9 ms·

Waterfox Browser

111 points by cameronbrown 7y ago

dlbucci 7y ago
Is this the same Waterfox that was a Firefox build for 64-bit Windows? Is it moving towards privacy now that Firefox is 64-bit on Windows, or do the projects just share (an obvious) name?
- jusob 7y ago
  Same project. It kept the old extension API from Firefox, this is why I use it.
- slondr 7y ago
  Same project. It switched focus after Firefox 57 released to become a continuation of pre-Quantum Firefox.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
I don’t get it, the concern is that Firefox sends telemetry to Mozilla? Can’t you turn that off?
- gruez 7y ago
  AFAIK the main selling point is xul (legacy) extension support.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    I guess if someone really needs to use a legacy extension, it's a good thing that it's around, but I'm personally glad that XUL is dead both from a developer standpoint and as a user.
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them, but that's because (1) people hate change, even when it's good for them and (2) they don't really appreciate all the security baggage those old APIs were lugging around with them. Projects that assure those users that they can keep on trucking with their old plugins like there's no problem just encourage them to do dangerous things they really should not be doing.
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        The problem is that the replacement is crippled and Google is clearly more interested in stripping features from the extension API. I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now.
        frenchy 7y ago
        I'm not sure what Google has to do with this, but Mozilla have been adding features to the extention API since Quantum first came out.
        sjwright 7y ago
        Being compatible with the Extension API doesn't require Mozilla to follow Google on every decision. As long as the deviations are well documented and developers perform feature detection, Mozilla won't ever have to make changes that serve the interests of Google ahead of their users.
        ronjouch 7y ago
        > "I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now" userChrome.css to the rescue: - Tree Style Tab's wiki offers tips to do exactly that: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... . - Or you can combine the address and tab bar: https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox If none is to your exact taste, https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ may help.
    - simula67 7y ago
      Not me. I lost DownThemAll[1] and TabWheelScroll after the extension overhaul [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll!
      - sjwright 7y ago
        I loved DownThemAll, but I'm not sad to see it go because I realised how rarely it was actually needed these days. The downloading interface built into Firefox really is fine 99% of the time. On the rarer occasions that I need to download extremely large files, I send them to an HTTP download client (pyload) that runs directly on my NAS in docker.
        bscphil 7y ago
        I didn't really use the segmented downloads feature. The important part of it for me was the fact that I could download all the files of a particular type and download URL ranges. Stuff like https://example.com/[0-999].png https://example.com/[0-999].png.
        ce4 7y ago
        You can do that rather easily with curl (comes with Windows nowadays) or wget. Just copy the resource location of the object you want as curl command line string from developer tools (cf https://stackoverflow.com/a/33384016 https://stackoverflow.com/a/33384016 ) and adjust the range (same syntax as DownThemAll) and download it manually.
        ubercow13 7y ago
        One thing that DownThemAll got right that I am not sure any other downloader I have found does is that if a download is terminated by the server before the reported file size of the file had been downloaded, it would see that as a failure and retry. Unreliable servers often terminate the download partway through and it seems most other download mangers, browsers etc. will just leave the truncated file on the disk and report the download as successful, not allowing you to continue from where it got to.
    - Causality1 7y ago
      I don't care about the technical details as a user as long as I can get the functionality I want. I want to be able to move UI elements around like menu bars, tabs, bookmarks bar, address bar. I need DownThemAll or something equal to it to work because I use it a dozen times a day.
    - drilldrive 7y ago
      I am glad Mozilla made the much needed change and don't have long-term problems with Mozilla other than perhaps lack of trust. I did not like how Mozilla made the swift change with little announcement for long-term add-ons though, particularly making the change right after allowing for multi-processing.
      - bscphil 7y ago
        My recollection of the change is that they did announce it well in advance, but left many of the needed replacement APIs missing or broken until it was far too late for many developers to make the switch before XUL got deprecated. (We're still feeling the effects of the lacking WebExtenions APIs, actually.)
        drilldrive 7y ago
        It was a bit of both as I see it. Tab-groups developer quit soon after rewriting the add-on to fit the multi-processing update (which was announced several years in advance I believe, and was anticipated nonetheless), and then right after Mozilla announced the depreciation of XUL in favor of WebExtensions in a year's time, forcing another rewrite and wouldn't be fully functional until the replacement API's are developed. Besides, that replacement API's haven't even now been fully developed points all the same to Mozilla forcing WebExtensions much too quick, as waiting more would have fixed this problem from occurring.
    - flukus 7y ago
