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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

#381

Post by 1oooqooq »

justinclift wrote: post #352
ReadCarlBarks wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can vote for features on Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/

Seems like a reasonable idea. With this in place, why are Mozilla using telemetry instead?

because Mozilla, the foundation, is hostile. it's a political money grab.

with telemetry they can justify whatever. they can go to the board and say "look people are clicking more on pocket, which we put prominently on the UI against everyone wishes, and they barely use bookmarks, which have critical bugs open for over 20years... who would have thought of this counterintuitive insight if it weren't for my genius persistence on trying and measuring new ideas uh? so are we good on the extra bonus to my close childhood friends?" ...see, it makes the pitch defensable, if you don't say the right parts out loud.

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

#382

Post by 1oooqooq »

ReadCarlBarks wrote: post #274
1oooqooq wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wonder if we should just accept it as "voting" and monitor their telemetry experiment and spam the option we would like

You can vote for features on Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/

nice find. nobody uses that and sadly it became a desperate support forum which mostly goes ignored

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

#383

Post by botanical »

BodyCulture wrote: post #103
dao- wrote: 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…

Firefox is the only browser that freezes Ubuntu after some extensive internet use, especially with video watching. Since many years and still today.

I'm on the Firefox snap on Ubuntu but don't get any freezes.

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

#384

Post by dartharva »

mariusor wrote: post #65
dartharva wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Youtube is the main irritant for me as well.

When it comes to the websites belonging to the competition, I feel like it's unjust to blame Firefox instead of, in this case, Google.

Google is ironically a key sponsor of Firefox.

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

#385

Post by wlonkly »

xuf wrote: post #289
chown wrote: post #208

I've recently started using Arc mostly out of FOMO and there are parts that I like and parts I don't. I have been a Firefox user for a long time before that so glad to see something similar that's one of the major priorities is the aesthetics and I very much appreciate that. I tried to use it on my macOS Apple Silicone and got an error about it being broken and macOS suggested to trash it. Not sure if it is a bug iss…

This is described in their FAQ. Running `xattr -d com.apple.quarantine '/Applications/Zen Browser.app/'` fixes the issue, see https://docs.zen-browser.app/faq#zen-browser-is-damaged-and-...

This feels like a strong signal that either

- this app won't see much adoption and will eventually fall out of maintenance, or

- the developers are going to be a pain in the ass to work with,

or both.

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

#386

Post by gxonatano »

The problems these browsers are trying to solve aren't web browser problems, they're window manager problems. Your web browser shouldn't try to be a window manager.

- If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.

- If you want to have several web pages open but not visible, so that you can switch between them (i.e., tabs), just use your window manager's tabs, stacks, or workspaces.

- If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.

- If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces. You can even name workspaces according to projects or tasks, and assign windows to them automatically.

Any modern window manager will do, but ones with automatic tiling are the best. Sway, i3, Monad, Hyprland, Awesome, and Newm are a few.

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

#387

Post by vilunov »

gxonatano wrote: post #386

The problems these browsers are trying to solve aren't web browser problems, they're window manager problems. Your web browser shouldn't try to be a window manager. - If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.…

You're basically saying web browsers and other applications (including IDEs, chat apps, etc) should remove support for tabs and rely on WMs providing tab functionality. Some of tiling managers you mentioned that I'm familiar with don't have any functionality I would be happy replacing browser tabs with.

> If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.

Bookmarks and history have very different UX from tabs, they are clunky to use and I would never prefer them to opening 100 tabs, sorry.

> If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces

These workspaces don't enable separation of cookies and other state, they have a very different use case to browser workspaces.

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

#388

Post by titusjohnson »

eddyg wrote: post #357
titusjohnson wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no difference between tracking and metrics, they're the same thing. You get your metrics out of the data you track. Browser phone home? Tracking. And there's no way for a user to validate that any tracking is indeed anonymous. The technical level needed to asses this is just... out of reach for everyone (the quantity of people who can properly verify this is small enough we can safely ignore it when speaking…

There is definitely a difference between tracking and metrics . One saves and associates information like “when and where did this piece of data come from?” along with other “identifiable” information, the other simply increments a count for things like “advanced feature X enabled”. If you don’t see the obvious difference between this type of data, then that’s on you. The latter can provide extremely valuable signals…

I was too succinct in my previous message, I guess.

To you and I there is a difference between tracking and metrics. To everyone else there is none. All my Mom knows is that the software dialed home. It is impossible to verify what it said to the mothership. The popup promised "Metrics only!" but then Little Snitch lit up like a Christmas tree 4 times! It's stealing my info!

How does the consumer know that the "metrics" didn't include home IP, OS version, and god knows whatever else? Again, metrics are a subset of data. Even the internet request to ship a fully anonymized usage info like "saved_files: 10, opened_files: 11" metric set contains Gobs and Gobs of identifiable information on and around the request itself. Does the company stash inbound request data for troubleshooting? That's fucking tracking bro. Your data dog instance is chock-full of tracking info.

It is not reasonable to expect end-users to be able to verify the claim that "only metrics are tracked". It is safer for everyone to assume this is a bald-faced lie, because at the end of the day it is impossible to verify to any level of certainty.

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

#390

Post by jay_kyburz »

lionelw wrote: post #378
jerbear4328 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they meant that you lose your windows after a reboot, because Firefox only restores one window, compared to all of your groups.

Firefox restores all windows.

If you close your windows in the wrong order, you will lose your tabs and pinned tabs.

Example: Have a primary window with you email, calendar and important sites pinned.

Then open another window and open a few tabs.

Then at the end of the day, close your primary window first, then discover you still have the secondary window open and close it as well.

When you restart Firefox you will get the secondary window and your "primary" window will be lost with all your pinned tabs.

I actually went down a rabbit hole of trying to log it as a bug, but the behavior is by design apparently.

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