[HN Gopher] Safari is adopting an extensions API similar to Fire...
___________________________________________________________________
Safari is adopting an extensions API similar to Firefox's
WebExtensions
Author : skellertor
Score : 125 points
Date : 2020-06-23 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hacks.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hacks.mozilla.org)
| tester89 wrote:
| What does this mean for Ad-blockers like UOrigin which were
| removed after Apple disabled the API they used?
| greenhatglack wrote:
| Not much, lots of missing APIs currently to accurately port
| uBlock to Safari, though not sure because it's incomplete or
| omitted by design.
| bluedays wrote:
| I'm going to be downvoted for saying this but... ublock origin
| actually does slow down rendering your webpage. I think that
| it's sad that there seems to be so much pushback from vendors
| in regards to options like ublock origin, but I have found
| equally impressive results with system wide options like
| adguard without it reducing the speed of pages rendering.
| gorhill wrote:
| uBlock Origin: https://www.debugbear.com/chrome-extension-
| performance-looku...
|
| I am skeptical system-wide blockers would slow down less,
| especially considering the browser has to fire the network
| requests no matter what, while in-browser blockers prevent
| blocked network requests from being fired at all.
| ivanche wrote:
| Interesting, do you have any benchmarks proving this?
| bluedays wrote:
| I provided proof in a comment above yours. Let me know what
| you think.
| surround wrote:
| Yes, I'm going to downvote you, but only because you
| misunderstand how ad blocking works. uBlock _does_ marginally
| slow down webpage render because it has to inject CSS rules
| (cosmetic filters) to improve blocking quality. If you don't
| want this feature, you can disable cosmetic filtering
| entirely within uBlock's settings.
|
| The problem with AdGuard is that they charge for system-wide
| blocking which can be done for free with a hosts file or pi-
| hole.
| bluedays wrote:
| You are being presumptuous about my knowledge in regards to
| ad blocking. So I'll explain in further detail why I
| personally use adblock, and why ublock is unnecessary.
|
| First, the css rules are available on adguard as well. You
| can actually review the documentation here:
| https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/how-to-create-your-own-
| ad-...
|
| Second, adguard is free. There are certain premium
| features, however. For instance, filtering ads outside of
| your browser requires a premium license. However, if you
| are comparing it to ublock this was already not a feature
| that was available to you.
|
| Of course, even that comes with an addendum, which is that
| this is only something that you need to worry about on
| mobile devices. Should you be using the desktop version you
| will actually see that adguard is free and available here
| on github: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
|
| In regards to pi-hole. The cumbersome nature of pi-hole
| makes it undesirable _for me_. There were many sites which
| were blocked for inexplicable reasons the last time I used
| a pi-hole and creating a whitelist for these sites requires
| more work than is necessary. First you must navigate to the
| portal, and then you must make changes to either the
| whitelist, or remove a site from the blacklist depending
| upon why the site is not accessible. It was not seamless
| design. However, those that find this feature desirable
| will find that adguard actually offers the same experience
| with adguard home:
| https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
|
| And as a matter of fact you will notice that there are
| comparisons between ublock origin available on the github
| page for your review. There are actually a number of
| features which are missing from ublock which are simply not
| possible with ublock origin. As for the accuracy of these
| features you'll have to determine that on your own but you
| can review them here: https://i.imgur.com/5fSLuHx.png
|
| Also, ublock origin does not _marginally_ slow down a
| webpage rendering. It _significantly_ slows down a webpage
| rendering. As evidenced here:
|
| With ublock origin: https://i.imgur.com/4NxOysN.png
|
| without ublock origin: https://i.imgur.com/jIlof5e.png
|
| That means that when you are running ublock origin your
| browser is working at 87.85% capacity. Or in otherwords, a
| 13.15% decrease in speed. To put this in real world terms
| it would be similar to reducing the speed to 50mph* on a
| road that was originally 60mph.
|
| So feel free to keep using ublock origin. As a matter of
| fact I also use it occasionally in a pinch. (It does, after
| all, significantly speed up rendering of some webpages. I
| find it especially useful on webmd.) However, for my daily
| driver I find it to be a poor solution.
