This is your hourly reminder that Brave is still Chromium and still contributes to Google’s influence over internet standards.
Iirc Firefox and I think Safari are the only major non-chromium browsers. It makes me so sad because I remember Google’s “don’t be evil” days… man they left that behind
they’ve lived long enough to become the bad guys
Safari already has attestation, has for a while, so while its at least a different browser, it’s still part of the problem.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. Safari is a piece of shit for other reasons too
Example reason why Safari is shit: It’s Safari
Yeah. They selectively adopt web standards years later than the others and the mobile and iPad versions in some ways behave completely differently from desktop (and each other). If safari just acted like the other browsers, frontend web dev would be MUCH easier.
Depends on which standards, for some css functions like backdrop-filters and mix-blend-modes it was years ahead of Firefox, where some of those had to be activated through about:config. I‘m glad Firefox catchend up in the past few years though. Also WebKit accelerated HTML5 adoption a lot.
Never had any major issues developing for Firefox, safari and chrome in the past few years though. It was quite a different story 10 years ago but nowadays 99% of the time, it works flawlessly between all major browsers for me.
I feel like you’re referring to Firefox literally 12 years ago or more. I’m talking about today. Literally any brand new standard is not supported for 1-2 years minimum. I run into problems with safari on a near daily basis. I rarely have a weird issue in Firefox. 99% of the time chrome and Firefox behave the same. The vast majority of the time that one browser has an issue others don’t, it’s safari. It’s weird to me to get pushback on this …
Anyone saying about duck duck go? Iv been using that and seems good
Their browser is webkit on iOS since apple doesn’t allow anything else on that platform. The mac version is also webkit. And the android version is - you guess it - blink, the engine used by chromium.
Doesn’t allow anything else on that platform yet*. Apple should be dropping the webkit requirement pretty soon and google and mozilla are already working on ios ports of their engines.
Source?? Very exciting if true. Haven’t heard this before
https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/
I think i heard a more definitive source as well since this one is a few months old that it should be coming with ios17.
Yeah I just googled and found that. Only problem is that it’s been 6 months and not a peep since. This is more of a policy piece than software (I think). Any reason why that capability would be tied to an os release?
Duckduckgo will stick with WebKit because they want to keep it native
What about Opera GX? The mobile and Desktop versions.
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The enshittification of Opera sucks… I used to like them when they had their own Presto rendering engine. I heard Vivaldi is the spiritual successor, but it, too, is based on Chromium.
Vivaldi isn’t just the spiritual successor, it’s built by the guy who made the original Opera. Its baked in Ad and Tracker blocking rival UBO and it has all the features Fox can only hope to barely emulate with Mozilla extensions.
I’ve got FF loaded up and set up how I like, but I won’t be switching over until Vivaldi doesn’t perform correctly.
The more you know
Still chromium underneath, just like the normal opera
:disintigrate.png:
chromium, and not even open source(from what i know)
It is good for privacy, but quality of results has always felt a bit lacking to me
That’s a search engine, chrome and Firefox are the browser. You can use duck duck go from either.
I haven’t heard anything negative about them yet.
I have the duck duck app on my phone, wasn’t sure if it was any different
I just looked it up and you’re right. Looks like they have a browser out now. My mistake.
I believe duck duck go sources their results from Google somehow. For whatever that’s worth
DDG aggregates from Yahoo afaik.
And I thought yahoo got it’s results from Google too… I probably have no idea though.
This is what DDG has to say about where their results come from:
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
Spoiler alert: It’s not Google or Yahoo.
Interesting. And Wikipedia says yahoo gets it’s search data from Bing.
I’m thinking about switching to Librawolf for the privacy features
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the CEO is also a homophobic bigot and covid denier
Had no idea! Thanks I’m getting off brave!
Thanks for pointing this out! I was already using Firefox, but after looking this up I found out that they also got rid of him for being homophobic.
