We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.2 Daly Barnett. “Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening.” EFF, December 9, 2021. ↩ Lawrence Abrams. “Google warns uBlock Origin and other extensions may be disabled soon.” Bleeping Computer, October 13, 2024. ↩

We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

  • realitista@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    I encounter this very infrequently. I think I only have 1-2 examples at work. It’s not a huge deal for me to spin up a chrome for those one or two occasions.

    • Damaskox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I recall I didn’t get some sites working on Chrome either, when Firefox fails me 😅

      • realitista@lemm.eeEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        This is also true. The majority of the time when something doesn’t work on Firefox and I try to go to Chrome, it doesn’t work there too 😂

      • realitista@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Sounds interesting, care to expand?

        The only concrete one I can actually recollect is generating a quote from our quoting tool in Salesforce. I just ended up running my 100+ Salesforce windows in Chrome because it has a good feature where you can name each window so I can see which customers I’m working on in the taskbar. It’s good to have those cordoned off from my normal browsing anyway. So this one doesn’t bother me. For everything else I use Firefox.

        • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I used this prompt

          I want to create an electron app for linux of a third party webapp

          How would I do that?

          And chatGPT gave me a good instruction, will try that out. Apparently, you only need node, electron and the javascript like this:

          
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')

function createWindow() {
  // Create the browser window
  const win = new BrowserWindow({
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
    webPreferences: {
      nodeIntegration: true
    }
  })

  // Load the third-party web app
  win.loadURL('https://www.thirdpartyapp.com')

  // Optionally remove the default menu
  win.setMenu(null)

  // Open DevTools (optional for debugging)
  // win.webContents.openDevTools()
}

// Run the createWindow function when Electron is ready
app.whenReady().then(createWindow)

// Quit when all windows are closed
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
  if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
    app.quit()
  }
})

app.on('activate', () => {
  if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) {
    createWindow()
  }
})
            • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
              3·
              2 months ago

              Electron is a tool to bundle a website and a interpreter for that website in an application. That works on many platforms. Official discord desktop app, for example, is an electron app, spotify as well.