|
| *Rounded down, the actual number is 52.11.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > That means that when you are running ublock origin your
| browser is working at 87.85% capacity. Or in otherwords,
| a 13.15% decrease in speed.
|
| Not everyone is running Speedometer all day where there's
| nothing to block.
| bluedays wrote:
| :| What?
| surround wrote:
| The point I was trying to make is that cosmetic filtering
| slows down the browser, period. AdGuard is not more
| efficient at applying CSS rules than uBlock.
| gorhill wrote:
| > That means that when you are running ublock origin your
| browser is working at 87.85% capacity.
|
| No it's not, at this point your are spreading FUD about
| uBO.
|
| This is a benchmark specialized for one thing, the
| creation/deletion of DOM nodes, a completely unrealistic
| scenario in the real world -- web sites do not repeatedly
| create nodes just to have them deleted as soon as they
| are inserted.
|
| uBO's code which deals with the DOM represents a
| _fraction_ of what uBO needs to do, and yet you
| extrapolate the benchmark as if it represents _all_ the
| work uBO does, leading to your nonsensical conclusion.
|
| Here is how uBO compares to other comparable content
| blockers with an actual real-world scenario, as per
| recent debugbear benchmark[1] -- it's the least CPU
| hungry of the bunch:
| https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1273263792785326085
|
| Note that the above is a worst-case scenario for content
| blockers, since this was about loading a page from
| `example.com`, where nothing is blocked, consequently
| where a content blocker acts only as an overhead.
|
| * * *
|
| [1] https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension-
| perform...
| stephenr wrote:
| It's almost as if the browser should provide an method for
| extensions to identify things to block, in a way that is
| optimised for performance and privacy, rather than just
| throwing even more JavaScript into the page.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > It's almost as if the browser should provide an method
| for extensions to identify things to block
|
| Safari[0] has this and has had for a while now...
|
| While maybe not as effective as uBlock Origin, I have
| extensions I use that leverage that API on iOS and MacOS
| that do a good enough job for my needs.
|
| [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservi
| ces/cre...
| aswan wrote:
| Chrome has a beta extension API that does this: https://d
| eveloper.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReques...
|
| However, this API could be used to optimize _some of_
| (not all of) the networking filtering that uBO does.
| Network filtering is distinct from cosmetic filtering,
| the latter is what injects scripts into every page. The
| uBO wiki has some nice documentation of the different
| features, measurements of their overhead, etc. E.g.:
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Doesn't-uBlock-
| Origin...
| stephenr wrote:
| Does network filtering _not_ rely on JavaScript now?
| aswan wrote:
| The webRequest api uses javascript, but with code that
| runs in the context of the extension, not code that is
| injected into web pages. You can read a bit more here:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-
| ons/Web...
| ameshkov wrote:
| Let me please chime in. As AdGuard developer, I'd like to
| comment on what you said and explain some details about how
| it works.
|
| First of all, AdGuard desktop and mobile apps are quite
| different from hosts files or pi-hole. For instance,
| they're also able to apply cosmetic rules. Also, and this
| is really important on Android (unfortunately we can't do
| that on iOS), AdGuard is able to apply different rules
| depending on which app makes a request.
|
| The common example is dealing Facebook Audience network. If
| you need to block Facebook ads in third-party apps with Pi-
| Hole, you'll have Facebook official apps broken as well.
| With AG, you can keep the official FB app working and block
| it in third-party apps at the same time.
|
| Second, on every platform save for iOS, AdGuard filters
| every network connection and not just DNS queries. There're
| already multiple examples of apps (for instance, TikTok)
| that switch to using DOH when they detect that there's DNS
| filtering messing with their domains. Eventually, every
| network-level blocker, pi-hole included, will have to
| control all connections as DNS simply won't be enough.
|
| Regarding Pi-Hole, we actually maintain a free and open
| source alternative called AdGuard Home:
| https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
| surround wrote:
| > AdGuard desktop and mobile apps are quite different
| from hosts files or pi-hole. For instance, they're also
| able to apply cosmetic rules.
|
| My understanding is that AdGuard desktop is equivalent to
| hosts file + adblocking extension. Is that correct?
