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Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

zen-browser.app

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Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#31

Post by exusn »

dartharva wrote: post #24

I don't know why but websites always feel downgraded with Firefox and its descendants. Long load times, incomplete/failed loads, bad font rendering, buffering.. It feels evident that webmasters only care for compatibility with Chrome et al. It felt that it was subsiding in between, but sites have again started breaking on it nowadays.

Font rendering does feel much worse on macOS, but on Windows you can tweak the cleartype parameters a bit and get it closer to Edge/Chrome.

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/404408660a4d976e2a...

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#32

Post by willi59549879 »

I quite like the zen browser. It is privacy focused but also visually appealing. The feature that I like best, is that the browser does not take up a lot of space for itself. Even the top bar can be hidden. That way most of the screen is there to show the website.

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#33

Post by raffraffraff »

dartharva wrote: post #24

I don't know why but websites always feel downgraded with Firefox and its descendants. Long load times, incomplete/failed loads, bad font rendering, buffering.. It feels evident that webmasters only care for compatibility with Chrome et al. It felt that it was subsiding in between, but sites have again started breaking on it nowadays.

I use Firefox on Linux and in general it's fine. Only really dreadful stuff like Microsoft Teams will outright fail. I've found that using NextDNS or an adblocker is more harmful on certain sites. I've had situations where a website completely fails until I change my DNS provider to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 or wherever. But I tend to avoid sites like that if I have a choice.

I'm sticking with Firefox. I like the account features (sync, send tab to another device etc) but Firefox's killer feature is container tabs, especially with the add-on for regex URL matching for container selection, and the other add-on that automatically handles AWS SSO accounts.

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#34

Post by raffraffraff »

frosting1337 wrote: post #27
dartharva wrote: post #24

I don't know why but websites always feel downgraded with Firefox and its descendants. Long load times, incomplete/failed loads, bad font rendering, buffering.. It feels evident that webmasters only care for compatibility with Chrome et al. It felt that it was subsiding in between, but sites have again started breaking on it nowadays.

While I agree that develops really only care for Chromium compatability, I've not really noticed any issues with Firefox, except with Google sites every now and then (YouTube in particular).

Weirdly, I've had to install the full Google Chrome because the Chromium has been problematic. Can't remember details, but I think MS Teams was one example.

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#35

Post by devjab »

danpalmer wrote: post #20
weikju wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably isn't notarized. Right-click the app and open, or use the terminal: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app edit: turns out they are describing this process here from a link on the macos download page: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/53

The link is titled "Download Zen for macOS" which seems superfluous when the DMG starts downloading immediately, perhaps it needs a better title. Also while I understand some people have moral objections to the 100 dollar/euro registration fee, clearly a lot more than that has been spent in time to get the application to this stage, almost all apps for macOS distributing like this are notarized now, and with such a s…

I don’t think anyone should pay Apple to notarize their applications to be honest. It’s basically extortion that you need both a running $99 subscription and a MacBook of some sort to complete the process. I understand why big companies will do so, but for OSS projects it frankly should cost anything. I do wonder if the process would stick if companies like Google and Microsoft refused to do it though they obviously won’t.

That being said, I’m sure a lot of OSS projects are willing to accept it if you personally chose to pay the fee.

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#36

Post by mrweasel »

dartharva wrote: post #24

I don't know why but websites always feel downgraded with Firefox and its descendants. Long load times, incomplete/failed loads, bad font rendering, buffering.. It feels evident that webmasters only care for compatibility with Chrome et al. It felt that it was subsiding in between, but sites have again started breaking on it nowadays.

That might be dependent on use case and which sites you use. I haven't installed Chrome for more than 3 years. Firefox has been my primary browser ever since Opera switched from using Presto, but I kept Chrome as a backup for the longest time. Now I don't needed it anymore. I do have Safari available, but that's mostly for testing.

When your coming directly from Chrome, then maybe you see the problems more? I know I started really disliking Chrome, mostly do to the UI and the developer tools (which is worse that Firefox and much worse than the old Opera, in my opinion).

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#37

Post by mrweasel »

gsimons88 wrote: post #2

Does anybody have insight into how this compares to Brave? In their own comparison Brave is not even considerd.

> In their own comparison Brave is not even considerd

If their target audience is disgruntled Firefox users that makes a ton of sense. I would not consider replacing Firefox with a browser based on Chrome/Chromium. It's not that I think it a bad rendering engine, it not, but I don't like the mono-culture that has been promoted and would like to avoid contributing to it, if I can.

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#38

Post by dao- »

hysan wrote: post #10

Seems… quite lacking in details? It makes some pretty bold claims but doesn’t explain how it achieves things like better performance. Their docs are also pretty empty.

Here are Firefox about:config preferences they tweak for performance:

https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/blob/1eaf6e49ef8edd44...

I also found this somewhat funny:

  # Edit: ok, ill remove it, goodbye top #1 on fastest browsers benchmark :[
  # ac_add_options --without-wasm-sandboxed-libraries
https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/blob/1eaf6e49ef8edd44...

Re: Zen, a Arc-like open-source browser based on the Firefox engine

#39

Post by commercialnix »

gorgoiler wrote: post #21
commercialnix wrote: post #6

I use Sway (an i3 clone for Wayland), so these "split views" and "workspaces" are not appealing to me. Zen makes serious claims about performance and sandboxing, but do not forwardly present writings on how they do these things, leaving us with the impression there are some tweaks here and there but not much more.

I’ve been using the sway family of window managers for nearly 20 years! (First ion2, then ion3, then i3, and now sway.) In all this time I’ve briefly used native tabs but mostly now use windows without title bars or any other decorations in split mode all of the time. Most of the day I simply have a terminal running tmux on the first workspace with vim in the first tmux window, shells in the others, and a browser on…

I feel like you and I would be friends.
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