Firefox it is!
i always use software for what it is, ignoring the beliefs of its creator, but ive already been using firefox, librewolf and mullvad browser since i moved to linux, and i have only been seeing people say stuff that shows chromium is worse. (except for people with no argument of course)
The CEO also donated to Prop 8 in California and a number of other bigoted conservative things.
This is your hourly reminder that default Firefox isn’t that great for privacy thus librewolf exist
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Honestly I dunno on this one. Someone likes foxes more than wolves I guess lol
Cool. If me choosing Brave over FF contributes to the demise of the useless, cash-grab scam which Mozilla is, I’ll happily continue using Brave.
I hate to be a pessimist but if people hate Musk as much as they seem to, but can’t leave twitter,
or post “Fuck Spez” thousands of times, but won’t leave reddit,
I’m cautious about how much of an exodous I expect to see from chrome.
I think its time we face the fact that most people will trade almost anything for convenience.
The piece that gets continuously underestimated is who moves in these small initial jumps. It tends to be the more technically inclined, who over the next couple years, their recommendations will lead to friends and family moving as well, at a slower rate.
The piece that gets continuously underestimated is who moves in these small initial jumps. It tends to be the more technically inclined, who over the next couple years, their recommendations will lead to friends and family moving as well, at a slower rate.
Sure. And here we are. I’m sure these companies consider us a real fly in the ointment. But I’m not inclined to believe the past is perfectly predictive of the future. What you described is also, in my perspective, how things have gone in the past. But will it happen the same way this time? I don’t know. I’m not confident based on what I’ve seen. They are trying to close in the walls on the internet and they are confident that people are too lazy to stop them.
If Internet Explorer managed to fall from 96% market share to complete irrelevance, Chrome is not immortal either.
You arent wrong. But, acectdata and mine own, convenience drove that. People are fucking lazy and hate nothing more than to be inconvenienced. When chrome was getting traction, explorer was trasshhhhhhhhh and every one knew it.
Chrome might be a bit bloated but its no explorer. If it doesn’t hurt people to stay, I don’t think we’ll see a shift.
Back then internet users werent normies, but nreds and tech savy people. Also, chrome learned from IE’s mistakes. It wont stop functioning and will keep updating, so the average normy user wont mind.
With the way every site is these days, removing adblock is worse than not functioning
I genuinely don’t know how Ill use the web without ad block. Cause I damn sure ain’t going back to paying for anti-virus like in the 90’s for a web experience that is objectively worse and less magical enough to risk it.
Drive by malware and viruses from ads has gotten scarily good at infecting systems without you knowing. It’s worse than ever as it’s not just a sketchy site issue thing anymore either. Even reputable sites have ads that only take one misclick to infect you now
Times have changed. The userbase that dropped IE was a vastly different one. With the internet being more accessible and more alluring to the massed (i.e. because of social media) convenience is king.
You made me proud of myself! I have left all three!
They better watch out. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
I shamefully still use chrome for work hehe
I cannot leave Twitter as I never used it.
Browsers at least, unlike social networks, don’t benefit from networking effects. How many people use a specific browser doesn’t directly affect the usefulness of that browser, as users of different browsers can interact with each other to the same degree as users of the same browser. For now at least, as Google’s Web Integrity API could obviously change that if websites start to require and some browser are unable or unwilling to provide it.
How many people use a specific browser doesn’t directly affect the usefulness of that browser, as users of different browsers can interact with each other to the same degree as users of the same browser. For now at least, as Google’s Web Integrity API could obviously change that if websites start to require and some browser are unable or unwilling to provide it.
Thats a great point and something to consider.
True. I MUST use Edge at work and honestly, its fine. Its not some radical departure from Firefox, i dont have to think too hard about the differences.
I switched to Firefox on windows and android on the same day as I saw that WEI bullshit.
I don’t know why the fuck I was thinking it would be a worse experience… It’s the same thing.
Bro wait till you install Linux.
It’s actually better as a stock experience than windows 11.
It’s actually better as a stock experience than windows
Don’t even need the 11 on the end.
I have used Ubuntu for a few months, and for me, windows 10 is still better.
