The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).

At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.

Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store

      • dan@upvote.au
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        1 month ago

        They recently started developing it again, after being silent for a long time. They released Amarok 3.0 in April 2024 which migrated it to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        probably wanted to monitor your every move, because the others one might shield your identity.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I like it’s pdf viewer interface. It’s less cluttered than Adobe, and it’s markup is a little better than Firefox.

    • SynonymousStoat@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      On the rare occasion I want to stream movies while on my PC at 1080p, because most online movie services will only stream 1080p to Edge. Some times Chrome will be allowed to stream 1080p but it’s pretty hit or miss in my experience. On another note, basically no streaming services will stream movies to you in 4k on a PC, I’ve also found most streaming apps on my phone won’t give me 4k either, you can only really get 4k streaming to a smart TV… it’s pretty ridiculous.

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Why let the streaming services tell you what you can or can’t watch videos on when you can just pirate everything?

        • SynonymousStoat@lemmy.world
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          Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can’t find 4k versions of movies on physical media.

          Also, I tend to buy digital and don’t watch subscription services much.

    • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
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      Edge wasn’t that bad honestly, I prefer it over chrome and use it when I need to test a site on that engine.

    • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Corps. All of the bells and whistles it has ties into the corps tenant which includes isolation of things like sync’d profiles, seamless sso, favorites, extensions, etc

      Since it’s all under the tenant, all of that data is subject to the same privacy and policies the corp and MS agreed to, which makes it easy to work with other companies that have their own client policy requirements.

      MS also makes it easy to control and harden all of their products including Edge using policy controls from a single UI.

      You can’t do any of this with Firefox without extra effort.

      • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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        1 month ago

        Yeah the level of control Active Directory can have over Edge is unparalleled. The entire industry would move to a more secure browser and can be centrally managed with Active Directory if something existed.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      My workplace configures edge and chrome by default, were very office365 integrated and support chrome for some dates specific thing.

      Now i am privileged with local admin powers so i have firefox. Still the integrations with edge run deep so i still have to use it lots of times. There are plans for copilot which is one of the dummest llm bots (opinion) but is again catered to edge.

      I will however never use chrome (anymore). Google was the second tech giant i dropped after facebook. They cannot redeem themselves for destroying the web (opinion). I rarely use search engines anymore but i rather use bing and bing sucks. (duckduck is also based on bing)

      Sorry for the rant, but that was relieving. Arch btw.

    • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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      1 month ago

      90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there’s essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We’re back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.

      • espentan@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Uuuuh… being a web dev in those days… You essentially first built support for proper browsers, then it was time to make things look and work as they should (or close to it) in IE.

      • chakan2@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Did you know Wayne Gretzky and his brother hole the record for highest scoring brother duo in the NHL?

        That comment reads the same way.

      • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Yup. Software developer here for a small company. We use a Windows. Chrome for testing applications and edge is just there. We are all in on Microsoft, server is C# .Net, running on azure with teams and outlook and office.

        I do use Firefox though but I’m the only one out of 7.

        • treadful@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          I’m also a software developer and I’ve never touched any of that professionally. There’s a lot more diversity of ecosystems out there, bud.

          • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 month ago

            I know there are but my employer is amazing and the work life balance is great. Don’t care enough to try and change our tech stack, but I hold no ill will towards anyone who does care enough.

      • Naich@lemmings.world
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        It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery. I haven’t seen a “best viewed in Chrome” for a decade or two.

        Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          I’ve had some mandatory training sites specifically disallow Firefox. But I’ve also had some that only work on Firefox, so it evens out.

          • Brutticus@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            I’ve found Gmail really hates firefox, especially with VPN. I have to use one of those masking extensions. I’ve found that its basically locked me out of my student email.

              • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                They might be using a third party authenticator to control access. My own job does that. Though I’ve been told we’re moving to Outlook soon.

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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          1 month ago

          It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery.