|
| > AdGuard is able to apply different rules depending on
| which app makes a request.
|
| How is this possible without root?
|
| > AdGuard filters every network connection and not just
| DNS queries.
|
| How can AdGuard filter secure connections (outside of the
| browser)? Does AdGuard filter by IP address?
| DavideNL wrote:
| Apparently the uBO developer says still not possible:
|
| https://reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/will_ubloc...
| drenvuk wrote:
| It's still gimped.
|
| No blocking requests.
|
| "Unlimited" storage (which is necessary for most non-trivial
| extensions) is actually limited to 10MB.
|
| You're stuck in Apple's app store which is equally as draconian
| as Chrome's and Firefox's but now you have to pay $99/year.
|
| No IndexedDB.
|
| The extensions aren't usable on mobile.
|
| I care little for Safari's users if I have to deal with all of
| this.
| danShumway wrote:
| Agreed. This is a step in the right direction, but, "Firefox
| works on Mac", is still the easiest, most straightforward
| answer to anyone who's asking me, "how can I get a decent
| adblocker for the web?"
|
| Having a shared API matters for extensions primarily because it
| makes it easier for a developer to say, "well, I might as well
| throw that on the Apple store as well." But if Safari literally
| can't do the things your extension needs it to do, then the API
| is kind of a secondary concern.
| stephenr wrote:
| "Install one of the dozens of content blockers that work
| across macOS and iOS" seems like a better answer than
| "install a different browser".
| danShumway wrote:
| None of those content blockers work as well as uBlock
| Origin. Maybe they work well enough for you, and that's
| fine.
|
| But if somebody asks me what the current state of
| adblocking is and how they can get it, I'm not going to
| pretend that Safari offers it.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| For the lay user, what's wrong with AdGuard's free
| edition?
| stephenr wrote:
| Thanks so much for going into detail and not just "mine
| is bettererer" like so many do.....
|
| Oh wait.
| foepys wrote:
| Doesn't Apple's content blocking API limit the number of
| rules at 50,000 rules per extension? uBlock Origin uses
| 85,000 rules from EasyList alone. That's without country-
| specific and privacy rules. I have about 180,000 active
| rules at the moment.
| saagarjha wrote:
| That is correct. Many content blockers ship with multiple
| extensions to try to get around this rule. (EasyList can
| compress a bit, FWIW.)
| kickscondor wrote:
| I don't know. I mean, yes, I need 'blocked requests' and
| 'unlimited storage' for my extension (http://fraidyc.at/).
| However, at least I can give Safari users a taste of it - which
| could either:
|
| * draw them into fuller platforms for using it. (or)
|
| * pressure safari to support more of the standard.
|
| Stepping stones.
| stephenr wrote:
| I'd never heard of your extension before but IMO that is not
| at all what I think of as a "browser extension" - it seems to
| me that it's more using the browser as an application runtime
| than actually providing more functionality for the current
| page.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Well - you could look at it as extending the browser (into
| a feed reader) rather than extending the current page.
| smnthermes wrote:
| > No blocking requests
|
| Probably will happen in Firefox too, since Google controls W3C:
| http://browserext.github.io/
| drenvuk wrote:
| I still don't understand why you're linking that. Can you be
| more specific?
| abrowne wrote:
| Probably Chrome extension manifest version 3. See, eg
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
| thayne wrote:
| I hope not. there's no reason Firefox can't continue to
| support it, even if it isn't standardized.
| notatoad wrote:
| >but now you have to pay $99/year.
|
| to maintain an apple developer account you also need a mac or
| iDevice with secure enclave, so even if these were actually
| compatible with webextensions, you couldn't publish your
| webextension for safari unless you were an apple user.
| Jaxkr wrote:
| Nobody really uses Safari except for on iPhones, and I suspect
| I will drop dramatically as they're adding support for choosing
| your own browser in iOS 14. Even among non-technical people I
| know, nearly everyone replaces Safari with Chrome or FF. Even
| my grandfather uses Chrome on his Mac and iPhone.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Third party browsers for iOS wrap the same WKWebView that
| Safari uses. Safari isn't going away any time soon, even with
| the ability to change default browser.
