Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#1

Post by abusada » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 10:48 AM UTC

I find myself frequently switching between different browsers, unable to decide which one truly stands out as the best option. Here are my thoughts on some popular choices:

Arc Browser: I appreciate the ease of switching between profiles and workspaces, but the overall performance feels somewhat sluggish.

Microsoft Edge: The clean UI and new Bing chat integration are appealing, but I don't appreciate the promotion of Microsoft's alternatives whenever I visit a Google app.

Google Chrome: Although its speed and smoothness are impressive, the lack of significant UX updates has left it feeling a bit stale, especially compared to the innovations seen in browsers like Arc.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Which browser do you prefer, and why?

Re: Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#2

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 11:16 AM UTC

Please give Firefox a try. Your options don't include it so you are missing out imo

Re: Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#3

Post by andyjohnson0 » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 11:21 AM UTC

Try Firefox. It's been my browser of choice for over a decade and I've never had cause to regret my choice.

Re: Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#4

Post by ofalkaed » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 11:30 AM UTC

I got stuck with Vivaldi for the past few years, I really did not feel like dealing with browser configuration/installing addons and it gave me everything I wanted out of the box. No complaints, have been trying out other options on the new computer but I am not sure I can part with the Vivaldi sidebar after all these years. I really want to like Nyxt and I probably would if it worked more reliably, really like the interface, might be time to try it again and see if it has improved.

Re: Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#5

Post by dxs » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

The real killer feature for me is Firefox's bookmark handling.

Bookmarks are easy to create, use, edit, reshuffle, and export.

I create bookmarks in Firefox and use them natively there, but also export them to HTML for use in other browsers.

I have a self-made, HTML "fast dial" that I use as my home page, and it has a link to the HTML version of my Firefox bookmarks, so I can easily use the same bookmarks in the same groups in Firefox, Vivaldi, and Brave, and that process is only a little clunkier in Brave and Vivaldi than in Firefox, so it works for me.

So far this is the best arrangement that I've found.

Vivaldi is an interesting but confusing beast, one I've tried and given up on many times since it first came out, but overall it's too complex for me to use as my main browser. And really slow to load.

Brave is fast to start up, and I do often use it for quick lookups, but it does some things I often do in its own goofy, awkward way, things that are trivial and much more intuitive for me in Firefox, so I'm sticking with the big F for now.

Re: Ask HN: Browser Hopping: Struggling to Choose the Best One

#6

Post by ofalkaed » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 11:10 PM UTC

dxs wrote: post #5

The real killer feature for me is Firefox's bookmark handling. Bookmarks are easy to create, use, edit, reshuffle, and export. I create bookmarks in Firefox and use them natively there, but also export them to HTML for use in other browsers. I have a self-made, HTML "fast dial" that I use as my home page, and it has a link to the HTML version of my Firefox bookmarks, so I can easily use the same bookmarks in the same…

>And really slow to load.

It seems to read a fair amount of data from the drive on startup and with a mechanical drive it really is very slow, with a SSD it is not bad and maybe a second for startup, but it is sort of the browser equivalent to a massive IDE and performance is put more on use than startup. It is large and complex and generally exactly what I avoid in software but the tab groups and note system hooked me, I was using surf for general browsing before that so it was quite a change.