Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

werd.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#61

Post by quesera »

pxoe wrote: post #42
cycomanic wrote: post #28

It's weird how people always complain about lack of easy profile switching in Firefox. If one tells them that what they are really looking for is containers, they dismiss containers, but then proceed to complain that profiles don't have the same features. If you want sync across browser instances, manage them with one Firefox account... You really want containers not profiles.

Maybe you just don't understand the difference between containers and profiles, or what is it about profiles that's useful and more useful in some cases over containers. For one, it's impossible to have separate extensions with containers. That alone is already a deal breaker, and there are many more differences. Profiles are useful when you want to have things to be actually separate, not just pretending like they a…

So use profiles for what profiles are good at, and containers for what containers are good at. This works well for me.

I have a work profile with several containers inside, so that I can be logged into, e.g. GitHub and AWS, with multiple accounts at the same time.

I also have a primary personal profile, with a few containers primarily for cookie pollution separation.

I've never struggled with the "Profiles have bad UX" complaint, because I created a few different launchers for Firefox: work, personal, (a few others for special purposes like retail sites), and a default profile that launches the profile manager dialog at startup so I can select from a few dozen less-frequently-used (sometimes single-purpose) profiles. I like to keep separate things separated.

This took 20 minutes to set up, 15+ years ago(?) and has been perfectly convenient for me, but I've also recently read that Mozilla is working to improve profile switching.

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#63

Post by reddit_clone »

codepoet80 wrote: post #29
cycomanic wrote: post #28

It's weird how people always complain about lack of easy profile switching in Firefox. If one tells them that what they are really looking for is containers, they dismiss containers, but then proceed to complain that profiles don't have the same features. If you want sync across browser instances, manage them with one Firefox account... You really want containers not profiles.

Agreed. Containers are the reason I use Firefox -- they are a much better fit than profiles. But I've not been able to successfully communicate that to Chrome users. Its like their mental model is stuck, and they can't grasp the differences.

Yep. Containers are great. But haven't seen anyone else using it near me though.

One feature I was missing from Chrome was Tab Groups. But recently (I don't know when it started) the feature showed up in FireFox too :-)

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#64

Post by acheron »

xnx wrote: post #11

We're past the point were small aesthetic changes like this make a meaningful difference in browsers. In 2025 a browser that really acts as a user agent needs to do much more at the content level: ad blocking, content rewriting (clickbait headlines, etc.), content aggregation and summarization, deceptive content idenification, automatic reader-mode, etc.

The extent that we need so many lines of defense versus web developers is astonishing.

Congrats to everyone working to make the Internet worse; you’ve had a very successful couple of decades.

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#65

Post by eviks »

> way; it was superpowered with keyboard shortcuts that just made sense

No, that's under-powered.

Powered is when you can define multiple simple custom shortcuts (as far as I understand, at least Zen allows 1 shortcut change for some commands (unlike 0 in the dumb FF), so halfway there, not sure about Arc).

Super powered is when you can add key sequences and keys without modifiers depending on context in addition to a simple shortcuts.

Uberpowered would be the equivalent of QMK within the app (tap vs hold, home row mods left vs right alt, all 4 modifiers, etc etc), but when you can have conditions based on app contexts and dynamic user defined conditions (eg, in the simplest way, have vim-like modal editing in text fields with word jumps and single key navigation outside).

While uberpowered apps are unicorns, among relatively known browsers think only Vivaldi has has power

> Firefox remains the gold standard for user-first browsing.

What's gold about poor customization (no keybind, but also changing UI is cumbersome) and bad defaults?

> why isn’t it Firefox?

Oh, why indeed! Something about lack of incentives to innovate of even listen to users much when you're a big company financed by "ulterior" sources

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#66

Post by Vinnl »

mariusor wrote: post #46
cycomanic wrote: post #28

It's weird how people always complain about lack of easy profile switching in Firefox. If one tells them that what they are really looking for is containers, they dismiss containers, but then proceed to complain that profiles don't have the same features. If you want sync across browser instances, manage them with one Firefox account... You really want containers not profiles.

Firefox does have profiles, to use them well one only needs a little UX sugar in the form of the Profile Switcher extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...

Firefox proper is getting the ux sugar too, as the article mentioned: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-management

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#67

Post by eviks »

grim_io wrote: post #7

What does it even mean to be all-in on a browser? You can switch any time, multiple times per day even.

No, not if you are "all in" and spend enough time customizing it or getting used to the UI/features uniquely available to a specific browser.

You won't be able to switch multiple times a day without noticing a lot of friction as you common workflows break down

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#68

Post by eviks »

xnx wrote: post #11

We're past the point were small aesthetic changes like this make a meaningful difference in browsers. In 2025 a browser that really acts as a user agent needs to do much more at the content level: ad blocking, content rewriting (clickbait headlines, etc.), content aggregation and summarization, deceptive content idenification, automatic reader-mode, etc.

In 2025 we still largely fail at the very basics of good UI in many apps, browsers included, so we're nowhere near the point where these extra features you describe are the only way to make a meaningful difference

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#69

Post by pxoe »

quesera wrote: post #61
pxoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you just don't understand the difference between containers and profiles, or what is it about profiles that's useful and more useful in some cases over containers. For one, it's impossible to have separate extensions with containers. That alone is already a deal breaker, and there are many more differences. Profiles are useful when you want to have things to be actually separate, not just pretending like they a…

So use profiles for what profiles are good at, and containers for what containers are good at. This works well for me. I have a work profile with several containers inside, so that I can be logged into, e.g. GitHub and AWS, with multiple accounts at the same time. I also have a primary personal profile, with a few containers primarily for cookie pollution separation. I've never struggled with the "Profiles have bad U…

>use profiles for what profiles are good at

This is what I'm saying and what people who recommend containers as a "replacement" for profiles sorely miss.

>20 minutes to set up

Meanwhile on Chrome this just worked out of the box and didn't have UI that's been abandoned for a decade.

Re: Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

#70

Post by xnx »

eviks wrote: post #68
xnx wrote: post #11

We're past the point were small aesthetic changes like this make a meaningful difference in browsers. In 2025 a browser that really acts as a user agent needs to do much more at the content level: ad blocking, content rewriting (clickbait headlines, etc.), content aggregation and summarization, deceptive content idenification, automatic reader-mode, etc.

In 2025 we still largely fail at the very basics of good UI in many apps, browsers included, so we're nowhere near the point where these extra features you describe are the only way to make a meaningful difference

Genuinely curious about where browser UI is falling short. I often run Chrome fullscreen, so there's barely any visible UI at all.
Post reply on HN