          Yet. I lived through the first browser war (Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer) and I’d estimate we’re right about the year 2000 ish. At that time both browsers were still active and reasonably well supported but it was clear that IE was going to win and somewhere in the IE6 / IE7 (2004 / 2006) time frame is when the real fuckery started. Since Edge started using Chromium in 2018(ish) we’re basically following the same schedule from two decades ago.

          Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.

          Sadly this is the same thing we said back then too and we (IT & the tech community) pushed hard to get people to leave IE and adopt Chrome.

          • Link@rentadrunk.org
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            1 month ago

            Don’t forget Safari. On iOS it is the only usable browser currently with everything else just being a reskin of Safari. There are a lot of iOS users.

            That is set to change but only in the European Union.

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              That is set to change but only in the European Union.

              And I believe Mozilla isn’t planning on porting proper Firefox to iOS. Chromium is more likely to come over.

              If Chromium manages to take much of the market share Safari has (like if Apple decides to ever make non-safari browsers a thing outside of the EU), it’s game over for browser engine diversity. Safari is currently in second place in market share behind Chrome, followed by another Chromium browser, Edge. Firefox is so low, it’s a rounding error.

        • BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Was super easy but my setup is pretty minimal.

          Export bookmarks from Firefox, install favourite addons in the Floorp extension menu and lastly import bookmarks.

          Most of the settings will be familiar and some features will be new like the workspaces and sidebar.

          Hope your transfer goes smoothly!

    • Kiuyn@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Did they fix the issue of their license partially closed? Or is it still the same

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    Yeah, if you didn’t see that writing on the wall you need your eyes testing.

    No Chrome browser will be maintained to keep using Manifest V2.

    Use Firefox.

  • Mwa@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Microsoft Edge is literally Google Chrome button replaced with Microsoft Features/Spyware

    • shani66@ani.social
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      1 month ago

      Removed? What could the comment possibly say in this context that would warrant removal?

      God, .ml manages to be the worst parts of both shitlib civility bullshit and tankie bullshit.

  • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml
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    Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?

    What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we’ve learned since html/css was invented? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/css, have a new UI layout system that’s simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.

    • Balder@lemmy.world
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      I feel like this sort of thing should be more modular. Maybe on Linux we could in theory have multiple packages that could have different implementations and the browser UI would just use the underlying packages with their specific extras on top.

      That would also align well with the Unix philosophy of each component “doing one thing well” and composing small tools to achieve complex tasks.

      But discussing this with an LLM, it pointed out that “Browser engines are among the most complex software systems in existence. Breaking them apart would require a deep understanding of their internals and a clear vision for how the pieces should interact” which is fair.

      Splitting things add a different level of complexity, such as creating public APIs, deprecations, etc. but it would make the web much more free as a result, because we could have different individuals maintaining different bits and no organization would have too much control over the direction of the web.

      I believe it is possible because we have very complex stuff like entire Desktop Environments on Linux which are made up of multiple packages that just do a well defined thing and build on top of each other.

    • Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz
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      What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we’ve learned since html/css was invented?

      Probably a lot better. The difficult, and expensive, part is getting everyone to migrate over to this new standard, not because it’d be unfeasible but because companies don’t want to spend any time or money on things that they don’t think will make them profit.

      What we’d need is, for example, the EU realizing that Google’s attempted monopoly on the internet is dangerous and requiring a certain standard for private consumer-facing websites to get the ball rolling.

    • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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      1 month ago

      If you don’t want to be compatible with what millions of websites are written in (because that’s the complicated part), you now have to convince all of them to invest lots of money to migrate to your new web standard… Good luck…

      • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        You don’t have to replace the html web. If a new system was sufficiently fun to create with, people might use it for all kinds of cool new projects. Kind of like Flash used to be. You’d go there for a specific thing you heard about.

        A new web free of cruft might turn out to be cheaper to develop for, and that might appeal to the corporate types. Maybe useful for intranet type apps where the browser is specified anyway and you have a captive audience.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Basically browsers are big because they are operating systems for web hosted applications with huge attack surfaces and lots of legacy compatibility requirements amassed over 3 decades.

