Matisyahu's Blog

I’ve talked about Safari and Webextensions API in the past but never really went into good detail as to the current situation of Safari and why it lags behind Firefox and Chrome when it comes to the functionality that web extension developers need to make their extensions work. At the moment there is the Webextensions API group which is made up of Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft along with several high profile extension developers such as AdGuard, who contribute to regular meetings about standardising the MV3 Webextensions API standard. My impression of what is taking place is that much of Webextension API is being rethought from the ground up with a greater focus security and privacy in mind not to mention improving in interoperability so it is then possible to write an extension according to the standard then have it run on different browsers without any headaches.

In the case of where Safari sits, Chrome and Firefox have the added luxury of the pre-MV3 legacy APIs that are still included as part of the browser where as it appears Safari is implementing MV3 but without any of the legacy that Chrome and Firefox have. What is the net result? many of the features that exist in Firefox and Chrome don’t exist in Safari – for example, at the moment there is a discussion about standardising how does one standardise cosmetic rules, should it be part of the declarative network request or should it be seperate API in its own right? (link) So there is a process that it’ll go through so that all the stakeholders involved can, at the end of an exhaustive process, will come up with something that they can all live with, is standardised which will then Apple engineers something stable that they can implement knowing that any work being done isn’t going be thrown out if one tried to write code while the standard is still being developed.

But for me, I can’t use Safari because I need to be able to use uBlock Origin so the choices I have left are either Chrome or Firefox but unfortunately due to the nature of the internet some websites don’t work smoothly with Firefox. Long story short, I would love to use Safari but until MV3 is fully standardised and implemented on Safari then unfortunately the experience content blocking experience is going to continue lagging behind what can be achieved on Firefox and Chrome. For those wondering, the content blockers in Safari either fail to fully block ads or if they block popups the window is still created but a message appears in the browser that the connection was blocked which kind of undermines the whole idea of having a content blocker if the window ends opening regardless of whether it says inside the window – be it content or a message that says the connection has been blocked.

I’m looking forward to the release of the Pixel 8 because it will now officially support carriers in New Zealand – VoLTE, 5G, VoWiFi and much more. It’ll be interesting to see whether Google expands support officially to New Zealand in terms of selling it either directly or through a reseller such as one of the three major carriers but either way I’m happy to buy it through a retailer like Mighty Ape, PB Tech or buying it off Amazon from the US then getting it delivered via YouShop (a NZ Post remailing service).

It is interesting to see the number of articles spelling the doom and gloom regarding Google and how ‘they’re late to the game’ when it comes to AI (or any laundry list of things the tech talking heads wish to throw at the wall) while they ignore that Google is going through the same teething pains that Microsoft went through before they eventually transitioned into the form they are today. While in the case of Microsoft it was embracing the cloud and having it permeate every aspect of their product line up, Google on the other hand is pushing to expand it’s ‘paid for’ services, it’s move into Podcasts where they’ll probably start to offer a ‘paid service’ that end users can subscribe to podcasts with Google handling the payment processing etc. Advertising is quite profitable but it comes with a whole lot of headaches particularly in the regulatory space around privacy when compared to selling a good or a service.