| philistine wrote:
| You use personal anecdote when we instead have dozens of
| services that catalogue exactly how popular browsers are.
| Look it up!
| kjakm wrote:
| >> Nobody really uses Safari except for on iPhones
|
| Have you got _anything_ to back this up? I'm willing to bet
| the majority of Mac users use Safari (given it's the default
| browser). I use it and it's a lot less clunky than Chrome and
| Firefox. I also repeatedly run into an attitude of "if my
| users don't user Chrome then I don't care about their
| experience" and find it very off putting.
| MintelIE wrote:
| I bet they don't. All the Mac Safari users I know also run
| Firefox because Safari's ad blocking sucks.
|
| I only know of a few Mac users of Chrome.
| rimliu wrote:
| I use Safari. Still the best and most memory efficient
| experience.
| acdha wrote:
| Your "nobody" is not a representative sample: if you run a
| general-purpose website, Safari will be something like 15-20%
| of the total traffic which is more than most people are going
| to write off as insignificant.
|
| On iOS, even if they allow different browser apps they have
| not apparently relaxed the restriction on the embedded
| browser engine and that means Firefox or Chrome are different
| UIs on top of a browser engine which is still Safari.
| erdaniels wrote:
| I really wanted to stick with Safari a little over two years ago
| when I moved off of Google products. It was (is) snappy and
| battery conversant. Beyond poor extension support, I realized the
| absolutely most important features to me in a browser are
| password, bookmark, and history synchronization. Since I use
| Windows and macOS, Safari was out of the question (RIP Windows
| edition of it). Thankfully in the last year Firefox has mad leaps
| and bounds on performance and battery life consumption on macOS
| (on Windows it is fantastic).
|
| Also at the end of the day, you have what I believe is the most
| unlimited ad-blocking experience on Firefox compared to Chrome,
| Chromium, and Safari.
| felixfbecker wrote:
| As someone who works at a company with a web extension, one big
| thing I care about is automated deployment. We have automated
| releases with Chrome and Firefox (although it has to use
| Puppeteer). The new Edgium recently wanted to get us to publish
| but I found zero docs on potential automation so that's a
| blocker. Wonder what process Safari has to offer here?
| MBCook wrote:
| Does this mean Safari may get the React or Redux extensions?
| That's all I care about.
| silviogutierrez wrote:
| I'm hoping for that too. I really try to make Safari my daily
| driver (performance, privacy, battery life). But the dev
| experience is lacking.
|
| Also the network tab is just... odd.
| freediver wrote:
| Apple had a great opportunity to natively support web extensions
| in Safari. Instead they choose to do it through the app
| extensions System. Meaning a developer needs to have and pay for
| Apple dev account. They need to have a Mac to port and compile
| it. They have to sign it. And then maintain it.
|
| This will certainly affect adoption. Forcing an open standard
| into a closed system seems intuitively wrong.
|
| But at least kudos to Apple for recognizing the need for
| webextensions support.
| balladeer wrote:
| At this point I think I should just switch to Firefox. It's
| just that Firefox still (unfairly) lags behind in performance
| because it's a Mac.
| gabrielvincent wrote:
| I think this is a worthy trade-off. The difference in
| performance is not that big.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I still much prefer Safari so I spent like $2 on an ad-
| blocker, not as good as ublock but my overall experience is
| still the best IMO.
| philistine wrote:
| I did the same. It's strange to buy a Safari extension on
| the App Store, but I bought stopthemadness and 1Blocker
| and I've been satisfied for years.
| kgermino wrote:
| Why is Firefox slower on a Mac? I know Safari is (supposedly)
| faster than a lot of the other options, but I haven't seen
| anything about Apple slowing down other browsers on Macs[0].
|
| [0] I know they force all browsers to use the same webkit
| engine as Safari on mobile devices, and used to limit
| competitors to an older slower version for "security reasons"
| but AFAIK they don't slow down competitors on mobile anymore
| and never have on Macs
| quantummkv wrote:
| It's not Apple that slows down Firefox on Mac. It's just
| that Firefox cannot match the resources that apple and
| google throw around on their browsers. Firefox has to be
| economical on where their resources are directed towards.
