the nav APIs in Chrome or other Chromium browsers may need it someday, so still a loss IMO.
Seems like a useful extension! How do you get different browsers to open with an extension?
Native messaging allows modern web extensions to talk to a pre-authorized desktop app. That's what my competitors and I do. There are also some custom scheme tricks, though they would require rewriting markup IIRC.
Ah ok that makes more sense. And while I'm here, if you ever want to charge for paid features check out my project
Some absolutely cavalier bombastic bullshit that Google is going to finally send a messenger to the WebExtensions working group like a week or two before they shut off capable MV2[1], having never ever replied to any of the massive massive outpourings of dismay, sadness, & hatred. Just dogshit apocalypically bad mishandling, complete & utter trashfire stewardship. This is the most trust-breaking saddening enraging thing I can think of that has happened to the web. I want to curse these people out so bad. It's incomprenehsible to me, just indecent at every level.
None of this seems at all in any way good for the web. It's 100% self serving horseshit, that reduces the power of the extension, that makes extensions less of a threat to Google. None of it is good for extensions or users. It's a radical radical radical reduction in capability. 100% every argument is that we need to de-empower extensions or else, that we must fear extensions, reduce them, contain any uncertainty about what users might do. I've never seen a company sell such bitterness & sadness so actively before, ever. I see zero reason to believe a single word. There's not a single ray of hope cast anywhere here, no hope that extensions will ever reclaim any of their capabilities.
As well as the numerous complains about the declarative request api, to me, the real biggest change is that previously extensions used to act like pages. Pages have tons and tons of capabilities. They have dom. They can access all kinds of great nifty APIs. the new MV3 version? Extensions are just service workers. They have extremely fantastically limited capabilities[2]. There's no idea of how they might ever support things like WebSockets. Most of the great web apis are cut off. This is a shrivelled pathetic husk of what extensions were. And Google has deferred deferred deferred response. They've said nothing, always kicked the can, but they're still going to cut us all off next month. My honest view is that we're getting punked by a bunch of immoral indecent @#$@#$@#$!@#$!'s. This is sick. This is depraved. How dare you force this upon us? You've failed to show your face at every critical juncture. Uncouth. Unacceptable. Indecent.
Mozilla tried to pitch a slightly less vulgar option, where there would still be something like Pages, something that had some of the web api's accessible. We saw one content free ultra-negative post from Google in reply to this Mozilla idea, on Limited Event Pages[3]. "No, doesn't work", mic drop, peace out. This looks like such sick sabotage. Not even raising a real point to discuss. Just murdering what extensions are, and exiting the building.
I'm someone who generally sees a lot of upside to the things Google is doing for the web. But this is a cavalcade of schlock. Not a single thing happening here is being done decently. It's all a pathetic shit show. There's zero responsibility, zero adults on Google's side. They post a couple random blog posts defending themselves, but this continues to look like a broadscale massive assault on users, a massive attack on the capabilities of the web. If this happens, it will be the single most colossal restriction of capabilities the web will ever have experienced. It will radically draw down what is possible for user-agents. There are no plans, no hopes, no vision of how we can get better: this is a vast strictly regressive loss of capabilities.
Oh and by the way, JavaScript, this dynamic language? Yeah, we're just going to disable any of it's dynamic capabilities. Just like Apple outlaws interpretive code systems, Google is now outlawing interpretive code in extensions. Extensions have to have every capability baked in. No more userscript systems like GreaseMonkey: forbidden. Too much power, too dangerous. I think of systems like Yahoo Pipes (rip) or IFTTT, how they could stitch together interesting computing: that's all outlawed now. The extension has to do static, fixed actions. Google has totally rewritten the game, totally minimized the power of the extension, by fiat. The same deep cowardice, complete bullshit that Apple has pulled, but far more insidious. Against the user. One can still write programs that script safari. But the scripts we can write for Chrome are suddenly deeply deeply hobbled, no longer ever permitted to be themselves programmable systems, always only fixed dumb inert matter. All for some ultra-fascist pathetic notion of security. I spit in your face you stupid corrupt useless fucks. What degradation, what reducing of the human race you have imposed upon us! By evil vast corrupt fiat. You horrible monsters!
There has never been a more critical juncture for the web. And Google has never been so colossally irresponsive, so blanketly unable & unwilling to make even the faintest motions to make good on the changes they are imposing. Google's only sometimes done whatever they want (such as with disabling HTTP/2 push because they feel like it after ~2 years[4], having never listened to a single iota of feedback on it in the first place). Few things strike so deeply in to the heart of user-agency, so few topics are so definitional to what we the world can do with the web. And there's been zero fucking show up (the declarative api stuff admittedly sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room, but even that seems completely unsatisfactorily in any way resolved). Absolutely nothing from Google. They've run out the clock & are going to shut down the best part of the web, because they fucking feel like it. Because it'll make it easy for them. Because they'll be able to regulate & govern conveniently by rescinding most powers.
