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Ask HN: What browser do you use?
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#22EWW from Emacs. If Emacs can't render the HTML then the website is not worth using. No JavaScript. I don't want to accidentally run non-free code on my processor.
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#23Safari is my main browser at home and has been pretty much since its inception. Periodically I go off and use Firefox, Arch, and other such things, but I always come back to Safari. It just gets out of my way, while integrating a few quality of life features that normally end up as extensions in other browsers.
My big gripe with Safari is the extensions being moved to the App Store. This creates a lot of unnecessary friction. I’m curious how much their AI extension creation will be able to do in macOS 27, maybe it will make this a moot point, but it’s still annoying.
At work I use Chrome, which I don’t like, but feel forced into it due to the company actively breaking or blocking everything else. As a general rule these days, I want to avoid all Chromium based browsers, to not give Google any more power on the web than they already have, but I’d have to quit my job for that to be possible at work.
I also use Mullvad’s browser from time to time at home.
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#24> so I'm wondering why so many people still stick with Chrome, Safari, or Edge. most non-tech folks aren't even aware firefox exists; they just use whatever is already installed; i predominantly use firefox, since its firebird days (v0.6 perhaps?); i switch to chrome when its one killer feature, inband language translation, is needed; firefox has a translator, but it is rather lackluster;
There was an era before Chrome when non-tech people were using Firefox in large numbers. Friends would install it in friend’s computers. Eventually OEMs started preinstalling it with systems. Similar to what later happened with Chrome.
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#25Safari because of the seamless integration with Apple platform features and because it is the most energy efficient browser while still being the most performant. It’s the best of all worlds.
If you are tied to apple ecosystem, then obviously Safari is going to be the fastest one since its apple specific so they can optimize it for their hardware, though I think with as powerful computers as we have right now, you can run almost any browser without performance issues
> I think with as powerful computers as we have right now, you can run almost any browser without performance issues
And yet Chrome’s memory usage has become a meme at this point.
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#26Safari is my main browser at home and has been pretty much since its inception. Periodically I go off and use Firefox, Arch, and other such things, but I always come back to Safari. It just gets out of my way, while integrating a few quality of life features that normally end up as extensions in other browsers. My big gripe with Safari is the extensions being moved to the App Store. This creates a lot of unnecessary…
Are you aware that it is, in fact, Safari who holds all of the power over the direction of the web? Theyve been sandbagging it for a decade, so when it doesn't support important features, developers don't make use of them.
You can learn significantly more in this tremendous blog series: https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#27Safari because of the seamless integration with Apple platform features and because it is the most energy efficient browser while still being the most performant. It’s the best of all worlds.
> most performant
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/28-percent-faster--the-bl...
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#28Safari is my main browser at home and has been pretty much since its inception. Periodically I go off and use Firefox, Arch, and other such things, but I always come back to Safari. It just gets out of my way, while integrating a few quality of life features that normally end up as extensions in other browsers. My big gripe with Safari is the extensions being moved to the App Store. This creates a lot of unnecessary…
Are you aware that it is, in fact, Safari who holds all of the power over the direction of the web? Theyve been sandbagging it for a decade, so when it doesn't support important features, developers don't make use of them. You can learn significantly more in this tremendous blog series: https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
Chrome and Chromium browsers have around 80% of the browser market. Without Apple sticking to WebKit on the iPhone, Chrome would have a full monopoly over the browser and the direction of the web... even Microsoft caved to Google's monopoly in this space.
You can argue that this would allow things to move faster, but faster in which direction? Would ad blocking be killed once and for all? Would tracking be embedded into the core technologies so it was unavoidable? Google is first and foremost and advertising company, are those the incentives you want controlling the future of the internet?
Apple's stubbornness on the iPhone is literally the only thing stopping Google. EU regulators are trying to force that to change, which look to be some of the stories your link talks about. I find it ironic that pushing for alternatives engines on iOS is framed as browser choice, when all it will do it hand the whole internet over to Google, have developers only ever test in Chrome, and hurt the ability for any other browser to take off due to compatibility issues.
If Chrome has 95% marketshare, whatever they do is the standard, so why bother getting things approved as official standards? Why would developers bother to wait or use the standard features... just make sure it works in Chrome. That puts us back into an IE6 scenario where we all just have to hope Google plays nice, when their incentive to do so is effectively gone. Have we learned nothing from the past?
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#29I used Firefox for most of last year. I consistently ran into issues where a form wouldn't submit, or a website would appear subtly broken, but it would work in Chrome.
Ultimately I switched back to Chrome full-time as a result.
Re: Ask HN: What browser do you use?
#30I made my own to prioritize these 4 things:
1. Fact-checking built-in 2. Declutter the page 3. Lightweight 4. Ability to listen to the saved articles when I want to