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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had checked there before, just checked again, and I still only see an option for a smallish bar with the two floating options. Where there exactly?

Settings → Look and Feel → Multiple Toolbars or Collapsed Toolbar as shown in the screenshot[0]. [0]: https://i.ibb.co/BVmkmkLC/Screenshot-2025-03-15-at-12-34-26-...

Thanks. Wow, that is very much not clear

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#342
post #245
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…

You can use the Stylus extension to get HN to look any way you want. There are some good community made styles for HN as well.

I appreciate your suggestion. But I hope not to have to exercise it. My go-to setup is: uBlock Origin, NoScript, Dark Reader.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#343

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…

The Zen fork should be based on the Mullvad browser, which is itself a fork of Firefox, or the Tor Browser, same thing I guess. Or they should collaborate. It would be nice to have the UI improvements on an already more privacy focused fork.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#344
post #330

The ecosystem of forks is currently healthy but what concerns me is a lack of Firefox browser support leading to lagging in standards support over time as the browser goes out of fashion for ideological or marketing reasons that this article touches upon. All forks depend on a strong Firefox base and no fork seems to do heavy lifting in terms of web standards, or as a prioritized feature. Instead, they focus on enhan…

Firefox seems to be good enough - is there anyone who wants to fork Firefox out of a frustration over how it handles some web standard and a feeling that they could do it better? Hard forking a browser and implementing all future features on your own is daunting enough that even Microsoft - a company with more engineering resources than all but a handful of others, and for whom having a branded browser is existential…

Firefox has made a few headlines over the past year for privacy-unfriendly moves. That's the context you're missing, despite it being in some of the first sentences of the linked article.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#345

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…

There's an extension called floccus [1] that can sync bookmarks between numerous different browsers (including both Firefox/Gecko and Chromium/Blink based browsers, mobile and desktop) and plug into a user-controlled NextCloud [2] or Linkwarden [3] instance running on a local homelab server for backups.

However, I try to minimize the number of installed extensions to reduce my own browser fingerprint. As others have replied, Firefox Sync works across most of today's popular downstream shadow-forks of Firefox (as in, forks that shadow the Firefox releases rather than truly forking the code). If you don't want to give Mozilla's enshittified corpse your email (I don't), just use an email service that supports aliases to sign up for Firefox Sync... Which is in any case a good idea generally: no two of your important online accounts should point to the same email, even if behind the scenes the aliases are all routing emails back to you.

[1]: https://floccus.org/

[2]: https://nextcloud.com/

[3]: https://linkwarden.app/

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox seems to be good enough - is there anyone who wants to fork Firefox out of a frustration over how it handles some web standard and a feeling that they could do it better? Hard forking a browser and implementing all future features on your own is daunting enough that even Microsoft - a company with more engineering resources than all but a handful of others, and for whom having a branded browser is existential…

Firefox has made a few headlines over the past year for privacy-unfriendly moves. That's the context you're missing, despite it being in some of the first sentences of the linked article.

> privacy-unfriendly moves

Which is a UX issue, not a Web standards issue. None of the major forks were made due to a difference opinion about how the standards should be implemented, so they are all dependent on Mozilla to implement the standards.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#347
post #39

There's an article about insecurities in Firefox ( https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht... >), which is a few years old now, but it made me curious as to whether it actually is better to run a Firefox fork, like Librewolf; Firefox itself; or a Chromium fork like Ungoogled Chromium. Unfortunately I don't really understand the implications about the security issues and I don't know whether any o…

Browser engines have become so complex that each ultimately represents a massive attack surface. I think, rather than trying to pick the most secure browser (which may change over time) instead:

* Stick to one browser engine per device as much as possible. Two at the most.

* Isolate installed browser engines as much as possible (i.e. Qubes or mobile operating system levels of sandboxed or virtualized isolation, not just containers or flatpaks for dev-environment tidiness and separation).

* Connect end-user devices with browser engines installed to the Internet only while actively using the Internet.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#348
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just copy url

Same number of keys in any other browser: Ctrl+LC

Focusing on the number of “keys” is an attempt to deceive.

Yes, moving focus to the location bar and then copying the URL gives you the same result. It’s not the same number of steps as copying the URL without changing focus.

Ctrl-L, then while still holding Ctrl, hitting C is not the same number of steps as chording Ctrl-Shift and hitting C. Two steps vs one step.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#349
Interesting discussion! It's true that many Firefox forks focus on UX and privacy, but as some have pointed out, they still rely on Mozilla for core web standard updates. It would be cool to see a fork that really pushes the boundaries of web tech, maybe incorporating some Rust-based engine components for better performance and security. Has anyone experimented with Servo in a fork? Also, the mention of the Tor browser is spot on - it's a privacy powerhouse, but perhaps not for everyday browsing. I wonder if a fork could combine the best of both worlds?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#350
post #330

The ecosystem of forks is currently healthy but what concerns me is a lack of Firefox browser support leading to lagging in standards support over time as the browser goes out of fashion for ideological or marketing reasons that this article touches upon. All forks depend on a strong Firefox base and no fork seems to do heavy lifting in terms of web standards, or as a prioritized feature. Instead, they focus on enhan…

Firefox seems to be good enough - is there anyone who wants to fork Firefox out of a frustration over how it handles some web standard and a feeling that they could do it better? Hard forking a browser and implementing all future features on your own is daunting enough that even Microsoft - a company with more engineering resources than all but a handful of others, and for whom having a branded browser is existential…

Microsoft contributes a lot of web standard implementations upstream to Chromium. They are not just letting Google do all the work as your comment makes it sound like. They could have chosen to do the same with Firefox, which means the reason to fork Chromium and not Firefox had other reasons.
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