You're Gonna Need a Bigger Browser

You're Gonna Need a Bigger Browser
berjon.com

Visceral reaction: Outside of FLOSS, technical people often react strongly against bundling concerns that can be kept separate because bundling them is often the first step to an over-aggressive capitalism entirely consuming their utility. The "Feed" that eventually becomes a heavy advertising venue or even a brainwashing tactic, has destroyed Twitter, and Facebook, and others as user experiences, rendered things like Youtube into potent infohazards, become a foundation for post-free-speech worlds in which the Platform is expected to Moderate Content for rightthink because the Platform is (for the sake of engagement!) deciding what to show you in an Editorial Capacity. The corruption of Google Search, or the Amazon review functionality, or then the Amazon search functionality, is a major short-term loss for human agency at least as big as the writer envisions, and it's being done because bundling different concerns provides an opening, gives the corporate board an erection during quarterly P&L briefings. Over the Possibilities.

If you care about the user experience, consider how long my grandfather's wrench was permitted to remain a wrench, rather than autonomously transforming into a screwdriver, or a brick, or a nice welcoming block of cheese, or a magazine subscription, or a bonfire, or Ebola. The owning entity only has to learn how to use the wrench once a generation; The interface does not drastically change to combine my love life, my choice in cereal, and my ability to tighten bolts. I have to re-learn some online tools once per YEAR because somebody is bundling something in a way that is in the short term slightly more profitable. I have a closet full of useful tools that don't exist on my cognitive plane any more and I'm not sure I want to investigate deeply enough to figure out what cosmic horror they became. In order to preserve my agency, I need to be able to flip back and forth between those tools and summon up capacities that I have not engaged in for several years; The state of web applications (and by extension, the browser) makes me as a tool-using ape feel like I have dementia with the number of holes that now exist in my knowledge versus my past self.

You don't need a bigger browser. You need a predictable environment that you can buy and own, that doesn't tear itself to shreds when you're not actively handing it a geometrically larger amount of money every five minutes. Most layering violations (outside of FLOSS) that you observe are trying to pick your pocket with one hand and scramble your neocortex ("The way you THOUGHT that the platform worked") with an icepick with the other.

No, my use of tabs may not be Technically Optimal. It is a way of organizing information. But it's predictable, and it's within my cognitive grasp, and it lets me do a great many things without entirely losing track of them. I don't want to have to relearn an entire means of organizing my information because you thought that my tabs belonged in your bookmark service†, or in your AI personal assistant†, or that they should be tidy and Bring You Joy. I don't want somebody to rearrange the papers on my desk; That would be profoundly disturbing because it breaks the model for how I think, how I predict things, and how I remain effective.

†Which you DEFINITELY will refrain from charging a subscription for. For a year, maybe even two, before seizing that chunk of my exocortex.

Chrome may be the default browser on Android, but Firefox is as easy to install as any other app in the Play Store.