Pessimist, but most likely right
Google broke on Firefox for a while a day ago for me. Went to some other search engine.
Jumping from social media is hard.
Jumping from applications is not.
teamspeak became Skype which became discord.
And many of us did leave Reddit. I didn’t even leave because I cared about the protests or what Reddit was doing. I left because many posts were deleted, people left, subreddits became abandoned.
Lemmy became better than Reddit basically overnight.
It is a slow process, most will still use it, but it will be less and less as time passes.
Twitter is a different beast, most of the people you follow on twitter are only active in certain groups.
All we can do is inform them and focus on what we do, no need to be stuck on what others do.
I just switched yesterday after learning more about why I should here in Lemmy.
The last time I tried FF (many years ago) it was incredibly slow, so I went with chrome. But the FF of today is actually noticably quicker.
Also, FF offered to import all of my bookmarks, autofills, passwords, history, and even my extensions (if a FF version exists of course, almost all of which did) and did so seamlessly. It was the easiest software switch ever.
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Why should I switch? Just curious.
Privacy and not being part of Google would be the biggest reason.
It also looks kinda nice, in my opinion.
It’s also faster than chrome now I think.
It’s also faster than chrome now I think.
Resource management is much better. Chrome will max out the RAM, which slows down the browser. Firefox handles that 100x better.
Apart from privacy concerns, Google has started to add some really bad features to Chrome, such as “Manifest V3” and “Web Environment Integrity”. These limit your ability to block ads or generally modify your device or the websites you’re visiting, and are just a bad for the web as a whole. WEI in particular is basically DRM for the web, so Google checks your device and denies you access to websites if they don’t like it. But as long as the majority of people keep using Chrome they can just force these things onto everyone.
My friggin’ Chromebook (which works great) can’t install FF.
I’ve tried rooting into Ubuntu, but, I can’t get it all straightened out. Until I notice truly diminished issues… I’ll use Chromebook as is.
You have 3 options:
- Enable Linux container and install FF in Linux: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/setup
- Install FF from Play Store
- If your Chromebook is old enough to not be capable of either, then you can wipe ChromeOS and install Linux bare-metal. mrchromebox.tech
Not even as an Android app? I’ve run Firefox from crostini as well but the Android approach is a lot easier.
I tried FF earlier this year. It sucked. Everything just took extra clicks. The password manager was a pain and didn’t interact with my phone apps properly.
I know the complaints against chrome. When it starts forcing me to watch ads I might try FF again.
Hey, at least installing a foss browser won’t slow down your phone like a spyware app, you could always try something like Mull even for only a portion of your browsing if you have ~80MB to spare. I suggest it because I hate some of that extra bullshit that comes with standard Firefox. Also there’s tons of projects that try similar stuff with Chromium! Like Mulch. Way better defaults than Chrome
Depending on which Chromebook it is, you can always install the Linux container and install it in there
The Android FF is not a great user experience for sure. On desktop it’s just fine but Android is janky. I tolerate anyway to support Firefox but chrome is miles better on mobile.
I can’t believe people still use Chrome, Firefox is better by a mile.
Idk, I’ve used both browsers and I prefer Chrome in terms of features and UI. But it’s not worth the privacy you get with Firefox
in terms of features
Like what? I can understand UI because that’s a personal preference but there’s nothing that Chrome does that Firefox doesn’t. Hell, allowing you to download app extensions on mobile browsers is a game changer. No ads and background play on YT has changed my life
I personally really miss being able to group tabs. I don’t think you’re able to do it on Firefox, right?
Firefox has extensions that can help with this, but I find the way Chrome does it extremely useful. I’d still choose Firefox, but there are certainly a couple of features that Chrome has that can be helpful
I use Firefox now and have most of this year.
One thing that annoyed me was how much more awkward it is to switch between two user profiles .
In chrome I have a work email a personal email, each with its own account, and a different look. I can immediately tell which I’m using, and can switch between them with the button at the top right.
I managed to mess around and find an extension which kind of does the same thing, so I’m no longer missing the feature, but it’s definitely jankier and doesn’t work as smoothly.
