web browsers are such a data black hole

just configured your favorite extension exactly how you want? that configuration is hidden in some binary blob deep in the browser that you can never read, back up, or directly modify

just created a beautiful userstyle? that userstyle is hidden in some binary blob deep in the browser that you can never read, back up, or directly modify

just wrote an amazing userscript? that userscript is hidden in some binary blob deep in the browser that you can never read, back up, or directly modify

like, fucking why? would it really be so hard to store some of this data as JSON files? it feels like browsers are getting more and more tamper-unfriendly and magic-box-y every day and that makes me uneasy. I don’t like that I have to experience the internet through tamper-resistant software

@kasdeya firefox actually lets you export your custom browser themes, and do some crazy css formatting of the UI! I only found out recently

@theking that is really cool actually! I wish it was stored in a readable format to begin with so I could symlink it into my cloud storage to automatically back it up, but being able to export it is pretty nice

@kasdeya it is, sort of? its a bunch of css and stuff in a folder that can be synced easily

@theking ohh omg that’s amazing! I’m really glad to hear that

@kasdeya a lot of this is because they started out as entirely unrestricted environments — see the history of flash and other plugin exploits, for example — sandboxing was introduced for security, but yeah it was implemented in such a way that any persistent data is pretty opaque

@kasdeya this shows some of the crazy theming thats possible:
https://github.com/adriankarlen/textfox
(and this should work with native vertical tabs now too!)

@tempest ohh - interesting! I had no idea that it was because of sandboxing. obviously security is very important for browsers but I definitely wish they had found a way to store the data so that it could be read and modified by users and backed up from the filesystem

@theking woahh - I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Firefox theme that I liked the look of before lol but this is actually gorgeous; I love it

also I had no idea that they added native vertical tabs now! it’s a shame they don’t seem to nest or I might even be able to switch away from TreeStyleTabs