Future of Nano Project Firefox Port?

[LiCybora]

As someone misunderstand my future plan, let me put words at begin.

Nano Adblocker is abandoned at the time new upstream devs push their privacy policy. There is no plan to continue Nano Adblocker and urge user migrate to uBO. v1.0.0.154 is released, meaning the end of Nano Adblocker.

Nano Defender is planned to rename as a new project which is independent form any entities or people. I have never claimed abandon Nano Defender, unless I make a typo I do not notice and please let me know in this case.

If you don't trust, check my edit history of this thread.

---

As upstream project has been acquired by new developers, and until the time this issue post, no words are received from new upstream developers. It is time to reconsider the future of the port. Again, I am neutral to upstream decision. Everyone may have their hard time and it is their rights to decide what to do in their life. Do not blame anyone for that.

Initially, I am not hostile to the new developers, but the recent updates seems untrustworthy to me. Although their removal of privacy policy on Chrome Store is suspicious enough, the bigger issue is that every links found on Chrome store still link to the old developers repository, while the former developer claims he already lost control of his extension. Given that I cannot find their repository anywhere, nor neither they exist on the issue tracker to introduce themselves as new developers, I really doubt whether the "two developers" exist, as I don't see any reasons to hide themselves to their users. It is unlikely I will maintain this port for them under current situation, unless they at least show up on somewhere that can be interacted with. I hope these are just because they still not yet post or update anything in this early stage...

So, the remaining options will be abandon or maintain as a new project in worst case. But the later case is a tough job. Not only just two extensions, but also Nano Filters, NanoMeow and Nano resources. Without them, Nano Adblocker is just a uBO clone and Nano Defender is just some user scripts. Given that I am not as active and experienced as the upstream developers, I really afraid I will do more harm than benefit to user if I make mistake on that.

For now, I will release one more version of NA that update included the last former developer changes, but I am not sure what's next if still no words from upstream. ND may still be updated when needed as it is designed working on uBO as well even decided to detach from upstream. Related links of announcement will be included in release notes and README as well when released, which is supposed to be within two days.

I am still open to any decisions, including the new developers given that they are good but just I misunderstood them[1]. Decision is now firmed, see below.

---

TL;DR

• NA will most likely no longer receive future update unless upstream maintain themselves or at least, they contact me for that.
• ND may still be updated, but whether maintain independently from upstream depends on their stance. might be renamed and released as a new product deal to bad reputation of the name "Nano Defender" since Chrome 15.0.0.206 can be consider as malware.

NA and ND with LiCybora as author on AMO or on my GitHub repository are still under my control and independent from any entities or people.

[1] They update their privacy policy but still keep themselves stealth from GitHub, which means they are active and purposefully hide themselves. There is no point to maintain for an unidentifiable developer.

[LiCybora]

I will push one urgent update to disable issue reporter first, their new privacy policy is too shady for me.

[memories169]

i hope them can support you more

[LiCybora]

i hope them can support you more

Who are them refers to? If you mean "new developers", they are unlikely to support me because they refuse to being interacted with.

[memories169]

i hope them can support you more

Who are them refers to? If you mean "new developers", they are unlikely to support me because they refuse to being interacted with.

it's like that they are working on offical version for firefox??? maybe not?

[LiCybora]

The App Nano Adblocker and Nano Defender is an extension for Google Chrome internet browser.

Their privacy policy only claims for Google Chrome. They leave no words about Firefox so their stance are still unknown.

Similarly, the Edge version still showing the former developer name. Most likely they don't care at all.

[memories169]

Did you ask new devs for make a port version, or you did and they dont care about that?

[LiCybora]

New devs never show up or provide any ways to contact them. No one knows who they are and how to contact them except former developers. I can only ask via former developer and he reply he do forward the information to them, but I receive no words from them for more than a week.

Anyway, I decide not to port for them now. Many users are asking who they are for a week here, they still no-show, no reply.

[jspenguin2017]

A quick FYI: I still control legacy.hugoxu.com, but I will shut down my Quick Issue Reporter backend service later this week or early next week.