Also, I don’t know if it’s a bitwarden issue, but autofill hardly ever works properly.
Sometimes I want to pull a tab into its own window on the other screen. You’re not allowed to do this when the browser is full screen, only when it’s windowed. Annoying.
These are my only issues with firefox I can think of.
I put in a good faith effort to switch to FF earlier this year. I really wanted to like it. I consider myself an expert user to so it wasn’t just “I didn’t know what I was doing.” I recently switched back to Chrome. I hope FF gets better because I don’t like recent Chrome news.
Lol, to me you seem more of a bullshit user than an expert user. No offense…
Which features? Chrome is barebones imo while others like Edge and Opera are the “glorified” browsers with many features.
To add to the other person said: Tab Groups. Firefox doesn’t have anything like it
Was just about to say this. I finally switched today because Chrome tried to sign me up automatically for a bunch of ‘privacy enhancements’ which do the opposite.
The only thing I’m having trouble finding a good version of is tab groups.
I want tab groups that I can collapse and expand at will. Not one that hides my tabs, and which I can’t see two tab groups concurrently.
Firefox sorta does! If you only use tab groups (or profiles for that matter) to separate school tabs from work and personal tabs, I recommend giving the Multi-Account Containers extension a look.
PWA. Last time I seriously tried Firefox it’s support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) was non existent. When their issue tracker told me they have no plans for implementing it, I shed a single tear and then moved back to chromium.
I’ve used this extension successfully on Win10 to install PWAs, most recently Elk for Mastodon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
That makes sense, I completely forgot PWA.
I primarily use Firefox, but the big one for me and the reason I haven’t completely deleted Chrome is being able to create shortcuts with the “Open in a new window” option for specific URLs. Granted I’m not very tech savvy (just a little more aware than the average user) and primarily use a mac for my personal computer atm, but that feature is a game changer for me. As far as I know, other popular browsers don’t offer it currently.
It’s really useful for when there isn’t a download or iOS app for a specific site/service, or when the web app is much better than the app or download option and I still want to be able to use it like a separate app from my browser.
I also wasn’t able to download any software that wasn’t on the Apple App Store with my work computer for my previous employer (super annoying, but I kind of get it). So it was essential if I wanted to have a separate and dedicated app/window at all for my work calendar, email, etc.
I love how I can visually organize the web apps I like to use separately from my browser, to save time and energy for daily use. I can customize the name and shortcut icon, pin them to my dock, organize them in folders in my launchpad, and even set them to launch on startup if I want. Not sure if there are reasonably easy ways to mimic this with Firefox, but I haven’t found any yet.
same problem we had back in the ie5/6 days: it was just there and most people don’t care. i physically cringe when i watch co-workers using chrome with not even a basic adblocker installed, klicking away ads, promts, pop-ups, videos and whatnot just to access a news article. it’s horrible!
I’m forced to use either Chrome or Edge for my work computer and it drives me crazy.
I’m forced to use either Chrome or Edge for my work computer and it drives me crazy.
I’ve been a Sysadmin for a ~decade. I can state with 100% certainty that the reason behind that decision is that you can very easily configure Group Policy to control the behavior and visibility/availability of features in Chrome and Edge. Firefox didn’t have that until just a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t great when it first became available. And to be honest, it’s still not fully baked, but it’s at least usable now from an administrative perspective.
Maybe bring it up to your IT department and include this link in the email/ticket.
Thanks for the link. I’m saving that to pass on.
People switched because “it’s the fastest” but that hasn’t been my experience with it at all. Sure, it LOOKS more minimalistic than Firefox, but it’s a RAM and CPU hog that litters my computer with Google trash.
People still download it because “it’s the fastest”
Yeah, I’ve been using Firefox exclusively for ages. And also Duckduckgo, I just can’t stand the excessive of Google’s captcha since I always use VPN.
IDK man, Chrome UI is kinda plain
I’d use it exclusively, but there’s no Ad Blocker for it on iOS, and I don’t want to run an ad blocking VPN all the time. I also don’t like how there’s no official PWA support on desktop.