| And understandingly Macos specific optimizations not the
| top priority.
| MintelIE wrote:
| They didn't have to rewrite everything in Rust thereby
| harming performance to a large degree.
| est31 wrote:
| One component was Safari using unofficial APIs. But some of
| these unofficial APIs have since been used by both Chrome
| and Firefox as well.
| miohtama wrote:
| With Firefox ad blockers you get that performance back in
| reduced download and CPU time spent in ad JavaScript.
| ebg13 wrote:
| Forget about performance. Firefox still lags horribly behind
| in battery life.
| dmix wrote:
| Firefox natively suspends unused tabs which dramatically
| improved my memory usage and battery life.
|
| Chrome has a similar extension but it's nice having it
| built in to the browser natively.
|
| If anything you could argue that FF is behind Chrome
| security-wise with their more limited sandboxing and some
| other memory protections. But performance is largely a non-
| issue.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Not for me, because Firefox's reader view stops the entire
| battery sucking JavaScript madness on the page I'm visiting
| whereas Safari doesn't.
| toyg wrote:
| Everyone "lags behind" Safari in battery life on mac,
| unsurprisingly: a mono-platform app can pull tricks that
| multi-platform ones cannot.
|
| When comparing apples to apples, Firefox imho is actually
| lighter than Chrome on battery, at least on Macs.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I think it's worth looking at how Apple has gone about similar
| changes in the past.
|
| It dips its toe in the water. It then eases an ankle in. It
| finally jumps in fully when it's ready to, and not before.
|
| Along the way, the sort of developers who spend more time
| posting on Twitter and HN than actually developing complain
| about each of the first two steps being not enough, and when
| the third comes moan about "monopoly" this and "lock-in" that.
|
| Apple isn't going to make everyone happy. And it doesn't care
| to. It brings what it feels its customers want. But it is
| rarely rushed to something because it's cool or trendy. Apple
| gets there when it is ready. The times when it has rushed, it's
| botched the job. So I'm OK with Apple's measured approach.
|
| If what Apple offers you today in Safari isn't what you want,
| go Firefox.
| AnonC wrote:
| I don't have a lot of hopes that this will satisfy my needs. I
| just want these extensions in Safari, to start with:
|
| * uBlock Origin (confirmed as of now as not supported, and
| unlikely to be supported in the future either, with content
| blocking handled at the browser engine level)
|
| * Privacy Possum or Privacy Badger
|
| * Session Buddy or some good Session saving extension
| baggachipz wrote:
| Seriously. Not being able to block ads with Safari makes an
| automatic no-go for me. Even if they make their own built-in ad
| blocker, you can bet they'll let companies pay to become
| "platinum sponsors". No thanks.
| peruvian wrote:
| I've been happy with Wipr on macOS and 1Blocker on iOS for
| years. In fact I think you can just use 1Blocker in both
| platforms now. Neither is as "good" as uBlock Origin but I
| don't really care.
| a2tech wrote:
| I believe Wipr works on both iOS and macOS. I'm also a
| happy Wipr user.
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| _> Not being able to block ads with Safari makes an automatic
| no-go for me_
|
| I actually turned it into a very specific use-case: when I
| need to be tracked for cashback/referral purposes on big
| purchases, I use Safari. Everything else goes on Firefox.
|
| It's a bit ironic to use Apple software when I want _less_
| privacy, after all their spiel.
| olliej wrote:
| The full app extension apis do let you do that (based on my
| installed as blocker), there's just a bunch if restrictions
| that apply to those extensions to prevent arbitrary content
| manipulation (iirc).
| newman314 wrote:
| I've resisted upgrading to Catalina because of the missing
| UBlock Origin support.
|
| Does anyone know of a tool to migrate open Safari tabs to
| Firefox?
| rovr138 wrote:
| You can bookmark open tabs to a folder.
|
| On Firefox, Open All in Tabs
| llacb47 wrote:
| More info on uBlock Origin in safari:
| https://reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/_/fvoc7wk/...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-06-23 23:00 UTC)