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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#71

Post by accelbred »

lxn wrote: post #46
Dwedit wrote: post #8

I read in a few places that LibreWolf's anti-fingerprinting features are breaking websites. One person complained that their meeting got scheduled incorrectly because the browser was messing with the user's time zone (for privacy reasons).

I can confirm that. I switched to using LibreWolf as a work-dedicated browser parallel to Firefox Developer Edition. In two weeks of using it, I got annoyed by the following: - no automatic dark-mode (against fingerprinting, some websites don't have a setting to switch it on - not sure if you can turn it off) - timezone is always UTC (can be worked-around with an extension, messed up my time tracking app and some log…

Unchecking resistFingerprinting in the settings disables these. You can also use the new firefox FPP settings to enable most if RFP stuff but opt out of specific stuff like dark mode, timezone, etc. You can even add per-site exceptions.

For example, my config is at https://codeberg.org/accelbread/config-flake/src/branch/mast...

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#72

Post by andix »

pessimizer wrote: post #60
andix wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gave up their own engine because it wasn’t good enough. If Google turns into a direction Microsoft doesn’t like, they can develop their own engine based on the best one currently available. As long as Google’s direction ist satisfactory to Microsoft, they can just save a lot of money by just using it.

> They gave up their own engine because it wasn’t good enough. It wasn't good enough because they had neglected it, not because they didn't have the talent or cash to make it good enough. They didn't want to. The bugs had been a moat to keep Firefox out of the enterprise, and it had worked. That was not going to work against Google, who had a good business reason to own the browser, unlike Microsoft at that point. IE…

It's hard to tell if they neglected the original Edge or if they just couldn't keep up with Chrome.

IE was a completely different story, it was full of proprietary Microsoft technology (ActiveX) and a lot of Enterprise applications used it heavily.

Microsoft didn't care about browsers maybe 15 years ago, but this changed a lot. A lot of Microsoft software is just available in the browser, they migrated a lot of things to web technology. That's also the reason they switched their browser to Chromium, they needed to ship something that actually works.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#73

Post by andix »

bad_user wrote: post #54
andix wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gave up their own engine because it wasn’t good enough. If Google turns into a direction Microsoft doesn’t like, they can develop their own engine based on the best one currently available. As long as Google’s direction ist satisfactory to Microsoft, they can just save a lot of money by just using it.

I don't disagree, and yes, you make a good point, and I added that the interests of Google and Microsoft coincide, which is also bad for us. The banning of ad-blockers, for instance, is also in the interest of Microsoft.

I think Microsoft just doesn't care about ad-blockers. They probably don't have a strong position on it. If they work it's fine for them, if they don't its also fine.

They need to ship a good browser with Windows, because a lot of their enterprise customers rely heavily on web applications. A lot of Microsoft enterprise applications are browser apps. The purpose of Edge is not primarily web browsing.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#75

Post by sedatk »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #61

> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant. It is developed by a community of Japanese students called Ablaze. Development is hosted on GitHub, and the project solicits donations via GitHub donations. According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page—but the ads, which are displayed as shortcuts with a "sponsored" label, can be turned off in the s…

Sponsored ads and donations are different revenue models. Mozilla has always been collecting donations and nobody had a problem with it.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#76

Post by bastawhiz »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68
slindsey wrote: post #50

For years I've thought of creating a "paid" Firefox fork that is _just_ Firefox rebranded, but otherwise the exact codebase. The money brought in would be used to pay an open source developer to work strictly on things intended to be sent upstream to the Mozilla Firefox. If nothing else, it would prove whether or not people are willing to pay for Firefox. The problem with Firefox currently is the organizational struc…

I don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

If someone was building "Arc but for Firefox" I'd gladly pay for that. Firefox is, because of its position in the market, incapable of doing anything broadly interesting that's not "Be as Chrome-like as possible." They sneak in features that are nice, but I simply don't think we'll ever see Mozilla put out something that does anything that really sets Firefox apart. We'll only ever just get marginally better privacy settings or whatever the next Pocket ends up being.

Browsers are _user agents_. I want my user agent to serve me by being as frictionless as possible when I use it. I simply can't accept that what Chrome/Firefox/Edge/Safari/Opera have provided as the standard web browsing experience for the last two decades is a global maximum. We use the web in very different ways than we did a generation ago and yet Firefox 136 looks impressively similar to both Firefox 36 and Firefox 3.6. Take the gradients away from Chrome 1.0 and you could convince me a screenshot of it was their next version. If the browser is a tool, it's astounding that the tool has hardly evolved _at all_.

I miss the days when Opera did all sorts of weird and wacky shit. Opera 9 was a magical time, and brought us things like tabs and per-tab private browsing and a proper download manager and real developer tools. Firefox should be that, but they're too scared to actually do anything that isn't going to be a totally safe business decision.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#77

Post by tcfunk »

I've been using zen lately mostly for the combination of "essentials" + "workspace" tab management scheme. I love having a space for tabs while also having a spot to pin stuff like email and bluesky which doesn't necessarily fit into one category or other.

Admittedly I haven't tried many other options, except sidebery which was good but not quite there for me.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#78

Post by osener »

bastawhiz wrote: post #76
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

If someone was building "Arc but for Firefox" I'd gladly pay for that. Firefox is, because of its position in the market, incapable of doing anything broadly interesting that's not "Be as Chrome-like as possible." They sneak in features that are nice, but I simply don't think we'll ever see Mozilla put out something that does anything that really sets Firefox apart. We'll only ever just get marginally better privacy…

Zen browser is exactly this. It has a growing ecosystem of “Zen mods” and has a great Arc-like out-of-box experience.

https://zen-browser.app/

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#79

Post by atulvi »

tcfunk wrote: post #77

I've been using zen lately mostly for the combination of "essentials" + "workspace" tab management scheme. I love having a space for tabs while also having a spot to pin stuff like email and bluesky which doesn't necessarily fit into one category or other. Admittedly I haven't tried many other options, except sidebery which was good but not quite there for me.

OK, this is it. The perfect firefox fork. The last thing I need is the ability to self host a ff sync server so my bookmarks are synced with my phone.
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