Chrome doesn’t support extensions at all on iOS, only Safari does - because of Apple. Firefox would absolutely support extensions and use Gecko on Ios if Apple let them.
Yeah, but there are ways other browsers have determined how to have in-built ad blocking. I’m not sure of the ins and outs, but Brave, Samsung Browser, and Edge all have built-in ad blocking on iOS.
The heck? UBlock works on Mac- ohhh is this an M1/M2 thing I was unaware of?
Nevermind, you said IOS not MacOS
But there is strict tracking protection which acts like a slightly degraded ad blocker. It has blocked everything except YouTube ads and “you have ad blocker enabled” pop ups for me.
Showing people that they can avoid ads by switching from chromium might make more people use adblockers.
I get flabbergasted whenever I talk to someone and realize they’re unaware that such things exist. I hope all (according to the google store entry for ublock origin) 10,000,000 of the ublock origin users switches from chromium based browsers to, say, firefox…
Feels like chromium is the new internet explorer…
That’s why Google is trying to launch the “Web Integrity API” that will essentially allow them to mandate any website accessible to or using Google Services to ban browsers that have ad blockers.
I know a lot of Chrome users, and the general story I get from them is nearly always the same infuriating bullshit along these lines:
“So, I tried the like, Fox Fire thingy, but this one time, like, it took, like, 1.5 seconds to load, so it’s “””“”“”““slow””“”“”“”" so I just use Chrome 'cause it’s, like, faster and stuff."
Yeah, and I suppose the 427 useless things you have running in your system tray right now don’t have anything to do with your computer being “slow,” right?
Wouldn’t those 427 things make chrome slow too
Yes
There is also the initial load problem where it would take longer to load in Firefox compared to chrome. Yet people will attribute it to the browser and not the fact that assets were already stored in chrome.
Or worse, “Why should I switch to Firefox? Everybody’s complaining about the performance of Firefox compared to Chrome, but Chrome just works for me.”
Blissfully unaware of the kind of power you’re giving Google over the Internet by using their browser. I once had an experience where someone tried to use this to push me back to using Chrome.
Fox Fire thingy
Oh god, I’m having Vietnam flashbacks
To me it looks like a tech savy kind of hurdle, once people learn about it and start thinkering they start to use it also.
Better for us when people start caring for what they tolerate from corps.
Firefox Mobile is great, Being able to add extensions is just wonderful.
You wish that was happening.
I’m preparing to be completely unsurprised that Firefox’s market share will still be at 3% next month and the month after that.
If I had to choose between a tracked, ad-filled experience and a slower, protected experience, I would go back to 1990s style Internet in a second.
A few years back when Firefox went through the whole “Quantum” update, I jumped and never looked back. It’s just better in every way, in my opinion.
I use it on my laptop, but it’s crap on my phone. My phone is pretty old now, I use opera. I know, no one likes opera, but I’ve used it that long now I find it difficult to jump across. I tried again recently, but it’s still too slow.
Isn’t Opera Chromium now too?
Yep it has been for a while.
Was it previously not Chromium?
It used to use a browser engine called Presto, but they dropped it in 2013.
I learned something today, thanks
What’s the advantage for google of doing this move? People “savy” enough to install an adblock (or even know that it exists) is most likely to switch to a competitor that allows for adblocking
Majority will keep using, for a while, until years later more see what has happened and move.
Mean while profits on marketing go up.
Google has gone to absolute shit. Unless you let them stick their hand down your pants and fondle you, you can’t even use their search engine with out getting hit with a captcha so they can use browser fingerprinting to track you. We were all hearded into the slaughter house and they are just now starting up the kill machines.
Mhm, I see that point, although I find it concerning given that the quality of the UX platforms like youtube has kept a consistent decline over the past decade. It feels like google keeps amassing more and more reasons for people to enable adblockers but I also understand youtube needs to be a profitable business and at some point you need to show ads
The way things are going with data collection and advertising, the EU is bound to put heavy restrictions on it, basically killing the market Google is built on. They are trying to find a middle ground between banning data collection and full on everything being collected you do online, and if ad blockers just happen to die in the crossfire, it’s not Google’s concern.
