Tag Archive for ‘Firefox’

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Mozilla today said it is adding an ad blocker to Firefox for iOS, allowing users to block many third-party ads and ad-related trackers.

One of the reasons I went with Brave when I switched browsers a few years ago is because it had a built-in ad blocker on iOS. I’m glad Firefox is finally implementing the feature, but unfortunately, it isn’t as comprehensive as Brave’s offering. For example, and maybe most importantly, Firefox’s ad blocker doesn’t block ads on YouTube. Brave, however, handles those well and also gives you the option to completely hide YouTube Shorts as well.

➝ Source: macrumors.com

Rick Findlay, writing for Reclaim the Net:

Brave shipped Containers this week. Version 1.92 of the browser lets you wall off tabs from one another so that cookies and site data stay locked inside whichever container you opened them in, even when two tabs point at the same website.

You can now hold several identities at once without the browser blending them together.

Firefox has had this feature available for years through its first-party Multi-Account Containers extension. But I stopped using Firefox a while back because it lacked an ad blocker on iOS.

One of the features I missed from Firefox was containers, though. And now they’re available on Brave.

And this is convenient timing for me — I just started a project at work where containers make things significantly easier. I can log in to a work-specific account within a container and remain logged in to my personal account in normal browser tabs, ensuring I don’t accidentally do anything on the work account because I forgot to log out.

➝ Source: reclaimthenet.org

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Apple now has a dedicated iCloud Passwords add-on designed for the Firefox browser, which means Firefox users can access passwords and logins stored in the Passwords app or iCloud Keychain when using Firefox on a Mac. 

The extension requires macOS Sonoma or later and isn’t available for Firefox on Windows or other operating systems. But it’s a start, at least.

➝ Source: macrumors.com

Mozilla:

This dashboard tracks technical issues in major software platforms which disadvantage Firefox relative to the first-party browser. We consider aspects like security, stability, performance, and functionality, and propose changes to create a more level playing field.

There are more issues for Apple platforms than Microsoft and Google combined.

➝ Source: mozilla.github.io

As far as I could tell, Mozilla hasn’t made a statement about this at all. Perhaps their reliance on Google for funding has a much larger influence on the direction of Firefox than Brave’s use of Chromium does.

➝ Source: brave.com

Mike Conley, writing in Firefox Nightly News:

• Again, a reminder that Mozilla plans to continue support for the Manifest v2 blocking WebRequest API (this API powers, for example, uBlock Origin) while simultaneously supporting Manifest v3.

I’m sticking with Brave for the time being, but if something happens upstream in Chromium that prevents them from fully supporting ad blockers, I’ll be looking at Firefox as an alternative.

➝ Source: blog.nightly.mozilla.org

Martin Brinkmann, writing for gHacks:

Internet users who download the Firefox web browser from the official Mozilla website get a unique identifier attached to the installer that is submitted to Mozilla on install and first run.

The identifier, called dltoken by Mozilla internally, is used to link downloads to installations and first runs of the Firefox browser. The identifier is unique to each Firefox installer, which means that it is submitted to Mozilla whenever it is used.

Cool. I guess this is just another reason to use something else.

Update 3/26/22: Michael Tsai points out that this is unlikely to be the case with Firefox for macOS because it would be difficult to accomplish with notarization.

➝ Source: ghacks.net

Michael Harley, on the state of the web browser market:

Has the Internet just become an ad delivery network? Is there so much money sloshing around from ad people that software companies/teams doing browser development are simply unable to pass it up? They have to take the money because it’s so much, but everyone seems to recognize people don’t want to be served ads, or tracked across the web. The browser developer organizations recognize the concerns of users but really all they’re willing to do about it is use the word private in the title of their ad tracking platform.

Maybe I’m being too naive, rigid or unrealistic but I don’t want to be served ads at all. I’m sorry that businesses have built their websites using an ad-based model but that’s not my problem. Offer me a subscription service, and if it’s valuable enough to me then I’ll pay for a subscription.

I’m currently using Brave because, despite my lack of interest in their ad network or BAT, I appreciate that they’re trying to build a business model that doesn’t rely on Google or other major tech companies for funding . And it’s easy enough to disable the features I dislike.

I’m not thrilled about it being built on Chromium, though. I hate the idea that there could be a future where the entirety of the market is Safari, Chrome, and Chrome-based browsers. But until Mozilla gets their act together and spends a little more time building a great browser and a little less time encouraging censorship, I’ll have to settle with the least offensive option.

➝ Source: obsolete29.com