Waterfox VS uBlock-issues

> [Monday](https://github.com/WaterfoxCo/Waterfox/releases/tag/G5.1.9),

With 4GB of RAM I would recommend that you use the ESR version or some lightweight fork like Waterfox that I've been testing these days. Is really lighter and can use Firefox Sync. But it has his problems. I would prefer to go with ESR and deactivating smooth scrolling if I was you.

> I wish Unity didn't die

Hi from Unity on Ubuntu 23.04.

I am running the Unity flavour:

https://ubuntuunity.org/

It uses the latest Unity 7.7, released earlier this year:

https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx

I run it on 3 or 4 machines, one of which has 2 screens and one of which has 3. Works great, scales well, handles modern Ubuntu just fine.

I use it with the Waterfox browser, which integrates natively with the Unity global menu bar, without any addons or config. I am currently on -- (hits alt-H, A) -- version 5.1.9.

https://www.waterfox.net/

Post issues on Gihtub for reporting bugs. https://github.com/WaterfoxCo/Waterfox/issues

I've made sure security updates have now been available ASAP for quite a while now. G5.1.9 released on Monday, for example. This is a day before Mozilla, but mostly because Mozilla spend a day or two doing QA.

I've been a fan of Waterfox for some time now

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1201/extend-panel-men...

Of course, GNOME broke it in a later release. This is why no amount of extensions are an answer: they break. Extensions do not work from one release of GNOME to another, and when they fail, the whole desktop often fails.

> Also, it’s not really Gnome’s fault that linux doesn’t have as great metadata from apps to be able to display the apps’ menubars (unity could do it).

False. Gtk exposes this; Unity didn't have stored metadata on lots of apps, it just displayed the existing controls' contents somewhere else. If you run brand new Gtk apps on Unity today, they get panel menus. This was not some clever hack.

Unity is still around:

https://unityd.org/

The distro is back again:

https://ubuntuunity.org/

Brand new apps, like Waterfox, integrate with it fine although they did not exist when it was written.

https://www.waterfox.net/

> With all due respect, that is bullshit reasoning. Selectively displaying useful things is the whole point of UIs.

I disagree.

1. I want to choose what is shown or not. In order to choose, I have to be able to see it. In other words, it needs to be there at first, and then I can choose whether I want to show it or not.

If I can't see it in the first place, then how am I to know it's there?

It's the users' choice what is shown or not. It is not up to the developer to say "they don't need to see this and I'm going to hide it away."

Any piece of software that does that is user hostile.

> Otherwise why would you roll up your window?

Again: it's my choice. I get to choose. It's my computer. They are my windows. I choose if they are shown or not.

That is the point of free software: Choice.

GNOME says it's free, but it takes choices away from me. I object to that.

> Why do you have menus in the first place that hide their content until clicked?

To save space for my document. You can't show everything all the time: that is why you leave it up to the user to choose what they show and when.

(Incidentally, this is also why in my opinion the Microsoft ribbon based fluent interface fails. It tries to show far too much all at once, and the result is that it wastes a huge amount of screen space, and is actually more difficult to hunt through for what I need when I need it.)

> That is no longer the corner, so it doesn’t benefit from this law at all.

False.

Fitt's law is about target size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implications_for...

It is not about corners. It is about edges too.

By the way I do have a clue about this stuff... for example here is a screenshot of a piece of software which I designed about a dozen years which makes use of Fitt's Law.

https://twitter.com/SimplicityComps/status/54085863397497241...

> The super key is the same as the windows, or the mac command key.

So, yes, but those environments don't suddenly change your entire screen.

> Also often called Meta.

That is a different key. Meta and super are not interchangeable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_key

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)

> What’s the problem here exactly? Is alt+f4 written over the screen? Or ctrl+c? Especially that the same behavior is expected from the windows start menu.

The problem here, as I'm attempting to spell out, is that there were existing conventions for this stuff, and GNOME does not respect them.

> It’s a community for its users. You clearly don’t use it nor contribute to it either by work or financially, so it is not really fair to ask someone else to work for you specifically..

No. What I do is, I write about it for a living. I analyse this stuff, I draw comparisons, I point out weaknesses and strengths. That's my job.

In my professional capacity, the GNOME foundation invited me to its GUADEC conference about six or seven years back. I asked a lot of awkward and difficult questions, because that's my job, and I didn't get invited back.

> Literally every OS and distro suck at it.