I believe it’s a two-pronged attack.
They have the Trust API changes they are trying to push, which I believe they may try to make websites only support browsers using that API. They have a largest user base already so they have some sway, if Chrome won’t load your webpage, you business might be dead.
Couple that with their anti ad blocking extension, users have to use Chrome to access webpages and can’t block ads on those pages.
Mildly tinfoil-hatty, but I think within the realm of possibility.
I think firefox should ship with ublock origin installed. (Perhaps also containers).
Hopefully then more people will migrate faster
At least tracking protection should be set to strict, iirc on default setting it barely blocks any ads.
Strict tracking protection makes Firefox on Android a ton faster, especially on any website owned by Google or any link that has a Google wrapper (e.g. clicking a link on the Gmail app)
Strict protection on iOS was literally the difference between “I can use this phone” and “brick”. I had an old iPhone, 6 Plus, and Safari lagged to death because it tried to load ads. Firefox didn’t.
Try Orion for iOS, it has better ad blocking
Thanks for recommendation, YT adblock is interesting.
Does that make a difference if you already have the PrivacyBadger extension?
According to this GitHub discussion PrivacyBadger is pretty much redundant if you use uBlock Origin, can even hinder performance and cause opposite effect than expected.
To add to this, I have uBO installed on FF Android, but Strict Protection still makes things much faster for me. I’m not sure if it’s because of my other Addons, but FF Android is so slow otherwise with certain sites (mostly just Google’s)
agreed, that’s why I have hard time switching to it but I still try
That would be awesome!
As a user of Linux and primarily FOSS software for 2 years, each time I recommended something FOSS, others had bad luck.
- I tried switching someone to Linux but I couldn’t achive %100 funnctionality on a Windows only app I set up via Wine. (it is an obscure program, not sth like Adobe or MS Office)
- I recommended Kdenlive to a Mac user friend, he couldn’t export a video he spent 30 hours on it.
- I convinced someone to use Libreoffice but they lost data in only 30 mins because I forgot to tell that if you draw more than a few strokes in LO Draw it enters a save loop. This is fixed now thankfully.
- I recommended VLC for DVD ripping, it entered some sort of loop and failed to export.
Each of the above examples involve completely different people, by the way.
- I set up 2 fresh Windows installs for family but installed Firefox with strict protection and uBlock Origin instead of Chrome and… it worked?! They still use Firefox. Maybe the alpenglow theme is too good, I don’t know.
You’re right and it’s that sort of stuff that people like you and me will deal with and figure out and move on but unfortunately it’s not the case with regular people. That’s why I never recommend that sorry if stuff to ‘normies’ ie. My mom. Instead I set them up with the lesser of evils that will give them convenience and make them more likely to trust me in the future. That way, if I ever REALLY need them to move on from something they will be more likely to just listen to me and not fight me about it. I just got a couple of friends to switch over to Firefox even though they were chrome fans, all because I have years of goodwill. Ported their bookmarks and got them ublock and they barely even notice a difference.
I think this is true for everything… we just notice it when we’re the ones ahead.
Some people can’t change tires, some can’t cook, some can do basic plumbing, some can’t remove appendixes, some can’t swim… whatever.
Granted, I think the main divide were all on the good side of is “some people know how to search, some people don’t”
Awesome, baby steps.
Shit breaks, but we keep trying and see what works!
Keep the fight going, peace!
One day my friend, one day I will make a Linux convert
Hahaha, that will be awesome!
I think it would have to be someone that likes to learn new things and mess around with electronics.
Never left. Never would leave. Chrome was always a trap.
I have for a long time been on Firefox. It’s stable and works great.
In the old days I used Firefox exclusively, until my work started only supporting chrome so I kinda went with it and switched. Out of habit I continued until a couple of years ago, that I went full Firefox again and I remembered why I loved it.
