there's now a proposal for it https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/pull/1019/changes so it will probably appear eventually.
In Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscriptw3c
webextensions
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w3c / webextensions
webextensions
Charter and administrivia for the WebExtensions Community Group (WECG)
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Charter and administrivia for the WebExtensions Community Group (WECG)
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Brian Kardell's recent post "Webrise"[1] has similar exploration of what humanity might be able to do to become responsible stewards of one it's most important common means.…
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Observed mentions: 2021-06-05 10:49:12 UTC to 2026-07-31 14:57:28 UTC.
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| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
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| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 1 | 12 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 0 | 16 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
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W3C WebExtensions Groups
This repository is the home for the W3C WebExtensions Community Group (WECG) and Working Group (WEWG).
Quick Links
📜 Draft Specification
📝 Meeting Minutes
Contributing & Issue Tracking
🤝 Contributing Guidelines
🌐 Browser-specific issue tracking
🐛 W3C Issue Tracker
WebExtension Community Group (WECG)
Focuses on gathering community feedback and early API design incubation.
🌐 W3C page
🏅 Charter
📅 Calendar
WebExtension Working Group (WECG)
Focuses on specification work and producing formal W3C Recommendations.
🌐 W3C Page
🏅 Charter
📅 Calendar
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
45 sourcesOne of the main goals of MV3 seems to be nullifying protection against tracking URLs. Most of the discussion about adblocking technically "still working" under MV3 misses this point. It doesn't matter if you're actually served ads or not, when when your underlying habits can still easily be collected from the combination of fingerprints and tracking URLs.
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
In Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock updateThis seems to be a significant problem: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/493#issuecomment...
TL;DR: In order to detect ad blocks sites create "bait" URL's that look like ads, but are purely there to detect if ad blockers block them. The only reason to do that is to punish the user for using a ad blocker, perhaps by nagging them, perhaps by refusing to display or load the content entirely. UBO responded by making bait URL's appear to work by redirecting them to local resources. Sites responded to that by putting required content behind bait URL's. So UBO now uses a number of dynamic heuristics it uses to detect what is bait and what isn't. Those heuristics aren't possible in V3.
My guess is UBO ability to change it's behaviour for every site based on what the site did created never ending war between ad blocker detectors an
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d UBO. Engaging in that war too much effort for a lot of web sites to engage in, which is why you don't see too many ad blocker detectors. With advent of V3 this dynamic will change, as UBOL will have one hand tied behind it's back. My prediction is once V3 comes in, a lot more sites will start demanding you disable UBOL - but they won't notice the presence of UBO.
Exactly as they intended. They can claim all they want that this is for security and that they're "supportive" of adblockers, but if you read the meeting minutes it's clear that they're just phoning it in in terms of the API surface needed to properly support adblocking against a hostile web.
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/56dc974e5d583d6989...
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/01ac3748984f31885c...
In Google is killing one of Chrome's biggest ad blockersIt sure is awfully convenient that MV3 by design will prevent referal-stripping extensions
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
(By the way, the meeting minutes are all published so you can read exactly how they're conspiring to kill your privacy and security. Take note of how many times they decide not to implement something citing that they don't want to engage in a cat-mouse game. How benevolent of them, to make the hard decisions on our behalf.)
In About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon no longer be supported"That’s wrong: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions
In Show HN: I made a CLI tool to create web extensions with no build configurationI've edited my comment to also include a link to the Chrome docs, but that FAQ entry also has the link to an issue in the webextensions repository indicating it's a limitation of MV3: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/112
In Chrome's next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updatesGoogle outlawing dynamic code in Web Extensions/mv3 is a travesty of high order. There's no place I want to be able to be more alive than my agents. Yet my agents must all be dead. For shame, ye villains.
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/139
This post definitely was quite a technical explanation. The opening framing, to me, means the world.
In There are no strings on meThe other big change of mv3 that gets no coverage but which is dear to me is that mv3 outlaws any kind of dynamic code. The whole app has to be statically defined. This makes it much easier to know what's running, since an extension can no longer go pull in extra code, but it greatly reduces what you can do as an extension too. Extensions have to have all behaviors predefined. I can't dial home & load my behaviors. Here's the issue, https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/139
For a while it meant that userscripts didn't have any way to run. So Google introduced a new API for user scripting. But those extensions only run in "developer" mode. I'm guessing that means when devtools are open?
I agree a lot with your premise. It sure seems like Google is targeting everyone with these changes, but that better real affordances & escape hatche
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s need to be builtin to not maim the lives of power users. It took a long long time to come up with a userscript solution, and it seems like an awful doesnt-work-for-me workaround (I use userscripts not to dev but to modify everyday experiences). Chrome just hasn't been taking their obligation to user agency seriously; they can't just start treating everyone as needing huge protective walls all at once.
Hi, Privacy Badger dev and coauthor of a bunch of EFF posts about MV3. Here are some thoughts.
We wrote the following call to action a couple of years ago in https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-st...
> Google needs to cancel moving to service workers, restore blocking webRequest, and halt Manifest V2 deprecation until all regressions in functionality are addressed.
