Decentraleyes < LocalCDN

[sinfulosd]

We all know that nowadays, the majority of the websites uses Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to provide the majority of the content on their websites to the users, but that comes along with privacy concerns that the user faces whenever they visit the majority of them because these scripts can also spy on you.

And this is where Decentraleyes Add-on comes in hand. It stores these scripts locally and run them instead, making it more private and even faster in some cases.

But wait a minute... The Add-on's last update was back in April 19, 2021. a lot of stuff on internet has changed and this Add-on is not like ηMatrix where it doesn't require that much of maintenance. This Add-on requires a regular check to see if it gets the job done as of right now or not. The fact that this Add-on hasn't been updated for more than 3 years can give the indication that it could be outdated for Pale Moon's current browsing experience.

Now, I sent him an E-mail to ask him to update the Add-on on Pale Moon to make it better and more up-to-date,

But after some research, I found that there could be a better idea.

Enter LocalCDN , the Extension that we may need right now.

According to this Reddit post comment here by the developer of the extension himself

The biggest difference is that LocalCDN currently supports 108 frameworks instead of 15. A few more CDNs are also included. An additional feature is the HTML filter, which removes some special attributes from the source code of a website to replace more frameworks. This HTML filter and the icons are unfortunately only supported by Firefox and not Chromium based browsers.

The Extension seems promising, the developer seems to be more passionate and a lot more active (The Extension was literally updated a week ago as of today's date), and it supports more than 100 frameworks instead of the one that only targets 15 frameworks.

The only downside of the extension is that it is only developed on Firefox, due to the browser containing a feature called "HTML filter" which suits the developer's idea of a more private and powerful browser.

Now, I could send him a drafted E-mail that is saved on my draft inbox, but I'm still new here in the community and I don't know if Pale Moon even supports "HTML filter" on its engine or not.

But even if it does support it, and even if it somehow even showed the extension developer that Pale Moon is even better than Firefox, I highly doubt it would be easy to convince him to support another version of it to a completely different browser, as my prediction of his response could be "It's a different engine, It's a different technology to develop extensions on it, etc..."

That's why I decided to post here on this forum with all of its community to propose an idea. We either:

[*]Wait for "Decentraleyes" developer to respond to me and update the Add-on on Pale Moon. (Keep in mind that even in Chrome and Firefox, he updates them once every 6 months or so) (Less likely to happen)
[*]One of the core developers of Pale Moon would be able to convince LocalCDN developer to add a version of it to Pale Moon (It's a possibility, but it's easier said than done)
[*]Someone decides to create a fork of LocalCDN and upload it here on the Add-ons website, along with all of its codes migrated to UXP. (My opinion that this one is the most productive one out of them all)

I really wish I could've been the one who would've forked LocalCDN to Pale Moon, but my knowledge of UXP is almost nonexistent.

So this is a humble request to whoever that can fill a big shoe and provides a fork of an Add-on that is very important to use in today's world of internet.

[moonbat]

It's worth a try asking him. Meanwhile I've installed it on Floorp and it looks promising.

[sinfulosd]

Does Pale Moon supports HTML filter though? This might seem to be the dealbreaker to the developer.

[Moonchild]

It depends on what is meant with "HTML filter". If that is a WebExtension API, then it'll have to be adapted to our platform; we do fully support rewriting anything in the document (in transit, even! See e.g. the instances of http response editing that has been used regularly to fix sites) and allow access to much lower level APIs in the browser that WebExtensions will have access to. Pale Moon extensions can do anything a WebExtension would be able to and much more, but it will require different code.

[sinfulosd]

It depends on what is meant with "HTML filter". If that is a WebExtension API, then it'll have to be adapted to our platform...

I don't think it has something to do with the WebExtension API as it seems to be exclusive to Firefox and it doesn't exist in Chrome.

I did a quick research about it and I found a link of Ublock Origin that is officially made by Gorhill and he speaks about why Firefox is the best to combine with Ublock origin and he stated a lot of reasons. One of them was HTML Filtering

He stated

HTML filtering is the ability to filter the response body of HTML documents before parsing them by the browser.

For example, this allows the removal of specific tags in HTML documents before they are parsed and executed by the browser, something not possible in a reliable manner in other browsers. This feature requires the webRequest.filterResponseData() API, currently only available in Firefox.

This could be interesting if there's an equivalent to it on Pale Moon. It seems like we're not getting the full potential of a lot of add-ons, even after being forked into UXP technology.

Edit: It turns out that from this link right here that it is indeed something that is related to WebExtension API. I was just confused that it doesn't exist on Chrome and it only exist on Firefox. I'm so stupid

[moonbat]

See e.g. the instances of http response editing that has been used regularly to fix sites)

I went through the extension code, not knowing anything well about WE development and what they're doing can be done using response editing. However it's better to fork the existing Decentraleyes for Pale Moon and integrate the additional CDNs since it's already working.

This could be interesting if there's an equivalent to it on Pale Moon.

