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LibreWolf time too.
Zen is nice
Zen was amazing when they first came to light, but they keep changing how workflows work, and it destroyed the workflow I had.
For example, I am a browser minimalist. I don't need workspaces, and I don't have thousands of tabs open, because that's insane to me, personally. I now have to see the ugly Default Workspace at the top of my tab bar every time I go to open or switch tabs. This was an option before, so it was perfectly fine. They've taken that option away, which is very much not okay. Options are good. They also messed around with the New Tab icon, making it to where I couldn't move it to the bottom where I prefer it to be, instead putting it at the top, which is extra movement needed to get to the top.. They later added that back in, but again, why the fuck are you just willy nilly taking options away from people? It should just be an OPTION.
Anyway, I've had so many headaches with their approach to changing workflows that I don't even recommend it to anyone any longer. I'm sure I'm just the crazy person who wants some of the offerings, while not being FORCED to use some of the others. :)
Yeah, I hate how projects become allergic to options. If you want to push your own agenda with new defaults, okay fine, but never ever remove options, let people keep it how they liked it.
I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated... Intel Xe graphics.
Personally I keep a copy of chromium around just for Google meet. Everything else is on Firefox.
Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”
It's slowly turning, too. Start looking for something else.
We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn't it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don't have one yet.
Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still
From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed
BSD licensed
Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.
(I almost just said "copyleft," but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)
Who fucking uses edge?
90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there's essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We're back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.
It's not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that's not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery. I haven't seen a "best viewed in Chrome" for a decade or two.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery.
Yet. I lived through the first browser war (Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer) and I'd estimate we're right about the year 2000 ish. At that time both browsers were still active and reasonably well supported but it was clear that IE was going to win and somewhere in the IE6 / IE7 (2004 / 2006) time frame is when the real fuckery started. Since Edge started using Chromium in 2018(ish) we're basically following the same schedule from two decades ago.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
Sadly this is the same thing we said back then too and we (IT & the tech community) pushed hard to get people to leave IE and adopt Chrome.
What's Edge?
The thing you use once to download firefox, and then never again.
Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we've learned since html/css was invented? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/css, have a new UI layout system that's simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.
Basically browsers are big because they are operating systems for web hosted applications with huge attack surfaces and lots of legacy compatibility requirements amassed over 3 decades.
A rewrite isn't the answer. Putting limits on browser functionality is. JavaScript was the turning point IMHO.
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we've learned since html/css was invented?
Probably a lot better. The difficult, and expensive, part is getting everyone to migrate over to this new standard, not because it'd be unfeasible but because companies don't want to spend any time or money on things that they don't think will make them profit.
What we'd need is, for example, the EU realizing that Google's attempted monopoly on the internet is dangerous and requiring a certain standard for private consumer-facing websites to get the ball rolling.
If you don't want to be compatible with what millions of websites are written in (because that's the complicated part), you now have to convince all of them to invest lots of money to migrate to your new web standard... Good luck...
Just in case you needed another reason not to use Edge.
Chrome* or Chromium based browsers*
Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you're a web power-user / developer sort of person
Zen's glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
Microsoft Edge is literally Google Chrome button replaced with Microsoft Features/Spyware
Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?
Tell IT and your boss how your productivity tanked since edge disabled uBlock.
Click on all the ads and install all the malware. That will teach them.
people use edge? it downloads itself onto your computer without permission.
Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android
Mull is not maintained anymore. However there is a fork called IronFox.
Right, you don't need extensions, because you don't need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.
I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.
A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.
BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.
Perfect time to check out AdGuard Home. Trivial to install locally. Probably took less than 3 minutes to install and get it operating. Hardest part was updating my router config. (Goddamn Google WiFi!)
Then you can focus on getting a better browser. Support libre software and check out LibreWolf.
Yeah, if you didn't see that writing on the wall you need your eyes testing.
No Chrome browser will be maintained to keep using Manifest V2.
Use Firefox.
oh look at that. It's 'chromium based browsers are garbage o'clock.'