Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!
- Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
- The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
- Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
since people here are more tech savvy than i could ever be if like to ask what you guys think of Vivaldi, because i like it a lot. super customizable, has quick command search, side panel lets me use some websites like extensions, and workspaces help me organize especially with work… has anyone used it and can anyone tell me if waterfox or other forks are better and how?
I tried it for a week, but eventually left back for Firefox.
Vivaldi is cool af and I used it for a few years but ditched it for firefox the minute i read about manifest v3(2 years ago? don’t remember). Not the devs’ fault but I’ll be damned if i allow ads on my devices.
is that guaranteed to force all chromium browsers regardless? like, does that ban the ublock origin extension (or something to the effect of rendering it useless)?
It does! However, uBlock Origin has a “Lite” version that works with Manifest v3.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
wow. ok. time to experiment with Firefox forks.
Yeah, all chromium-based browsers will be affected, sadly.
Vivaldi is the new Opera, right?
If by Opera you mean as it was back in version 12 before it got sold to some chinese company and completely changed, then yes. Nothing to do with what opera is now.
If Vivaldi were free and open source, it would make an interesting alternative to Ungoogled Chromium. But it’s not, so I’ll stick with extensions on Firefox (and Ungoogled Chromium as a backup).
It is source-available though, so that’s a plus.
According to Vivaldi’s blog post “Why isn’t Vivaldi’s browser open-source?”, all of Vivaldi’s UI is closed source and not source-available:
The UI is the main thing that differentiates Vivaldi from Chromium, and Vivaldi chose to keep it closed source and obfuscated for business reasons. That’s a negative compared to Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium.
Huh, hadn’t seen that bit before, thanks for that. Ok, well that is disappointing. I did notice this bit in there too though:
It not much consolation, but it’s better than nothing. As it stands though, FF still has too many problems for me. I’ll have to see how this ad blocking thing shakes out though, might have to revisit my decision then.
As a long time user of Opera (from before they went with Chromium), I’ve been using Vivaldi as my primary browser since they first released a public preview. It has its downsides (i.e. the UI is slightly slower than that of Chrome), but at the same time it’s the thing that feels most “at home” for me after migrating away from the joke Opera has become. The developers seem to hold a strong anti-manifest-v3 stance, but unfortunately at one point they might have to comply. I just tried the built-in blocker instead of uBlock Origin I normally use and it seems to do a pretty good job.
I get the whole “switch to Firefox” thing; for me the major blocker is that it doesn’t have global mouse gestures and this messes up with my muscle memory. If they add that, I might give Firefox another chance.