Matisyahu's Blog

I’ve been running Firefox for a while (recently updated to 128.0.3) but every time I update my version of macOS I like to give Safari another try, to see whether things have improved and what bugs have been fixed – I guess I have an optimistic outlook on life where I hope that maybe as Safari improves and AdGuard improves will reach parity with the experience I get with Firefox and uBlock Origin can be reached.

Oh, and I checked to find out why Skype web application comes up with a scary message about ‘reduced functionality’ aka partial support for calling. Given that Skype these days is pretty much irrelevant (I only keep my account around to keep in contact with a friend overseas) I don’t think much is lost given that I only use it for text chatting. I’m hoping that Teams will eventually replace it – it just feels a lot more streamlined, less UI bloat etc.

uBlock Origin 1.59 has been released and is now available through the Firefox extension store – I’ve updated to it. Every release it just keeps getting better – faster, more responsive, dealing with squashing unwanted content.

Regarding the move to MV3 by Chrome, I think what we’re going to start seeing are those who held out until the very end believing that Google wouldn’t follow through with it just as in the past where they made an announcement onto the push back moving to MV3. I think the other reason why many are holding off is the belief that maybe it won’t be so bad – that’s until they realise that filter updates for content blocking has to go through the arduous process of being submitted to the extension store rather than allowing the filters to be downloaded like they can now.

Why is that a hassle? because in the area of creating filters for content blocking it is a game of cat and mouse – always trying quickly update filters as quickly as a web developer has worked around it. The net result of the new way of doing things with MV3? days if not a week or more where users will be inundated with crap that their content blocker cannot block because the filter updates as always lagging behind the speed in which web developers move at.

I don’t think Chrome’s market share will be collapse but I do see tech enthusiasts and technically inclined people moving resulting maybe at max 20% of the desktop user space using Firefox but ultimately if that is reached then at that sized it does keep the big players honest as you cannot simply ignore 20% of users out there. I really do wish people would learn from history because Chrome is slowly turning into the Internet Explorer of today – not on the basis of the technical issues but more the inertia that has built up as Chrome’s dominance becomes more embedded, it becomes the first thing people down load the moment they buy themselves a new computer then come home to set it up.