The problem with Web Standards is that they’re so complete, broad and complex that it’s very hard as an independent team to get started writing a browser.
You’d have so little daily active users compared to the titans products (Chromium, Gecko, WebKit) that even if you made something super good, it would still be hard to guarantee website compatibility without faking the user-agents.
There’s also a lot of complexity involved in writing a sandbox for every instance of a website (tabs or iframe) and sharing information between multiple process. I don’t know how they do it in Chrome, but in Firefox they have a whole specification language for that which compiles to C++.
You also have to recreate the DevTools and other tooling for developers to adopt your browser and for you to debug any issues with your DOM renderer…
I love how much the web has to offer nowadays with technologies like WebRTC, WebSocket, Blobs, GamePad API, modern CSS3 but it has also the effect of locking us down into a tiny ecosystem.
I really their should be legislation on what companies can do with their browser because they’ve become such an important piece of the internet so they should serve public good.
I don’t know how to make it happen and I don’t even know if it’s a good idea when you consider the governance issues it would bring for open-source project.
I’m really passionate about this technology !
Unfortunately, there are only 3 companies developing browsers right now: Google, Apple and Mozilla.
Apple’s browsers are only available on Apple platforms. In fact, if you’re on iOS you have no choice, you have to use Safari. Even browsers labelled as “Chrome” or “Firefox” are actually Safari under the hood on iOS. But, on any non Apple platform, you can’t use Safari.
Google is an ad company, so they don’t want to allow ad blockers on their browser. So, it’s a matter of time before every kind of ad blocking is disabled for Chrome users.
Firefox is almost entirely funded by Google, so there’s a limit as to what they can do without the funding getting cut off. They seem to be trying to find a way forward without Google, but the result, if anything is as bad as Google if not worse:
“investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term;”
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/
All these other browser people like are basically reskinned versions of Chrome or Firefox. They have a handful of people working on them. To actually develop a modern browser you need a big team. A modern browser basically has to be an OS capable of running everything from a 3d game engine, to a word processor, to a full featured debugger.
It looks like it’s only a matter of time before there will be 0 browsers capable of blocking ads, because the only two companies that make multi-platform browsers depend on ads for their revenue, and both of them will have enormous expenses because they’re obsessed with stupid projects like AI.
Vivaldi on Linux and Windows is still good in my experience, and so far uBlock Origin for manifest v2 still works. I hope they keep v2 support forever, forking completely if they must.
I switched to Firefox the morning they disabled uBlock Origin.
I never left Firefox. It’s a fantastic browser.
Meanwhile ublock origin works fine in Fennec/Firefox Android.
LibreWolf if you want security, privacy and freedom
If you’re still using Chrome, do yourself a favour and install Firefox.
Let’s be honest: Everything that might be “worse” or “annoying” in Firefox for someone is not relevant in comparison to “no working adblocker available”. A browser without adblock is unusable
I haven’t actually found anything that doesn’t work on Firefox on my personal computer. At work we also use Firefox, and some things don’t work on it, but some things don’t work on chrome or edge either, it’s a hodge poge.
True, but if an adblocker no longer works on a specific browser, change your browser! I started using Netscape back in '94, and lost count on how many browsers I’ve tested and used in the past… Holy shit, 30+ years!!
Mosaic was awesome. Netscape 1 was pretty cool, but Netscape 2 and animated gifs… zowie! That was a day to remember.
30+ years!
…fuck off, '94 wasn’t 30… counts on fingers several times
…Shit…
It doesn’t sound right but it is. I think in ‘94 I was using Juno for email and internet. Shortly after that it was time to actually use one of the many AOL trial discs for service instead of a mini frisbee/ninja star.
Modem sounds, chat rooms, you’ve got mail. What a time to live!
Fuck. I got free internet for almost 5 years. So many AOL discs. 01, 02? Friend’s dad had a T1 connection put into their house for his work. The difference between T1 and the 56k I had at home? At home walk out the room, have a smoke, maybe ⅔ a boob loaded. At buddy’s house, that’s when I realised that the internet had the potential to change everything. Whole boob before you could even stand up.
Kids these days. No appreciation for how much struggle it used to be. Everything just. Just there. No bork the only computer in the house because boob.exe.
I know… Jurassic Park is 33 years this year. It would be like watching a movie from the 60’ when it was released.
We’re old, friend.
I’ve never hated my life more than right now…
In the past 10 years it’s pretty much just been Firefox, Safari, Explorer/Edge, and Chrome. 99% of browsers are just skinned Chrome. Even Edge now. Opera’s engine died in 2013.
99% if browsers are just skinned Chrome.
