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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#251

Post by lolinder »

broadsidepicnic wrote: post #179
MrAlex94 wrote: post #126

> Waterfox is a browser that began in 2011 as an independent project by Alex Kontos while he was a student. It was acquired and then un-acquired by Internet-advertising company System1. Its site does not, at least at the moment, have enough specifics about the browser's differences and features to compel me to take it for a test drive. Are the others that much more descriptive in their features on their website? IMO…

well, a browser owned (and de-owned) by an internet advertising company is enough for me not to ever touch that. We already have a chrome, which is one of the reasons we're in this mess to start with. And yea, I did use waterfox like a decade ago.

Yeah, I'm pretty uncomfortable with Waterfox because of that episode. In the HN thread the creator responded to complaints about this privacy-unfriendly turn by saying that they "tried to stay away from branding Waterfox as" being about privacy or user control. That's fine, but an immediate turnoff for me even now that the advertising company is apparently out of the picture.

If Waterfox isn't about privacy or user control, who knows where it gets sold next or what the dev adds to it next?

Edit: I just realized that the dev is the one who wrote the grandparent comment. Maybe you have an explanation that would help?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22343476

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#253

Post by saint_yossarian »

voytec wrote: post #240

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 pr…

Check `browser.zoom.siteSpecific` in `about:config`, in Firefox it defaults to true.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#254

Post by Pesopes »

majesticmerc wrote: post #232
adhamsalama wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I use Sidebery a lot and I'd like to know what exactly you mean by "close multiple tabs"? I currently drag with right click in Sidebery and then click close tabs in the popup menu, however I don't really like doing this way. How is it done in Tree Style Tabs?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#255

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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…

I've been using Zen for a few months now and love it. There are some rough edges (the article mentions how customizing it is confusing because multiple mechanisms affect different parts of the app). However, it's getting regular updates, and once it's set up, it's really a pleasure to use.

Apart from the elegant, minimalist user interface, I particularly like how it implements workspaces. It makes it super easy to switch between personal and work contexts.

I highly recommend it.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#256

Post by InsideOutSanta »

keerthiko wrote: post #91
eikenberry wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Zen plan on taking payments at some point? Key part of the idea is paid development.

they have a ko-fi and a patreon, with about a 1000 "subscribers" across both at amounts at the moment. it's not exactly enough to promise indefinite support, but tbh i don't really much reason to have that faith from products i've paid for but are closed-source either.

The project's main owner said that the income from the project is enough for him to make it his main job after he finishes university.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#257

Post by odiroot »

I'm generally happy with the "original" Firefox. Just wished it played better with KDE Plasma, especially on Wayland. It ignores the window decoration settings among other things.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#258

Post by devit »

glenstein wrote: post #109
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 continue to be puzzled by this idea of direct donations being a panacea. Firefox already has orders of magnitude more revenue than would come in from such a venture. And that already mobilizes development resources toward the core browser, which are already more substantial than what would be raised by direct donations. Just to use some back of the envelope math right now the revenue is something on the order of $5…

The use for donations could be for a single person whose job is to check the upstream code for any antifeatures (telemetry, ads, product placements, online service defaults, Google as paid default search engine, etc.) not in the user's interest and revert them, as well as bundling any useful extension like uBlock Origin and verifying them.

That needs minimal effort compared to building a browser, because it doesn't involve doing any of the hard work, but just removing code that serves to line the pockets of those doing most of the work at the expense of the user.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#259

Post by johnkizer »

odiroot wrote: post #257

I'm generally happy with the "original" Firefox. Just wished it played better with KDE Plasma, especially on Wayland. It ignores the window decoration settings among other things.

Go to Customize Toolbar, check "Title Bar" at the bottom - that gives a Plasma-native title bar with window controls.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#260

Post by Mossy9 »

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…

Zen supports FF sync out of the box. Just started trying it out, and it synced at least all the extensions without issue https://docs.zen-browser.app/faq#how-can-i-sync-my-data-acro...
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