False. For example, using most other interfaces, such as XFCE, I can treat a multiscreen desktop as one big space. I can have one panel at the far left, and one on the far right, of the entire multi-monitor desktop.

But GNOME doesn't let me do that.

Why not?

> Nonetheless, I feel you are reasoning from a very biased point

Because I disagree with you, you think that I'm biased?

Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you is biased?

Have you considered that perhaps I have opinions, and can draw upon years of knowledge and experience, and make reasoned arguments based on evidence, and that is not the same thing as being biased?

> I don’t think it is as fruitful a discussion.

So because I can counter your arguments with examples and reasoning, you don't think that it's fruitful discussion?

Personally, I think that the arguments where people can defend their points, and produce evidence to back them up, are the most fruitful kind.

There is an open issue for this: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/2786 uBO should report such filter as en error in Firefox, so that is the thing to fix.

This would be the price of one of the four CDNs (6000$ per month): https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/2958

opened a bug report https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/3003

Current estimated cost for just ONE of uBO's CDNs: HERE. This is with other lists updating every few days. uBO's not a company, it's a volunteer project using free services, which have limits that we cannot cross.

The extension with the best success rate seems to be **uBlock Origin**. It is a community driven project with a team of volunteers, you can review the source code [here](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). You will need to update your filter lists regularly, this because Youtube changes detection methods daily. Here is how you do that:

Definitely a much-needed area for development. However, having gone down the browser extension rabbit hole, I've largely shifted my focus to user scripts. Granted, there will always be a need for specialized browser extensions like ad blockers (uBlock[1]), keyboard shortcuts (Vimium-C[2]), and password managers (Bitwarden[3]).

That said, I find user scripts superior for most tasks, despite some lacking UI niceties. They are easier to share, use, and crucially, audit—be it in terms of scope, permissions, or code updates. Plus if Manifest V3 is any indicator, the future for browser extensions looks bleak. While I don't agree with this direction, it's probably for the best for the majority of users, like my mom.

Your effort is commendable; however, should you find yourself looking for a viable pivot in the future, I believe the user script space is primed for innovation and could offer a good alternative.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

const defineProperty = function(chain, cValue, middleware = undefined) { let aborted = false; const mustAbort = function(v) { if ( aborted ) { return true; } aborted = (v !== undefined && v !== null) && (cValue !== undefined && cValue !== null) && (typeof v !== typeof cValue); return aborted; }; // https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/156 // Support multiple trappers for the same property. // // trapProp is used to trap a single property within an object. const trapProp = function(owner, prop, configurable, handler) { if ( handler.init(owner[prop]) === false ) { return; } const odesc = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(owner, prop); let prevGetter, prevSetter; if ( odesc instanceof Object ) { if ( odesc.configurable === false ) { return; } if ( odesc.get instanceof Function ) { prevGetter = odesc.get; } if ( odesc.set instanceof Function ) { prevSetter = odesc.set; } } Object.defineProperty(owner, prop, { configurable, //When a property is accessed (get), the custom getter function is called. get() { if ( prevGetter !== undefined ) { prevGetter(); } return handler.getter(); // cValue }, // When a property is modified (set), the custom setter function is called. set(a) { if ( prevSetter !== undefined ) { prevSetter(a); } handler.setter(a); } }); }; // trapChain is used to recursively trap properties along a chain of properties (e.g., object1.object2.property). const trapChain = function(owner, chain) { const pos = chain.indexOf('.'); if ( pos === -1 ) { trapProp(owner, chain, true, { v: undefined, init: function(v) { if ( mustAbort(v) ) { return false; } this.v = v; return true; }, getter: function() { return cValue; }, setter: function(a) { // Middleware is called when a property is set, allowing additional processing or validation of the new value. if (middleware instanceof Function) { cValue = a; middleware(a); } else { if ( mustAbort(a) === false ) { return; } cValue = a; } } }); return; } const prop = chain.slice(0, pos); const v = owner[prop]; chain = chain.slice(pos + 1); if ( v instanceof Object || typeof v === 'object' && v !== null ) { trapChain(v, chain); return; } trapProp(owner, prop, true, { v: undefined, init: function(v) { this.v = v; return true; }, getter: function() { return this.v; }, setter: function(a) { this.v = a; if ( a instanceof Object ) { trapChain(a, chain); } } }); }; trapChain(window, chain); }

Maybe https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/2725 ?