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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

#91
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I currently work on tab groups (It's happening.gif) But seriously, that makes me extremely happy. I'm using the weird hack in tree style tabs to do this and it's not great. I'd love this to work in general and something with a persistent "current context" for new tabs.

If you're unfamiliar with Sidebery, it's similar to TST but has a neat tab groups feature as well. Speaking of, there are other cool new features coming to Firefox - such as vertical tabs: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re...

Thanks, sideberry looks great. I've defaulted to TST for so long, I haven't looked for alternatives, but it seems worth trying.

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

#92

One thing almost all arc clones dont get right and I talked with other arc users about this is that arc when surfing has no ui besides the border no top bar not tabs you can hide everything if you want to. I downloaded Zen and what do i see a top bar which I can not hide or at least I can not find how to do it.

Okay I found it but its wanky at best. how do i show the topbar once its gone?

I get that this ia an alpha but yeah going back to arc feels much smoother

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

#93

While I don't condone complaining for the sake of complaining, I really don't see why I would use this. Every argument feels very "floatey". When I think of browser devs, I don't think about fancy UI, and blazingly fast speeds! I think about engineers who know what they're talking about. I've never heard of floorp, and the arguments against librewolf are silly. On top of that, some of these "features" like themes, pr…

Sometimes (not necessarily here) just a better UI for existing features is enough to make a project succeed.

One relevant example being Firefox, which started in exactly that way. Hiding some features from the overly-featureful Mozilla and focusing on the basic user flow.

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

#94
post #61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I work at Mozilla as an engineer for Firefox, and I'm generally happy to see this. I currently work on tab groups, and I'm curious to see what their implementation will look like or whether they'll try to fast-track our work-in-progress once that's somewhat viable. For the sidebar and vertical tabs, they seem to have implemented their own thing rather than using what our team has been working on. At a first g…

Tab groups again? I don’t remember when exactly, but like 10 years ago Firefox already had this feature. I was using them happily, organising all my numerous tabs to a dozen of groups by theme (work, social, movies, etc). But then Mozilla decided: “Nobody is using tab groups, screw it!” and removed them. All groups and tabs were lost. Now history will repeat?

I never understand the need for tab groups, once you get above 4-5 tabs you are actively working in, whats wrong with bookmarks?

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

#95

Not many straightforwardly positive comments here so far, so I will write one. I'm a Firefox user but I've recently been tempted by Arc primarily because of its 'workspaces' feature and its minimal UI that gets out the way. I used Arc for several weeks and really got a taste for these features, so I'm really happy to see them come to a Gecko-based browser. Thank you, and keep it up! My advice would be: don't advertis…

Sideberry extension does this perfectly. I migrated from Vivaldi to Firefox because of it.

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

#96

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 fe…

Well at this point for anybody who cares about adblocking Firefox is the only choice, unfortunately.

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

#97
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tab groups again? I don’t remember when exactly, but like 10 years ago Firefox already had this feature. I was using them happily, organising all my numerous tabs to a dozen of groups by theme (work, social, movies, etc). But then Mozilla decided: “Nobody is using tab groups, screw it!” and removed them. All groups and tabs were lost. Now history will repeat?

I never understand the need for tab groups, once you get above 4-5 tabs you are actively working in, whats wrong with bookmarks?

Bookmarks are perceptually longer-term than open tabs, so there may be more reluctance to save to a bookmark. (E.g., if planning a trip to Italy, do you want to bookmark some blogger's food recs for Rome, forever?)

But worse is, it relies on recalling the text in the bookmark's title to resurface it. You might not remember the page title, but you can always scan through open tabs.

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

#98

I used Arc a lot back when I used MacOS. Was definitely a pleasing experience. I missed it a lot since I switched to Linux/Firefox. I just set up Zen with all my extensions and bookmarks, it behaves very well: let's see if it stands the trial of time, but very nice work. I like the UI

Have you tried the Sideberry extension?

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

#99
post #51

> Optimized for peak performance What does that even mean?

I interpret that as they have tweaked the configurations with the performance in mind, meaning their goal when customizing the browser has been to get as much juice as possible out of the browser.
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