      A rewrite isn’t the answer. Putting limits on browser functionality is. JavaScript was the turning point IMHO.

      • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I think it could be sensible to come out with a subset of modern web tech stack, and just use that. There could be even a lightweight web browser just for this subset. The problem is of course on agreeing with what would be included.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          1 month ago

          Sounds like you’re describing pure HTML5

          JavaScript partially took off due to HTML’s limited functionality at the time. This was also around the time that web media was becoming really big, which before HTML5 it wasn’t easy to integrate into a webpage without turning to extra libraries or extensions

  • Petter1@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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      My work insists on using it too. Fuck knows why, maybe it’s a security thing? And my personal laptop is constantly nagging me to use edge - it could be the best browser ever and I would still avoid it just because of the pushiness.

      • OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
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        It’s a good Chromium based Windows native browser that has integration with your Entra ID account so all your bookmarks / history is automatically synced and users have seamless experience when switching devices. No longer seeing tickets like ″My bookmarks are gone after I reinstalled my PC″ is enough to consider Edge as your company main browser. And the fact that it is part of OS, you do not need to worry about install and patching.

        I prefer Firefox, but from Chromium browsers Edge is really good, you cannot expect companies to suggest something like Vivaldi.

        This is for companies being in M365 ecosystem. If you are in Google then I suppose Chrome would make more sense.

        • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, that’s fair, I thought it would probably be something like that. TBF it’s work, they’re paying me, I’ll use whatever they choose. I won’t have it on my own computer though just because of Microsoft’s hard sell

    • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The new manifest v3 version is actually not that bad, though not nearly as good as normal ublock.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        So, unironically, I do plan to request Firefox with uBlock Origin as a reasonable accomodation for my ADHD if I’m not able to use it at a job in the future. Banner ads are genuinely distracting and I have a real disability that makes them worse for me.

      • Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        This might actually reverse firefox’s decline in userbase at least in the business world. Any shop that already has multi-OS management could probably insta-switch to firefox, and i’m sure that MS locked-in places could too given enough of a push by IT.

          • Petter1@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Of course, but extra work is required for third party browsers vs just using windows built in browser designed to be managed using entraID / intune.

            Companies don’t like to pay extra.

            • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              It’s no different than controlling add-ons via GPO like we did in the old days of on-prem. No extra cost associated.

                • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  1 month ago

                  Your outsourced IT provider charges for simple configuration changes? That’s a yikes from me. I worked in MSPs for years and those sort of changes were always covered in the standard contract.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I work in research and development, I have to constantly search the web for stuff

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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    Right, you don’t need extensions, because you don’t need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.

    I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.

    A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.

    BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.

    • drthunder@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we’re basically running Doom in a word professor. I don’t know what a better system would look like, but I’d draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.

  • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    people use edge? it downloads itself onto your computer without permission.

    • RickyWars1@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      I use it on my laptop because it doesn’t nuke my laptop’s battery like all other browsers. So it’s a bit of a shame.

    • DV8@lemmy.world
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      It integrates very well with your M365 you need at work, and it saves a ton of time when people can use SSO to basically get everything up and running immediately on a new laptop. Including bookmarks and passwords.

      By default I install unblock on any user machine I touch because it’s equal parts user experience and security.

      • Blinsane@reddthat.com
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        1 month ago

        O365 never saved anyone any time ever. But it’s the one solution dumb-fuck IT managers know of and think they understand so that’s what everyone’s going with.

        • DV8@lemmy.world
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          If you think SSO and easy profile migration doesn’t save time, there’s simply no point in discussing it with you. I don’t like MS and their near monopoly position as a company much either. But that doesn’t mean every product they make is utter trash for every situation.

          There are undoubtedly other solutions but to pretend every one is too dumb to use them shows how little actual experience working in a variety of companies is.

