It absolutely feels like all the major web browsers have given up on being the User Agent, and instead act as the web developer's agent. I feel like I'm constantly fighting my web browser to do what I want rather than what the website wants.<p>Case in point which I'm fighting with at this very minute: HTTP. I want to access a site over HTTP, not HTTPS. I know it supports HTTP. I have used HTTP in the past. But my browser insists that I want HTTPS instead, despite my manually typing <a href="http://" rel="nofollow">http://</a><p>HSTS is an abomination, directly ignoring the user's command to do what the <i>site</i> wants instead. As if I'm some kind of bystander of my computer, instead of the user.
This. While I don’t make my own extensions or bookmarklets, I chose to develop for the web because of its openness and how it’s not owned by a singular entity. I do not want to be at the mercy of Apple or Google with their distribution channels.<p>With Google’s manifest v3 debacle, it’s clear we need to fight continuously and ruthlessly to keep the web for the people.
I was just talking about this with my wife. I have so many tabs open that I run out of memory but I find that all the solutions to save sites or resources I find and need to reference in the future are aweful. Bookmarks suck, search sucks, saving browser sessions sucks. I don’t have a good workflow and can’t even imagine one.
The world would be a better place today if Android Chrome supported extensions. Users have so little control over their experience of using modern software. When the dominant browser on the most popular OS doesn't support extensions they just can't gain critical mass.
Fantastic article. I wish there was a crowdsourced “annoyances database” which people contribute information to everytime they kill an element on a page; it’d be amazing to have a browser extension that queries the database and auto-kills anything voted as annoying by the masses.<p>Everyone has favorite addons - if you’re looking to expand, here are mine for iOS Safari.<p>- Kill Sticky Scroll - hide dickbars and obnoxious overlays in front of the content. Use iOS Shortcuts app to create a new shortcut, set it to receive input from Share Sheet and add a “run javascript” then paste this js: <a href="https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky/blob/master/src/kill-sticky.js">https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky/blob/master/src/kill-s...</a> (you’ll need to add a call to `completion()` to make it a valid Shortcuts js function)<p>- AutoPiP: automatic picture-in-picture when tabbing away from a playing video in Safari <a href="https://github.com/vordenken/AutoPiP">https://github.com/vordenken/AutoPiP</a><p>- Vinegar to use the native video player on youtube: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303229">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303...</a>
I strongly believe if there was no browser, companies would have taken over the PDF viewers. Brochure files that let you select the product you want and then you email it back to them.
A step further than WebExtensions is customising the code in the Firefox omni.ja file. The next step after that you have to spend a lot of resources to recompile it.<p><a href="https://github.com/SebastianSimon/firefox-omni-tweaks">https://github.com/SebastianSimon/firefox-omni-tweaks</a>
<a href="https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix">https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix</a>
I'm looking for a good feed preview addon that isn't an RSS reader! Because I kind of have that, well not really, but sort of. RSS reader extensions wouldn't be accessible to me anyway, because I use a screen reader. I just need something where I can pull the feed up ya know, like it used to. The one I have is very slow!
I understand why a lot of these extensions are not allowed, simply because of security issues. But I agree on RSS needs more work.<p>I continue to think RSS Reader should be a function of browser and shouldn't require a third party web or app to do it. In modern days I wish that could be married with a personal LLM so I could ask question about things I have read but I cant find it easily.
You can't retake the web browser since the browser is a slave to the web itself, and the web's ridiculous excesses are enabled by the expansionism of Chrome and before that Firefox. It's a tragedy but I don't see a cure. Best I can hope for is a security-oriented niche subset getting some traction. Gemini tried to be that, but was too silly.
i wonder if we'll ever see good user owned and operated personal "ai agents" or if the technology will just skip the cottage-hipster phase and jump straight to enshitification.