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The Browser Monopoly

blairreeves.me

101–110 of 197 posts

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#101

Interesting i was just thinking about this yesterday. I should ditch chrome. yet here i am typing more shit for google to harvest from me and sell to the highest bidder.

What is the point of making this comment? Why haven't you switched? It's not that hard.

Brave, guys. Switch to Brave. Brave is everything.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#102
Firefox lacks the credibility to sell (charge for) privacy products or services when they at the same time make money off aggregated browser analytics.

That would be no better than that AdBlock company whose income comes from advertisers. It's that Mozilla can't do it right, but rather than they wouldn't be on my list of top 5 privacy service vendors to check out.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#103
Just a quick rant about Firefox -- an INSANELY annoying bug that they've yet to fix is when trying to copy the URL on Mobile Firefox, 99% of the time I get the wrong address (the previous page I was on), because it seemingly doesn't populate the address as the page you're currently looking at if the page hasn't fully loaded yet. It's so odd.

Other than that, Firefox > Chrome. Privacy situation is vastly superior and web standards support is comparable. I also just feel that Mozilla is a way better company ethics wise, and for the software community at large, than Google.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#104
post #23

I don't get why people (I mean technically minded people who are aware of privacy issues and so on) don't just use firefox. They are pretty much at feature parity (Firefox may even get the edge due to the fantastic extensions ecosystem), except one spies on you and the other doesn't. Why do people find the switch so hard? In addition, Firefox + ublokc origin is pretty much the only option on mobile if you want to blo…

I’ve been having a good experience with safari + ublock origin. Firefox tends to consume a lot of system resources on my pretty modest machine.

Ublock origin can be added to Palemoon and it makes a great browser. If a website doesn't work in Palemoon then too bad for them. I've had a great break from twitter since their new UI doesn't work. And recaptchas can go captcha themselves.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#105
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly use Firefox, except I use Chrome for certain tasks at work [1]. There is one thing about Firefox that occasionally has me on the verge of ditching it for Chrome. It has a terrible spell checker. I find about as many errors in its spelling as it finds in mine. There used to be one other thing that really irked me, but it looks like they recently fixed that (I'm on the beta channel, so not sure if everyone has…

>and it handles multiple profiles better. I think that Containers available on Firefox are much better than profiles

Profiles provide separate bookmarks and add-ons per profile. I don't think containers do. Containers seem to be more about making it so you can appear as different people to different sites. Profiles are more about letting you separate roles.

For different things I do during development, I want different sets of cookies, bookmarks, history, and add-ons. With profiles, I get that, effectively getting a separate browser that I can extensively customize to its particular task.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#106
>but what Google was really doing was laying the groundwork for the ability to deliver all sorts of new online ad formats (like video) and complicated Javascript behind them that would help track and target users more effectively.

this is just plain dumb. There are plenty of other uses for javascript and powerful programming features beyond ads, and even google's most complicated ad products barely scratch the surface of what's possible with the new js features that have been introduced since the beginning of the chrome project.

Just because google is an ad company, doesn't mean everything they do is purely and simply about serving ads. And if you're going to try and make the argument that it is, you had better have something to back it up - you can't just make the claim and then skip on to the next bit of your rant.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#107

The number of features that gecko (Firefox) lack vs blink (chromiums) is growing everyday... In a factual sense, mozilla slow down the evolution of the web and what it allow web masters to create. But it is nothing in comparison of safari which is pathetically behind blink and gecko feature wise. It's a shame that the most popular websites don't team up to block safari and ask to install a browser that supports web s…

> But it is nothing in comparison of safari which is pathetically behind blink and gecko feature wise. It's a shame that the most popular websites don't team up to block safari and ask to install a browser that supports web standards. YouTube did this with a version of IE and weeks after they were followed by thousands of websites not supporting this antic version. What about iOS? There's no alternative.

There's no alternative until there's one. If the web stopped working on Apple devices do you imagine the public reaction? Apple would be humiliated and would instantly indeed allow to install other browsers.

But we don't need to go so fast. Firstly the web should block desktop safari, then laptop safaris. We wait that Apple fixe it's OS. Then we do the same on IOS waiting for the same "fixe"

Instead of making apple bend the knee, the web got broken for GPUs with the shitshow that is webgpu (which is the intersection of features from metal, Vulkan and dx12) instead of doing a webVulkan which is well supported on all OSes except Apple because they choose to make the world a worse place. Google lack balls. Mozilla too.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and it handles multiple profiles better. I think that Containers available on Firefox are much better than profiles

Do Containers support segregated browsing history yet? That's what I've liked most about Chrome profiles. I can have a "personal" profile and then a "work" profile that doesn't comingle the browsing history. It's convenient when on a screenshare--the URL bar's type-ahead won't reveal your personal browsing history.

You can have multiple profiles in Firefox too. If you start Firefox with the "-P" flag, it brings up the profile manager, which allows you create/delete profiles or start Firefox with a selected profile.

You can also start/manage profiles from inside Firefox by navigating to about:profiles.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what extensions do you miss? I've never really used anything beyond the usual privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS everywhere). All of which seem to be as well or better supported in FireFox.

Mainly Google extensions (yeah, not coming anytime soon): Keep and Chrome Remote Desktop are two of my favourite services.

I only used Chrome Remote Desktop for the first time two weeks ago. I was blown away how easy it was the setup and how well it worked.

Re: The Browser Monopoly

#110
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and it handles multiple profiles better. I think that Containers available on Firefox are much better than profiles

Profiles provide separate bookmarks and add-ons per profile. I don't think containers do. Containers seem to be more about making it so you can appear as different people to different sites. Profiles are more about letting you separate roles. For different things I do during development, I want different sets of cookies, bookmarks, history, and add-ons. With profiles, I get that, effectively getting a separate browse…

Firefox also has profiles. (about:profiles)
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