[jspenguin2017]

@LiCybora

Also for this: https://github.com/LiCybora/NanoCoreFirefox#what-should-i-do
I highly recommend users to manually copy settings instead. Below is part of the original project changes announcement that I drafted before the new developer(s) contacted me, I hope that it helps.

---

Migrating to uBlock Origin

Due to the many differences, I strongly recommend you to copy the settings over
manually instead of using the backup and restore feature. Below are the details
about the differences between Nano Adblocker and uBlock Origin which should
hopefully assist you with a smooth transition:

• Filter editor/viewer and syntax highlighter
  • uBlock Origin has its own editor/viewer which should be overall an upgrade,
    but a few minor features are missing:
    • Double-click to select domain is not supported (you can always drag to
      select)
    • Search and replace is not supported (you can use an external editor)
    • The search widget is simpler and lacked a few features (explicit mode
      toggles, search in selection, etc.)
      • It supports regular expression, so it is not really less powerful, just
        that it can be a bit harder to use
• Filter linter
  • uBlock Origin does not have display explicit linting warnings and errors,
    but its syntax highlighter is a lot better at highlighting invalid filters
• Extra redirect and script snippet (scriptlet) resources
  • The most useful resources became part of uBlock Origin over the years
  • You can load the rest into uBlock Origin with advanced settings, but this
    is strongly discouraged (since the extra resources are unmaintained), so
    please only do so if you are absolutely sure that you know what you are
    doing
• Quick Issue Reporter
  • You can still use the Quick Issue Reporter through Nano Defender
• Force scroll mode
  • Although less convenient, it is possible to emulate force scroll mode with
    a filter rule, simply replace example.com with the domain you want to
    force scroll

    example.com##*:style(overflow: auto !important;)
    

• Visualize hidden elements with the DOM inspector
  • It should start to work in uBlock Origin once this Chromium issue is
    resolved (you can star it to give it more weight):
    • https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1101473
• Short aliases for filter options
  • uBlock Origin now supports most of these aliases, with the exception being
    the iframe option, if you have custom filters using iframe, be sure to
    change them to frame
• Settings
  • Settings in the dashboard may have different default values and/or be at
    different places, when copying settings, be sure to read the description
    text for each option instead of going by the order in which the options
    appear
• Advanced settings
  • Nano Adblocker has different default values for some advanced settings,
    these are mostly subjective, but if you like the tweaked values better, you
    can copy them over
  • Nano Adblocker also has a few extra advanced settings options, but I
    question their usefulness since I never found myself using them
    • uBlock Origin does not have the force recompile button in the advanced
      settings page, but the button is only useful alongside the extra options
      that uBlock Origin does not currently have
• Other small changes
  • uBlock Origin swallows all script snippet (scriptlet) errors, this should
    only affect filter list maintainers, if you are affected, you can give the
    debugScriptletInjector advanced setting a try
  • uBlock Origin will only show the refresh button in the extension popup
    panel if there were changes, but you can simply use the native refresh
    button of your browser
  • Nano Adblocker comes with a slightly different set of default filter lists,
    you can subscribe to the extra filter lists if you want (be sure to check
    whether the lists are still maintained, remember that Nano Filters are no
    longer maintained!)
  • To hard purge cached assets in uBlock Origin, you need to click the button
    (in the filter lists tab of the dashboard) while holding both Ctrl and
    Shift keys, instead of either Ctrl or Shift
  • When restoring uBlock Origin to default settings, the statistics in the
    extension popup panel is not cleared, you can clear them by doing a
    reinstall instead of using the restore to default settings feature
  • Nano Adblocker caps filter lists update interval to 60 days, uBlock Origin
    does not enforce a cap
  • If configured in the assets manifest (which cannot be modified by users),
    Nano Adblocker will revert the update interval to a default value when the
    update interval header is removed, uBlock Origin does not have this feature
    • I do not even remember why I implemented this...

[LiCybora]

Thanks for the guide. I will add it and link it such that your past effort on this guide not waste but benefit users to migrate.

[jspenguin2017]

@LiCybora Do you want to maintain the Quick Issue Reporter? I can give you some of my backend code. Let me know if you're interested.

[LiCybora]

@jspenguin2017 Yes I am interested. If I have enough resources I can try to implement it.