Yup. Hence, the reason I originally suggested to use Firefox, only because it’s not built on Chromium.
Hence, the reason I originally suggested to use Firefox
Just FYI, the word “hence” literally means “for this reason”. So you just said “for this reason the reason” lol.
Chill dude, I’m just going to the ATM machine to put in my PIN number to take out some money. 🤙
nottheopbutok
Chrome uses WebKit, safaris engine.
Chrome forked Webkit in 2012 to create Blink. It is reasonable to assume they have somewhat diverged since.
Ahhh TIL
They’re developed separately. It’s a hard fork so I consider them different.
Man I haven’t been around that long but I feel like some of my knowledge is outdated and I have to start with “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” because I stopped paying attention
What issues do people even have with firefox? Its a browser, it seems fast enough. Isn’t that all most people need from a browser
I very much dislike Mozilla’s direction over the last decade. They’re introducing user-hostile features that subtly break normal browsing experience, even when disabled[0]. Not like Google is better, but I’m also trying to get away from Mozilla.
[0] On Firefox Mobile, there’s a “feature” which makes the address bar auto-complete domains of companies paying Mozilla. I noticed this with Netflix - I never visit, but when I start writing a URL with n, roughly every 10th time Netflix was suggested. You can disable this feature, but this doesn’t actually disable it. The address bar no longer auto-completes with Netflix, instead it just doesn’t autocomplete! So 9/10 times I can write n and press Enter, but 1/10 times I press n and search for the letter n.
Mozilla doesn’t care whether they break features, as long as they can make more money. I strongly dislike this approach by the supposedly “good” browser manufacturer.
Do you have a good non chromium based alternative? To be clear I genuinely am asking those things make switching probably worth it considering how little of a hassle it is.
Sadly not, I’d also be interested in one!
isn’t chromium under the Linux foundation now? Might look at the options on that side.
GNOME Web if on Linux
This comment made me look into if KDE has one and apparently they do it even has built in ad blocking.
Off to compile for 3 hours. /j
Makes me remember when I used Konqueror with FF as a fallback before Chrome existed.
Is that Falkon? I’d use it if it could integrate with bitwarden.
Download fennec it’s the fork of ff mobile with less of the cruft.
I don’t know if it has fixed that specific problem, but I can’t recall seeing it
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll give it a try!
Security and sandboxing are important, weak points on the android implementation.
would Vivaldi on android be better? I really like having extensions on my browser and that’s the only other android one I know of that has them.
Edit: I was wrong apparently Vivaldi does not support extensions on mobile which is a bummer.
No horizontal tab grouping. Tab groups on Chrome are perfect, and the Firefox tab extensions all suck in comparison.
That said, I’m still using Firefox today because the internet is unusable without a good ad blocker.
I still use the full screen tab groups feature that they removed from the core. I don’t like scrolling tabs, so I can just hit a button and click on the exact tab I want. I do probably have too many tabs open tbh.
Tab groups and vertical tabs are at least on Nightly now; you can enable them in settings.
Too many people complain about the UI and claim it’s “outdated, ugly, unusable”. I find that funny because you can make FF look almost like anything you want, and I personally hate chrome’s UI.
Well, you USED to be able to, anyways, but they’ve slowly moved to a less customisable ui. Now you have to use extensions from outside websites to even do simple stuff like have a multi-row tab bar.
Not to mention Firefox seems to break them every year or so.
I’m one of those complaining about the UI. Used the TabMixPlus extension to adjust the UI to my liking. FF killed it. So, I started customizing the UI CSS. Every few versions, Mozilla changed the browser enough to invalidate my changes. After a while, I got tired of thiz and switched to Vivaldi, which is Chromium based.
Honestly I’m probably heading to Vivaldi after reading a lot of these things.
I have no idea either. Sure, chrome is a little faster but its a minor difference in my opinion. Been using it for a long time and have no idea why it’s so unpopular.
Also, keep in mind, google has been caught slowing Firefox down in YouTube before. So if you notice any slowness in their services, it’s fair to suspect it might not be Firefox’s fault.
Was
Isa little faster.No way it stays that way after blocking ad-blocking. Some websites genuinely take over 30s without ad block.
I advocate Firefox, but I must admit I personally am affected by regular crashes on Firefox desktop. Mostly when I enter a page I haven’t visited before (randomly though).
I don’t know if others are affected by this, and I still recommend Firefox regardless, but every crash leaves a sour taste in my mouth. As it is not widespread, it might just be my setup, but still.
That’s not normal. You should go to the support pages and see if there is a fix. And it could be an addon causing the issue, not FF itself. I had that issue many years back.