Already present for years.

[sinfulosd]

Alright, guys. LocalCDN's extension developer responded to my email.

This is what he responded to me.

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words.

Unfortunately, Pale Moon requires a very large conversion and a completely different addon, because the technologies supported by the browser are extremely different. Firefox and Chrome only support
WebExtensions and LocalCDN is a WebExtension.

The Pale Moon roadmap says:
“We will not be supporting WebExtensions of any kind in Pale Moon”
https://www.palemoon.org/roadmap.shtml

This means first of all we need to completely rewrite everything and then maintain two extensions at the same time. That's a lot of work. Unfortunately, too much to do on top of my regular work and my
family. If someone from the community wants to do this, I will of course help as much as I can.

Best regards
nobody

I responded with:

I'd like to thank you so much for responding to me. It really means a lot.

And I understand that I'm probably asking for a lot of effort on your end in regards to developing the extension on a completely different technology here.

I really hope you do not mind, but I've made a forum post on Pale Moon in regards to the whole situation that we have in developing LocalCDN on Pale Moon

you can find it here: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=31373&p=253542#p253542

I posted your answer on the forum post and there might be a huge chance that you would get to speak with one of the core team of Pale Moon anytime soon, since they are very interested in your extension and wanna migrate your code into their technology.

Or you could create a new account on the forum and even reply inside the post and speak with them. They are very friendly and very cooperative. I'm sure you guys could get into an agreement and this would benefit both parties and it will be a HUGE win for the internet.

I personally cannot wait to see how this will go.

I'm very excited to see how this entire situation will go. I hope this would be my contribution, not only to Pale Moon development, but also to the entire internet and for helping in creating an alternative browser that would be viable for everyday use.

[Moonchild]

As already suggested it would be better to fork Decentraleyes and work on what is already there. The main issue with it is that it has not been updated with local copies of what framework versions are actually in use on the web. This kind of extension needs continuous maintenance to remain effective.

[sinfulosd]

As already suggested it would be better to fork Decentraleyes and work on what is already there. The main issue with it is that it has not been updated with local copies of what framework versions are actually in use on the web. This kind of extension needs continuous maintenance to remain effective.

Well, since we both agree that this type of extension is in need of a continuous maintenance, unlike say ηMatrix, then it won't really matter if we just forked the old XUL version of Decentraleyes and just added the new CDNs on top of it. This would replicate the same issue that we have right now, which is the extension being outdated for today's websites, only for that to happen in like 1-2 years from now.

The better resolution is if we managed to get Nobody's help on it and him personally giving all the new changes to whoever that decides to maintain the UXP version of the extension here. My opinion is that this is the most optimal and the most effective route to take with the development of the new version of either we call it Decentraleyes or LocalCDN (If we're gonna get his help, then we have to call it LocalCDN).

Let us not judge too fast. Maybe he is not that reluctant with the idea of supporting another version of his extension to Pale Moon.

Off-topic:
Is there a possibility to have vannilla to possibly become the new maintainer of the new version of Decentraleyes or LocalCDN? I feel like he could fill such a big role, but also a lot of other people could fill the same role, that I'm not aware of their presence.

[Moonchild]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Both of these extensions do effectively the same thing. Both need to be constantly updated as new versions of remote frameworks come out and are used. It's pointless for the LocalCDN dev to do double work when Decentraleyes already exists; it (Decentraleyes or a fork, compatible with Pale Moon) just needs a maintainer for keeping the locally supplied copies of CDNed resources up-to-date, and the rare occasions when the extension code needs to respond to core changes in the browser.

[vannilla]

Akshually, XUL extension require very little maintenance regardless of their goals.
Sure, in this specific case there is an actual cost in porting over the existing code, but once you do it how much do you actually need to do afterwards?
Assuming "constant updates" of the existing codebase means changing a list of URLs and/or adding and removing a file, then that's also what you need to do for the XUL version.
You don't need to change the actual extension code or do other "low level" maintenance. If you do, it's only to add new features, not to keep up with existing ones.
In fact, considering the history of WebExtensions, we can argue that XUL extensions require much less work: the APIs are effectively frozen unlike WebExtensions which can get new ones or have old ones removed (e.g. Manifest v3).

[moonbat]

Assuming "constant updates" of the existing codebase means changing a list of URLs and/or adding and removing a file, then that's also what you need to do for the XUL version.

It would require downloading the latest versions of each framework and adding them to the extension, since that's how it works - by caching them locally. Both extensions are several MB in size as a result, huge compared to the average extension.

[vannilla]

It would require downloading the latest versions of each framework and adding them to the extension, since that's how it works - by caching them locally. Both extensions are several MB in size as a result, huge compared to the average extension.

The size of the distribution is not the issue, I'm just saying that if all it takes to update is downloading the files and placing them together with the extension proper, then the XUL port requires the same amount of work than the WebExtension one after the porting is done, which means if you automate the process you get zero-cost maintenance for the UXP-based code.