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Fri, 05/31/2024 – 12:08

In November 2023, we shared a timeline for the phasing out of Manifest V2 extensions in Chrome. Based on the progress and feedback we’ve seen from the community, we’re now ready to roll out these changes as scheduled.

We’ve always been clear that the goal of Manifest V3 is to protect existing functionality while improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness of the extension ecosystem as a whole. We appreciate the collaboration and feedback from the community that has allowed us – and continues to allow us – to constantly improve the extensions platform.

Addressing community feedback

We understand migrations of this magnitude can be challenging, which is why we’ve listened to developer feedback and spent years refining Manifest V3 to support the innovation happening across the extensions community. This included adding support for user scripts and introducing offscreen documents to allow extensions to use DOM APIs from a background context. Based on input from the extension community, we also increased the number of rulesets for declarativeNetRequest, allowing extensions to bundle up to 330,000 static rules and dynamically add a further 30,000.

This month, we made the transition even easier for extensions using declarativeNetRequest with the launch of review skipping for safe rule updates. If the only changes are for safe modifications to an extension’s static rule list for declarativeNetRequest, Chrome will approve the update in minutes. Coupled with the launch of version roll back last month, developers now have greater control over how their updates are deployed.

Ecosystem progress

After we addressed the top issues and feature gaps blocking migration last year, we saw an acceleration of extensions migrating successfully to Manifest V3. Over the past year, we’ve even been able to invite some developers – such as Eyeo, the makers of Adblock Plus – and GDE members like Matt Frisbie to share their experiences and insights with the community through guest posts and YouTube videos.

Now, over 85% of actively maintained extensions in the Chrome Web Store are running Manifest V3, and the top content filtering extensions all have Manifest V3 versions available – with options for users of AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin and AdGuard.

What to expect next

Starting on June 3 on the Chrome Beta, Dev and Canary channels, if users still have Manifest V2 extensions installed, some will start to see a warning banner when visiting their extension management page – chrome://extensions – informing them that some (Manifest V2) extensions they have installed will soon no longer be supported. At the same time, extensions with the Featured badge that are still using Manifest V2 will lose their badge.

This will be followed gradually in the coming months by the disabling of those extensions. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time after the extensions are disabled, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on, but over time, this toggle will go away as well.

Like any big launches, all these changes will begin in pre-stable channel builds of Chrome first – Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary. The changes will be rolled out over the coming months to Chrome Stable, with the goal of completing the transition by the beginning of next year. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.

We’ve shared more information about the process in our recent Chrome extensions Google I/O talk. If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to reach out via the Chromium extensions mailing list.

Posted by David Li, Product Manager, Chrome Extensions

About a week ago I reported on a case study from Dell and FreeBSD, about Dell’s ThinOS thin client operating system, which basically consists of a proprietary Dell GUI running on top of, at the moment, FreeBSD 12 (they’re moving to FreeBSD 14 for the next ThinOS release). Well, this got me interested – I’ve always been fascinated by thin clients, and a Dell/Wyse FreeBSD ‘distribution’ is just wild enough to be interesting – so I went onto eBay, and bought a Dell thin client. More specifically, I bought a Dell OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client, which comes with an Intel Pentium Silver N6005, a four core CPU without hyperthreading, 16 GB of RAM, a 32GB eMMC storage chip with room for a small M.2 SSD, WiFi 6, Ethernet, USB 3.0, 2.0, and C ports, Bluetooth, and so on. A low-power, but still quite capable little computer that I snagged for a mere €130, which is a steal compared to the full unit price; my configuration is sold new for like €700-800. Of course, these things are sold in batches of hundreds or maybe even thousands of units, and in such volumes corporate clients get massive discounts. Still, it’s a nice deal. My model came installed with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which I was not at all interested in. I immediately downloaded the latest ThinOS version for my model, used Dell’s tool and instructions to create a bootable USB, and got to work. The installation process was quick and easy, and does indeed look like an automated FreeBSD installation, TUI and all. After the installation is completed, you get guided through a first-run experience to configure things like the keyboard, WiFi, and so on, and it looks rather fancy. Once I completed the first-run experience, I hit the roadblock I was expecting: in order to use ThinOS, you need a ThinOS Activation License. Since my device was originally sold with (I think) Ubuntu preinstalled, it doesn’t have a TAL in its UEFI, and the only way to push a TAL to a device is to use the Dell Wyse Management Suite. Sadly, the Dell WMS only runs on Windows, and to make matters far worse, only on Windows Server. And it gets even worse – even if I created a Windows Server VM just to run WMS, I need the Pro version, which isn’t free (the free Standard version cannot push TALs), and I’d need to buy a TAL. Aside from the Windows Server restriction, I was aware of these limitations and requirements, so I’m not in the least bit surprised. I was curious to see if buying a TAL was an easy experience, or if it’s entirely geared towards enterprise customers and silly hobbyists like me need not apply. Without a license, I can use the proprietary Dell user interface, but it seems I can’t connect to any possible VDI providers, and I can’t tell what other features might be gated at the moment. With some admittedly very mild poking and prodding, I also haven’t been able to discover any ways of ‘leaving’ Dell’s proprietary GUI to get to a terminal. I’ll do some more prodding over the coming days. I’m not entirely sure where to go from here when it comes to seeing just how much you can do with ThinOS, which was my original goal for this project. I have a feeling the pro version of the Dell Wyse Management Suite is going to be rather expensive – I can’t find any pricing information, which confirms my suspicions – so I think the journey ends here. Unless any OSNews readers have experience with this stuff, and can point me to some tips and tricks to perhaps acquire and install a TAL some other way, there won’t be a more in-depth look at Dell’s weird version of FreeBSD on OSNews. Which sucks, but was to be expected when it comes to enterprise software. Mind you, this does not mean the hardware is going to waste. Not only are there other purpose-built thin client operating systems to experiment with, it is also a full-fledged tiny x86 computer with completely silent passive cooling and a free M.2 slot, so the possibilities are endless.