I did check the about:crashes page and it showed me that it seems to be related to “speechd init” and the crash itself is being linked with https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1794057
Having said that, I just disabled narrate, so maybe it goes away now.
If you have the time try the troubleshoot mode to help figure it out - add ons are often the cause
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-crashes-closing-or-quitting
Thats really weird. I have never personally had the issue but it is more and fair enough to have issues with FF after that. I would recommend brave then, still chromium based but is actively doing things to make sure their adblock still works.
I dont have issues with FF in general which would cause me to stop using it, while it is frustrating, not using something chromium based still outweighs that heavily. Its kinda of a matter of principle to me. E: clarification
In Australia it won’t save card details. And it can’t natively create app shortcuts for things like Gmail, keep, whatsapp etc.
I put up with it but it’s a pain compared to chrome and edge.
You could probably convince a third-party password storage program to store and auto-type details like that. Preferably one that doesn’t need internet access to work.
KeePass allows offline password management, though I am not sure if it supports card/ID autofill.
Bitwarden is mainly online only, but does support card/ID autofill and allows users to self-host their data if desired.
Not overly familiar with other password managers, but it would not surprise me if one of them out there has the best of both worlds.
Just double-checked with the help manual of the one I use (PasswordSafe) and it looks like it can do it. Never actually tried it though, which is one of the reasons I didn’t mention it previously.
At the risk of sounding like an ad (I’m not affiliated, just a someone who found it in their Linux distro’s package manager), there are versions of it for pretty much any device. I definitely can’t vouch for the feature set(s) of the other versions, though.
I know lastpass does but they lost my trust after the breach.
Main reason I don’t is cuz:
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
This only applies to android, not desktop use, and you couldn’t use uBlock on mobile chrome anyway so it is simply not relevant.
Other security implications are stilp valid.
They’re completely irrelevant to the average person.
If you want absolute perfection then sure, stick with Chrome but implying Firefox on GrapheneOS is insecure is misinformation.
upvoted for the spinny gif … weeeeeeeee C:
Firefox-based https://zen-browser.app/ if you want to get fancy
Thanks for this!! I became spoiled with Arc’s UI, but it’s a Chrome based browser. This looks like it’s the same experience without the bs.
Yeah. Zen is a bit newer and I’d say not quite as slick an experience yet, but it has come a long way in the last couple months and is getting very good
I’ve liked this one lately.
It’s a good thing I stayed loyal to Firefox. Mainly due to my dislike of change lol, but I was forced to use Chrome and it felt ominous with its owner being Google.
What is everyone’s thoughts on duckduckgo browser? I’m on grapheme os and have always used Firefox on my desktop
Why not use Firefox for android too?
duckduckgo browser is based on Chromium (as nearly every other “alternative” browser is) and therefore will use Manifest v3 and neuter uBlock.
i like waterfox https://www.waterfox.net/
Whats the advantage of Waterfox over librewolf?
Better defaults for the average user who isn’t looking for maximum privacy
fair enough makes sense. LibreWolf is real strict about it.
eh? no idea, never used it. these downvotes are wild to me. is waterfox bad somehow?
I don’t know either. This one of those cases I wish people would elaborate, since I don’t know much about waterfox so would welcome more insight into it.
in the early days, waterfox was simply a fork of firefox that provided 64bit support when the official builds didn’t. since then i’ve kept using it since it seems like firefox with better default settings for me. between 2019 and 2023 waterfox was owned by an advertising agency although they exerted no control over the software as far as i can tell, and everything remained open source. maybe some peoples info is outdated and they don’t know that the partnership ended 2 years ago. sorry for bad formatting i’m on mobile.
I have no idea. I did not downvote lol. Was genuinely trying to figure out if there was a reason to switch.
I would assume there is no issue until someone actually explains what the problem is.
wonder if they’re somewhere else in the thread naming other browsers. i looked up librewolf and it looks solid enough anyway.
I still find it interesting that the Vanadium browser in Grapheneos is Chromium based, with no possibility of extensions. I know this is for security reasons but it feels odd to still use chrome on my phone and Firefox everywhere else.
I just use a Firefox derivative there as well, because of Ublock. Tried Vanadium but the adblocking was just not good.
Which one are you using? I was looking at ironfox
Fennec right now, switched before Ironfox was out and now switching would be painful as there is no export, so all manual…
go to brave, chrome has been pretty anti-adblock for a while. chromium might have a problem since it uses chrome store for extensions.
Brave is full of adverts for crypto and is owned by a homophobe
It’s still the Chromium browser. Same problems, but now at the mercy of two corporations that are looking to turn a profit.
