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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#231

Post by anonym29 »

immibis wrote: post #207
anonym29 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, slow down there. You can't just go around asking people to read first-party sources and think critically on their own about an issue without getting their opinion from their feed or influencer of choice. That's an unreasonable and insane expectation! /s

The first-party source is Mozilla themselves skirting around saying, but very heavily implying they are now selling unspecified data about me to unspecified actors, in a legally binding way, then walking it back with a pinky promise that is not legally binding, so doesn't actually mean anything. Have you read the first-party sources?

The narrative you gave above is by definition not a first party source.

Here's a first party source explaining your misunderstanding of the situation: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...

And here's another credible source explaining Mozilla's mistake in making this decision based on language that was only present in a draft version of the CCPA, as opposed to the final version, but which also made it to Wikipedia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43276624

Most of the conversation on this topic never moved past the first misunderstanding, just a bunch of irrational kvetching at Mozilla by people who read an (incorrect) summary of the situation.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#232

Post by majesticmerc »

adhamsalama wrote: post #199
PufPufPuf wrote: post #188

Zen looks like Arc Browser, but Firefox-based and open-source. Exactly what I'm looking for! The UX pattern for tabs in Arc is amazing. No, it's not just "vertical tabs". It's an innovative blend of the concepts of bookmarks and open tabs. Sort of like files: they can be open or closed, and live in a folder hierarchy. But the development of Arc stopped half a year ago (except security Chromium updates), with a well-w…

Try Sidebery extension. It has nested tabs, workspaces and much much more.

I tried Sidebery for a couple of months off the back of multiple recommendations and while it has some decent features, I found it surprisingly lacking in terms of basic features like "close multiple tabs". I also found it regularly would semi-regularly prevent me from clicking on tabs which was frustrating until I restarted the extension or Firefox.

In the end I found good old Tree Style Tabs was better. I just wish it had an easier UX for creating named tab groups.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#233

Post by ta8645 »

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…

The fact that the Mozilla CEO makes over $6,000,000.00 per year is a complete betrayal of what Firefox was. How could anyone justify donating to Firefox knowing that so much of their money would be going to this one person?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#234

Post by j16sdiz »

inversetelecine wrote: post #15

The biggest issue with forks, which is pointed out in the article, is Mozilla still does the heavy lifting. None of the forks have the resources (and probably interest) to fully fork Firefox and make it their own codebase to maintain. Personally, I like LibreWolf and Mullvad browser. Hopefully they can keep up to date well into the future.

Mozilla do more then just the code base -- There are larger eco-system for HTTP, HTML5, CSS, Certificate Authority, etc.

The effort for entry is quite high for those...

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#235

Post by bovermyer »

I like the idea of using a Firefox fork, but one thing in particular keeps me tied to Firefox - my Firefox account and the sync feature.

I make heavy use of bookmarks and switch between devices frequently. Manually keeping those synced would be a bit of a nightmare.

Assuming that Firefox forks can use Firefox extensions, I imagine I could get around this problem by using some kind of bookmark extension. I don't know what options are available for that, though.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#236

Post by eloisius »

bovermyer wrote: post #235

I like the idea of using a Firefox fork, but one thing in particular keeps me tied to Firefox - my Firefox account and the sync feature. I make heavy use of bookmarks and switch between devices frequently. Manually keeping those synced would be a bit of a nightmare. Assuming that Firefox forks can use Firefox extensions, I imagine I could get around this problem by using some kind of bookmark extension. I don't know…

I’m using Sync on LibreWolf just fine. I am interested in self hosting sync, but not there yet. I think it would be cool if someone could set up a sync server and charge a small fee for accounts. It’s all OSS and setting it up doesn’t look impossible. Just tedious.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#237

Post by cosmic_cheese »

Semaphor wrote: post #228
osener wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

After a short time with it, I find it kinda funny. Back then, power users were up in arms about things like the omnibar, and chrome removing more and more parts of the actual URL. And here is a browser marketed at power users that goes beyond that, showing only a small fraction. There doesn’t even seem to be a Zen mod that restores a real usable URL bar. For me, I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private…

There’s an option under Settings > Look and Feel for a full length URL bar.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#238

Post by ddtaylor »

I held off for a long time and tried to find multiple ways to "make Firefox work" and eventually just gave up on that. There are multiple ways to preserve the rights of web users and Mozilla isn't doing a great job there, so stop trying to save something that isn't working and redirect those efforts into something that will.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#239

Post by Croftengea »

bovermyer wrote: post #235

I like the idea of using a Firefox fork, but one thing in particular keeps me tied to Firefox - my Firefox account and the sync feature. I make heavy use of bookmarks and switch between devices frequently. Manually keeping those synced would be a bit of a nightmare. Assuming that Firefox forks can use Firefox extensions, I imagine I could get around this problem by using some kind of bookmark extension. I don't know…

I use two forks on a daily basis - Floorp and Waterfox. Both sync FF accounts just fine.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#240

Post by voytec »

I've tried using LibreWolf on MacOS but there's a few annoying bugs.

HN has a really small text size for me and I usually read HN at 120-133% text size. LibreWolf does not remember this setting on per-site basis and even opening HN-to-HN link in a new tab doesn't preserve text size and I need to increase text size constantly.

In addition, posting images to Bluesky doesn't work. Every attempt results in an image of proper size but consisting of only vertical lines. For this, I need to fall back to Firefox or use Safari.

Even if the first of above problems is a "feature", the latter is definitely a bug. I haven't filled a report yet. But for now, I'm planning to test Zen.

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