This is a plugin I found recently and really enjoy. It gives you the opportunity to redirect several webpages to alternatives. For example Youtube to FreeTube or Piped. If I search for youtube in Firefox, FreeTube automatically opens and shows me my feed. I like it, I use it, I can recommend it.
Any reason for making a new extension instead of creating a FastForward filter list?
Never heard of Fast Forward before, only LibRedirect. How do they compare?
Edit: They appear to be totally different use cases
Same use case, different intentions. Both can redirect sites based on domain.
Unless I found the wrong extension, Fast Forward simply skips short URL redirects where as LibRedirect redirects you to FOSS (for the most part) front end alternatives.
FastForward has too main parts: URL redirection and Crowd Bypass. URL redirection changes the URL based on a regex (actually, it’s based on JavaScript, but most rules just detect with regex), of which domain redirection is a subset. Crowd Bypass is for link shorteners that give a unique ID for all links. FastForward includes both, including rules for both.
From what I can gather, Fast Forward is more of an alternative to Redirector rather than LibRedirect.
I did some digging: FastForward could specify custom filters during the Manifest v2 days. However Google disallowed executing unpacked/unsigned code in their Manifest v3. This disabled all custom filter lists, and is yet another reason ublock origin isn’t moving to v3.
Isn’t LibRedirect just FastForward/Redirector with baked-in rules?
It’s like comparing apples to oranges, both are fruit but very different. LibRedirect has a nicer UI than Redirector and also has content discovery mechanisms for each of the supported sites as well as the ability to ping each instance and TOR support.
Redirector is just an extension that takes URI, passes them through a REGEX find/replace and then sends the user to said new URL.
I keep thinking about installing this, but the required permissions seem a bit excessive:
This add-on needs to:
- Input data to the clipboard
- Access your data for all websites
Anyone know if the ‘All Access’ permission is really required for what this is doing? It just feels wrong. There isn’t some sort of “Control Navigation for These Domains” that it could request for each enabled site or something is there?
It’s open source, you can ask the author and other users about it too (if you can’t read the code yourself)
Oh, I’m confident(-ish) in my ability to review the code, but as I understand it I have no way to guarantee that the code that’s on github is the code that AMO installs. Plus updates are automatic, so I have no way to ensure that something malicious won’t be added anyway.
You can build it yourself from source then.
You can only do that with Firefox Developer, can’t you? And IIRC, they self uninstall after a week or something, don’t they?
You can either install it unsigned with Firefox Developer Edition and it will be permanent. Or you can sign it yourself (you don’t need to publish it on AMO): https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-and-distribution-overview/ and it will work on regular Firefox.
“Access your data for all websites” is important because otherwise it doesn’t know what domain you’re on in the first place.
Access browser tabs
Access browser activity during navigationare enough to do that.
Maybe the devs don’t know that. Could you open an issue on this?
Asking you because you may know more about these permissions than me.I’ve been using the addon for some time, and while it’s good now, there were some silly mistakes in the past. What I’m trying to say is that maybe they’re just relatively a beginner, and it haven’t yet occurred to them to revisit the permissions.
Shouldn’t it just require access to i.e. YouTube.com and not a blanket everything? This is what other extensions do.
It can redirect a dozen other services too
Just add them to the list. They have to code separate rules anyway.
It’s open-source so you don’t need to worry
I would suggest Redirector.
It lets you redirect any site you desire.
Sadly the developer passed away. I found out after looking into the development when trying to edit some redirects brought my phone to its knees. It’s a good extension, but clearly needs a bit of love.
RIP Einar Egilsson
Removed by mod