          Back in the nineties you might have had Novell NetWare or just plain old LDAP instead of AD, but unlike those competitors AD kept working and offered upgrade trajectories. And it offered decent integration with a decent mailserver (that ofcourse sucked to set up securely for outside access), and that mailserver was fantastic versus the utterly terror that was Domino combined with Notes. I don’t like MS for basically forcing you to go to their cloud now, but pretending it’s a bad product through and through on a functional level is just being willingly blind.

          • rmuk@feddit.uk
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            1 month ago

            All the people who bluster and huff about Microsoft’s stranglehold on enterprise, education, government, etc all absolutely fail to grasp how utterly manageable Windows specifically (and MS products in general) is/are. If you’re familiar with Group Policy, you know; if you’re not, your really, really dont. A moderately competent Windows admin with a single Windows Server can make ten thousand Windows workstations work seamlessley in fifty countries, twenty data protection doctrines and ten languages with hundreds of customisations, tweaks, automations and deployments tailored to each combination of device/user/location, if that’s what they need. I wish that was the case with any FOSS OS, but it absolutely isn’t and even MacOS and ChromeOS don’t come even vaugley close.

            • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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              A moderately competent Windows admin with a single Windows Server can make ten thousand Windows workstations work seamlessley in fifty countries, twenty data protection doctrines and ten languages with hundreds of customisations, tweaks, automations and deployments tailored to each combination of device/user/location

              Not to mention that single Windows admin is paid less and a more common skill set than a more specialized skill set like Linux administrators. Paying $10k per year in licensing but saving $40k in payroll is still a net $30k savings.

              And if you’re hiring in a rural area specialized skillsets tend to not exist so you open yourself up to new risks of not being able to hire a replacement if needed by building something less standard

            • jj4211@lemmy.world
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              This is understandable, and also can see why FOSS would struggle, since a big part of the value is keeping the operators of the machines from doing the things they want or need to do. This is anathema to general FOSS thinking, to keep the user from doing things they would generally be empowered to do.

              Which I can see as being great for the admins, but it is often maddening to be a user under that regime. For example, “officially” I must use the corporate load for my work, and it’s super locked down. Problem being is the lock down makes my job effectively impossible (unable to run arbitrarily new binaries, unable to connect to services without a proper certificate, unable to add my own certificates, must get all binaries and service certificates from IT who takes 2-3 weeks to turnaround a signature). So you have a few departments resorting to that naughtiest of naughty words “Shadow IT”, always looking for end-runs around the corp policy that explicitly blocks software development work because they wouldn’t be able to discern that from malware.

              Ours also shot us in the head, by forcing automatic updates off (because they know better how to deploy patches than Micrsoft I guess) and then there’s a ransomware attack that cripples things because they didn’t realize they failed to apply security updates for two years on most systems. Fortunately enough people had been manually updating to keep things going.

          • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            You’re not wrong about it being easy to set up and use, but the reason it’s still the defacto is because of its earlier monopoly. Now, they are slowly killing what made it the best Enterprise option either by its greedy licensing schemes hiding things you used to use behind new and additional licensing or breaking them with untested patches that go straight from dev to production.

            • DV8@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              And your arguments have the strength of the hobbyist with the homelab he’s constantly having to reinstall, not understanding why companies are so stupid to not do the same thing as him.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        Firefox also has SSO integration with M365! Last I tested it it was less clean than Microsoft’s but it does exist and work the last time I used it

        Edit: just tested on a fresh install of Firefox and it worked perfectly. Checked the checkbox under Settings>Privacy and Security for “Allow Windows single sign-in for Microsoft, work, and school accounts” then navigated to my account.microsoft.com and it immediately signed me in (and appeared to be faster than on Edge‽)

    • Symphonic@lemmy.world
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      Honestly, it’s pretty easy to dunk on edge. But it’s based on the same chromium browser. They have excellent customer support. I have in the past submitted bug reports and they have followed up. Until now, they had pretty good privacy and options in their settings. With this v2 / v3 situation, I will have to reassess all that.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).

        Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can’t develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn’t it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don’t have one yet.

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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          1 month ago

          Why a new engine, Firefox is open source?!

          Fork Firefox.

          But good luck funding a team to keep up with commercial companies’ pace. It needs funding.

          If Mozilla made a way to donate in a way that I KNEW it would go towards the maintenance of the browser, and not another crappy thing they’re trying to be profitable, I’d donate in a second. I spend about £30/month on OSS donations and I’d happily add £5/month to Mozilla if I trusted them not to misspend it.

        • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I agree. I’d even be willing to regularly donate to a foundation that would have this aim as their goal and have their acts matching their promises.

          Although, not necessarily a new engine. Going from scratch is a good way to remake a lot of mistakes, while reusing old code is a good way to keep old debt. That’s not a decision I would like to have to take.

          • dan@upvote.au
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            1 month ago

            The web platform is huge… It’s going to take a long time to reach parity with other browsers.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            BSD licensed

            Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.

            (I almost just said “copyleft,” but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              Huh? The goal of the chromium project was to facilitate a corporate browser in the first place. It’s why they don’t have a more permissive license. They want to be able to use everyone else’s work if anyone forks it.

              Permissive license doesn’t mean that corporations suddenly get the ability to completely change existing work for the worse, or change its’ license. They can bloody well do that with GPL too if they own the project including contributions, so it doesn’t matter if it’s BSD or GPL, the only protection that the open source users have, in any case, is that licenses can’t be changed retroactively, so if Firefox, Chromium or Ladybird went completely closed source and proprietary today, we’d still have the right to use the code as it was yesterday. Permissive licenses just mean that someone somewhere can create a closed source build without the permission of the person or company who owns the project and that doesn’t particularly matter for anyone using Ladybird or any future open source derivatives. Permissive licenses are useful for libraries, but also for software that could be bundled as part of a bigger solution. Maybe you want to embed a web browser in your proprietary application and don’t want to use webview because its’ usability differs platform to platform.

              Also why AGPLv3 and not GPLv3? I don’t think the “A” part is even necessary here, that’s needed more for server side applications, I.e if the end user is using online without the code running on their own computer, AGPL is the one to use.

              Anyway, in the modern age, (A)GPL is used by a shit ton of corporate software. Oftentimes with an (A)GPL open core and a bunch of proprietary functionality not included in the core. I should know, I work with one example on a near daily basis. This way, nobody can just take their core functionality and develop a closed source alternative, while they can sell you an enterprise license for full functionality on their “open source” software.

              • grue@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                The reason why Chromium uses LGPL is because they forked the code from Safari, which had previously forked the code from KHTML (KDE’s web rendering component, used in Konqueror). The LGPL was provably insufficient to prevent corporate usurpation of the project, as a historical fact.

                As for the “A” part of AGPL not being relevant for locally-run software, (1) it doesn’t hurt either, and (2) having maximal protections could prevent weird corporate shenanigans that we haven’t thought of yet.

                • MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip
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                  1 month ago

                  The LGPL does its job, it’s not as copyleft as GPL or AGPL, but having those licenses doesn’t guarantee that companies will use it, like Gab, which used a fork of Mastodont, Truth Social, or Pawoo. If you want a more restrictive license, the OSI basically won’t accept it as open source because it doesn’t meet their guidelines.

                  Also, there are no other browsers due to the standards set by W3C and therefore browsers have to have corporate support.

            • MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip
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              1 month ago

              An AGPL license is a verdict that the browser will not be successful.

              In addition, Ladybird is under the guardianship of a non-profit organization.

            • tomenzgg@midwest.social
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              1 month ago

              Truly; it’s shocking how much people are still clinging to permissive licensing in the middle of everything going on.

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      1 month ago

      Unfortunately Edge is the 2nd most popular browser, with double the market share of Firefox.