I've been sad for the web some times. But never like this. This is truly apocalyptic destruction being wracked upon the web.
[1]
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/pull/135/files#diff-ee4...
[2]
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72
[3]
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134
[4]
https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/http2-push-chromium-deprecation....
Citing something from one of the OPs posts on github
> The web & user agency doesn't deserve to be hurt like that & such aggression should be actively strenously heavily resisted.
I think a lot of people (who are mostly developers, since this hasn't affected the end users yet) are watching the situation with a similar feeling. I've myself considered just straight up writing a new browser, but that is obviously an insurmountable task for a single person in the current age of the web. I hate having to do politics, but I think it's time to do politics. Someone (like OP) needs to organize, write a petition, run a public poll, propose an actual way forward, more widely publicize the corrupt nature of what Google is doing with MV3 and get an actual voice out there. I bet lots of people would be willing to contribute financially or otherwise.
Google’s strategy regarding extensions is literally embrace, extend, extinguish.
> I've never seen a company sell such bitterness & sadness so actively before, ever.
If I were to look anywhere, it might be at how Apple is trying to claim the ability to sideload apps on an iPhone would lead to the destruction of modern civilization as part of their war on general purpose computers.
You have put into words, what I have been feeling.
Thank you
Hi, rant author here.
> _All for some ultra-fascist pathetic notion of security. I spit in your face you stupid corrupt useless fucks._
Unacceptable language. Sorry doesn't cut it but it's a start. Sorry. I do not spit in people's faces.
That said, wow, the things this planet does in the name of security are baffling & sad to me, again and again. Google claiming to be so so so afraid of extensions, insisting they maim them in order to protect the user...
I know you see a lot of bad stuff going on. I think there are some real desires to make things better. But this really does come off like a cruel authoritarianism. So many vast losses, all at once; it's completely unpalatable. I don't feel like I will be able to call chrome a user-agent, if you so harshly restrict what agency I am permitted to instill/install in my browser like this. That's one of the strongest, saddest, most bitter statements I could make about the situation: the web was a place of power for the user, in a good way, and there has been something holy & distinct that the web has afforded the users such positions of power. It's meant more than anything to me, this idea. These principles are all being shattered, torn asunder. This is one of the worst possible things you could do to the web. I was overcome with anger last night, but coming at this with a more sober light, I can not underscore enough what a deep betrayal of all the web it is to forbid dynamic code from extensions. Your fear is not an adequate reason to remove potential.
It's been puzzling to me just how slow developers have been to adopt v3. Even right now if you look at a brand new extension created yesterday, or read a chrome extension tutorial from last week...they completely ignore the new manifest requirements.
And Google has been clear for a very long time that v2 was being phased out, so what gives? Laziness? Inertia?
I worked on a v3 extension earlier this year, and the docs were still half baked and missing a lot of features, often hand waving links to v2 docs.
either there's a lack of proper documentation, developers unaware of the newer version, lack of interest within the company, or all of those.
I dream of a day when enough people stop chasing the new shiny thing, and development churn returns to a more sensible and sustainable pace.
Is this gonna kill Adblock or not? Heard different things at different times about manifest 3
It removes the ability for extensions to intercept network requests. Instead, it provides a means for extensions to block content by providing a blacklist. This is similar to how content blockers work in Safari.
It won't kill adblockers, but severely limit their functionality in the face of increasingly elaborate advertising techniques
It will kill the only adblock that matters, ubo.
it will work fine initially but then it will slowly get less and less effective as advertisers figuring out how to subvert declarative lists with no logic
boiling the frog, basically
it will neuter but not outright kill it. as much as google thinks they can get away with
I heard it cripples some of it's major features but overall it will still kind of work?
I don't have a source for that - I could be wrong.
The only hope is that other Chromium derivatives like Edge and Brave continue supporting v2. Considering Microsoft's history, I doubt they are going to be the resistance against ads. Brave has a bright future ahead, I feel.
I appreciate what Brave are doing, but this will affect them whether they support MV2 or not. Extensions on most Chromium forks are installed through Google's Chrome Web Store, so when Google drops support browsers who do not agree will need an alternative distribution platform (like Opera's fork).
More generally, Brave's attitude towards Chromium changes has been "disable first, ask questions later", even when it hurts forward-looking developers and useful feature adoption [1]. In the case of the file system API, there's also a possible conflict of interest, given how they're pushing IPFS and the rest of the crypto web bullshit. My biggest gripe with them is that most of their development efforts go into developing the cryptocurrency features and they end up neglecting general browser usability and innovation.
[1]