To their credit, Google did halt MV2 deprecation. They fixed bugs, filled in functionality gaps (examples: userScripts API, the Offscreen API cludge), and made a number of improvements to DNR, their limited-by-design replacement for the powerful and flexible webRequest API. Google also relaxed their initial, entirely unreasonable service worker lifetime requirements.
So where are we now with service workers and DNR?
The requirement to base extensions on se
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rvice workers adds complexity and headaches to developers, but because of various policy changes and workarounds, it is no longer the issue it was two years ago. Google put in a lot of effort to make service workers kind of work for extensions. I think the end result is it's now harder to make a browser extension, but service workers are no longer a deal breaker.
However, blocking webRequest is still mostly gone, unavailable outside of a specific proxy authentication use case, and DNR is still not an acceptable replacement.
There are still outstanding functionality gaps such as https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302, which is interesting in that much of the tracking that privacy extensions are no longer able to properly handle is by Google!
But more importantly, DNR is fundamentally not an adequate replacement for webRequest.
As we wrote in https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-st...
> [R]emoving blocking webRequest won’t stop abusive extensions, but will harm privacy and security extensions. If Manifest V3 is merely a step on the way towards a more "safe" (i.e., limited) extensions experience, what will Manifest V4 look like? If the answer is fewer, less-powerful APIs in service of “safety”, users will ultimately suffer. The universe of possible extensions will be limited to what Google explicitly chooses to allow, and creative developers will find they lack the tools to innovate. Meanwhile, extensions that defend user privacy and safety against various threats on the Web will be stuck in the past, unable to adapt as the threats evolve.
The gist is that we now all depend on Google to keep evolving the API to keep up with advertisers and trackers. Google is a massive advertising company. Chrome extensions already had one "lost decade", where nothing much happened until the Manifest V3 proposal.
It's just not a good idea to let Google hold the keys to anti-tracking tech.
DNR is better than at launch, but still full of feature gaps. How do you match a redirect response? How do you robustly rewrite URLs based on query parameters?[1]
The fundamental problem is that DNR is not an adequate replacement for webRequest. From something I wrote[2] a couple of years ago:
> [R]emoving blocking webRequest won’t stop abusive extensions, but will harm privacy and security extensions. If Manifest V3 is merely a step on the way towards a more "safe" (i.e., limited) extensions experience, what will Manifest V4 look like? If the answer is fewer, less-powerful APIs in service of “safety”, users will ultimately suffer. The universe of possible extensions will be limited to what Google explicitly chooses to allow, and creative developers will find they lack the tools to innovate. Meanwhile, extensions that defend user privacy
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and safety against various threats on the Web will be stuck in the past, unable to adapt as the threats evolve.
[1] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-st...
We lose the ability to innovate. The browser (Google) becomes the gatekeeper. And yes, we lose CNAME filtering.[1]
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/151#issuecomment...
Google is an advertising company. Chrome extensions already experienced a lost decade, where nothing much happened until the Manifest V3 "proposal". It's not a good idea to let Google hold the keys to anti-tracking tech.
[1] I stand corrected, DNS lookups are not part of webRequest in MV2 Chrome either. This doesn't change my larger point.
In Google resumes transition to Manifest V3 for Chrome extensionsPrivacy Badger dev here.
The most interesting thing from the post may be that fixing tracking redirects is partially broken in Google’s Manifest V3: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
Google also happens to be a major link mangler and tracker.
So, link cleaner (and generally privacy) MV3 extensions in Chrome can only offer a half-broken experience to their users. A Chrome dev recently expressed support for fixing this in the issue linked above, but MV3 is already required for all new extensions in Chrome Web Store.
In New Privacy Badger removes tracking links in more Google products> I wonder if the main obstacle to (actual) cross-browser extensions isn't so much technical but rather political.
Normally when browser folk talk about "cross-browser extensions," we're not focusing on the distributable package so much as the source code. As you suggest, there are a variety of reasons that browsers aren't terribly interested in having a single authoritative distribution channel. For that matter, the packaging format is explicitly not something we intended to discuss in the WebExtensions Community Group[1]. While we diversity in how extensions are marketed and distributed, we want the actual code of the extensions to be as reusable as (reasonably) possible.
[1]: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/
In Firefox users may import Chrome extensions now> the extension APIs are standardised enough that this is actually possible a lot of the time
A bit off topic, but as a co-chair of the WebExtensions Community Group[1] (WECG) I'm a bit touchy about the calling WebExtensions "standardized." A few years back the Browser Extensions Community Group[2] created a spec for WebExtensions, but it never reached a state that we'd normally refer to as a web standard. (Technically W3C community groups can only produce "Reports" and these documents are not on the standards track.[3])
FWIW, I'm very bullish about specifying and (hopefully) standardizing the WebExtensions platform. I'm especially excited about having a good chunk of dedicated time to sit with browser folks at TPAC 2023[4] and try to work out some open questions about where we're going and how we're going to get there.
[1]: https://gith
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