taviso

A recent update broke the file history service for me, which I only discovered when I went to restore a previous version of a file. If you use it too, you should probably check it's actually working.

> Nevertheless, MV3's ability to offer limited filtering on startup does not seem like such a blessing when the other option was to just support full filtering on startup

Sure, but as I said, it's a design decision, and nothing to do with MV3. I'm not trying to litigate it one way or the other.

I do think DNR is a good solution, and that request callbacks were a bad idea. That's my opinion - and the counterargument is obvious -- you can't do literally everything you could do in a callback declaratively. That doesn't sway me, I still think it's better!

> Great if you just want a normal quality user agent switcher

It was just a trivial example of using a powerful new feature that uBO doesn't have, not a full featured extension! The fact that it's possible at all is the point, it's cool.

You can definitely do anything that DNR can do with webRequest, nobody can dispute that. The point is that there are things you can do with uBO lite that you can't do with uBO (and vice versa!). It's not a straight downgrade, there are powerful new features.

> and then the request had to wait until it was given to and processed by the blocker.

Despite the name, the requests were not blocked until the extension had initialized. The browser could make network requests before that happened with MV2. With MV3, static rulesets and persistent DNR rules are enforced immediately.

> With MV2 you'd use blocking webRequest and chrome.webRequest.onBeforeSendHenders

Of course an extensions could do this, I said uBO lite. DNR made exposing this powerful functionality fast and easy. My point is that MV3 uBO lite has useful features that MV2 uBO does not.

> content can load without the blocker being ready to filter

This isn't an MV3 issue, it's a Chromium design decision that extensions cannot block browser initialization. It was also true with MV2. In fact, MV3 has improved the situation because DNR rules are enforced immediately.

You could certainly argue that Chrome should allow extensions to block browser initialization, or that it should be user configurable - but it seems like an entirely defensible Chrome decision. Regardless, it's nothing to do with MV3.

> the filter rules aren't as flexible.

That's true, but they are still very flexible, and DNR makes some very nice features possible in uBO lite that were not possible in uBO.

For example, did you know that you can change your User-Agent with uBO lite? Go to the Custom DNR rules tab, and enter something like this to pretend to be Lynx on whatever.com:

     id: 5
     priority: 100
     action:
       type: modifyHeaders
       requestHeaders:
         - header: User-Agent
           operation: set
           value: Lynx/2.9.2 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/3.5.7
     condition:
       requestDomains:
         - whatever.com
       resourceTypes:
         - main_frame

I don't think that's possible in uBO, so clearly there are some benefits to switching. I have a ton of custom dnr rules, and love this feature.

That's nothing to do with MV3 though, that was also true with MV2. The situation actually seems improved in MV3, because static (and dynamic, IIRC) DNR rules are initialized and enforced immediately, right?

Major breaking bugs.

A regression here and there would be normal before, major features breaking in this stable 25 year old software is simply unheard of.

This is not exciting cutting-edge software, it's a boring financial app. My instinct is people want stability and confidence that the output won't change and that their records will still parse.

I'm experiencing something similar with another piece of software. ledger-cli is a boring, dependable accounting application.

The next release will be the first where the majority of commits will be made by AI, and it has definitely not gone smoothly.

After a dozen or so bug reports, it's mostly in a working state, but I worry the output is no longer reliable in subtle ways.

If you hear a rumor that sounds too crazy to be true on social media, maybe don't repeat it as fact. Imagine how you would feel reading something like that.