Opening Up paraMatrix to Collaboration

Apr. 29, 2023 [libre] [technology] [news]

Today I am uploading my edits and additions made on top of xiMatrix as ‘paraMatrix’. It has a way to go before it can be considered webworthy. So I’m not yet dogfooding the extension although it will be a pet project of mine for the forseeable future. And anyone is invited to collaborate in its development!

There really are no explicit goals with paraMatrix aside from being an insurance policy against the disappearance of existing web request blockers. I am painfully aware that the current situation completely relies on that one guy in Nebraska doing thankless work. Raymond Hill has already shelved development on uMatrix and God forbid he ever gets hit by a bus or simply loses interest in maintaining his remaining tools. That is partially my motivation to continually explore other options for the Web Content Blocker Tier List.

Some of the niceties I’ve already bolted on so far include:

• A column for images, separate from audio/video
• Option to refresh the page with changes
• Dark theme
• Cleaned up the dialogs (and will eventually migrate them to a dedicated in-extension page)

Some bits from the README:

Why use xiMatrix as a basis instead of uMatrix?

xiMatrix is simpler with a smaller codebase and is therefore more suitable to hack upon. It is already built in the spirit of ‘do one thing and do it well’ and implements some of the features I would have liked to see added to uMatrix. uMatrix covers things which may be considered outside the scope of a web request firewall such as spoofing values and managing local storage.

Why not just contribute to xi’s xiMatrix?

He has clearly stated in his project that it is a personal tool and will not likely be extended further. I will, however, try to track changes to xiMatrix to incorprate into paraMatrix. Although it may eventually be spun off as its own fork.

Any and all contributions, be it aesthetic, techincal, big or small, are welcomed. If you would like to build the extension to try it for yourself, just clone the repo:

git clone https://gitler.moe/Wrongthink/paraMatrix.git

Then cd into the root directory and assemble the files into .xpi:

cd paraMatrix
zip -r -FS ../paramatrix.zip * --exclude '*.git*'.
cd ..
mv paramatrix.zip paramatrix.xpi

Either install it unsigned through <variation>Fox’s about:addons > Install Add-on From File… Or, for easy testing, through about:debugging > This <variation>fox > Load Temporary Add-on…

Rough edges abound, I will be slowly chipping away at them. Maybe it will amount to something, maybe not. We’ll see where this goes.