      I'm still waiting for a working vertical tabs extension that doesn't leave the tab bar across the top wasting space. Dumping XUL is why it's hard to see firefox as a viable browser.
      - opencl 7y ago
        You can still remove the top tab bar in the current version of Firefox, though it is significantly more annoying to do so than it used to be. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...
    - _florians 7y ago
      To this day I miss vimperator. There are substitutes but they don't come near the glory of vimperator.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    That was my determination as well. Reading the features of the browsers just lead me to believe they were unhappy with the changes Mozilla was making to Firefox which both improve security and performance. I wonder what performance is like? I can't imagine it's great.
- ab8 7y ago
  I suppose the difference is that in Firefox you have to opt out of it, and in Waterfox you opt in (?). The default makes a difference, since most users don't know about it.
  - SamuelAdams 7y ago
    It's about the audience. People who don't know or care about telemetry tracking are also probably not going to know about Waterfox. The ones that do know about waterfox are probably technically savvy enough to disable telemetry in regular old Firefox.
vecplane 7y ago
I wanted to use Waterfox, but I wasn't sure about the security side of things. When vulnerabilities are found in Firefox, we can expect them to be fixed pretty quickly. Can the same be said for this project?
- sjwright 7y ago
  Given the project is so small, I wouldn't trust their future response to be rapid even if they have been in the past. Right now most security fixes come in the form of merging upstream security fixes from Mozilla. As their code base becomes increasingly divergent to the Firefox head, merging in upstream security fixes will become increasingly difficult and increasingly cumbersome.
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  I managed to get the security patches out from ESR the same time, I don’t think I do too badly on that front. Not always easy though!
RyanShook 7y ago
Are there any similar projects in the Chromium world?
- ronilan 7y ago
  ChromiumWater might be trademarked by PG&E.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    Firefox - Waterfox Chrome - Matte
- paxys 7y ago
  https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
  - keyle 7y ago
    Not sure why you got downvoted, this project answers the question exactly. People downvote nowadays withtout giving any information as to why the post is bad. When it's sarcasm, I get it, but when it's an actual answer...
- alexhawke 7y ago
  There's Brave https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ https://github.com/brave/brave-browser https://github.com/brave/brave-browser
- frogpelt 7y ago
  https://vivaldi.com/# https://vivaldi.com/#
- imiric 7y ago
  There's an extensive list here[0]. There's even more if you include WebKit-based browsers[1]. Out of those I would strongly recommend surf[2], which is not discontinued despite what Wikipedia says (latest upstream commit was a few months ago[3], but there are many active forks as well). Shameless plug, but I've used my own fork[4] as main web browser for the past few months, and despite the amount of hacks and limitations, it fits my workflow on Linux quite well. It does involve some external tooling and configuration, and I still keep Firefox and Chromium around for tricky sites, but it's provided a great user experience more often than not. The key benefit of surf is its simplicity, which we should all strive for as programmers and consumers of technology. The entire browser is under 3KLOC of very readable and well-documented C code. Granted, it relies heavily on WebKitGTK, but it avoids all the mess and complexity of modern browsers, extensions and security concerns simply because of its minimalism. I would encourage anyone willing to make certain compromises to give it a try and contribute so we can make it easier to use and approachable for a larger and non-technical user base. As web browsers have become the main gateway to the Internet for a vast majority of people, we should actively work towards preventing abuses of user freedoms via aggressive advertising, fueled by corporate greed. We need to take the web back, and simplicity is key. My goal would be to eventually strip out WebKit entirely, but that's a gargantuan task with no clear way forward, unfortunately. As mentioned in today's Google/ad-blocking thread, we need new and alternative browser engines, outside of the sphere of influence of large corporations. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Blink-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Blink-bas... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-ba... [2]: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/ [3]: https://git.suckless.org/surf/ https://git.suckless.org/surf/ [4]: https://github.com/imiric/surf https://github.com/imiric/surf
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sdan 7y ago
Doesn't collect any data Proceeds to links to Stackpath (in the footer) with a bunch of query tags: https://www.stackpath.com/?utm_campaign=Partner%20Display&ut.. https://www.stackpath.com/?utm_campaign=Partner%20Display&ut....
- trufflepig 7y ago
  What’s stackpath
  - pheeney 7y ago
    Looks like its a sponsor of their CDN. The link doesn't embed any tracking that I can see. Its simply a referral link so that stackpath can determine how many people clicked from waterfox.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    From a quick search, it's a CDN.
- unreal37 7y ago
  I have no problem with "utm" parameters. They're static and not personal to you. You can see them.
sdan 7y ago
Says limited data collection Proceeds to use Google Analytics on waterfox.net
- unreal37 7y ago
  You seem obsessed with this. :)
  - sdan 7y ago
    Yes :). But in either case, if the browser is advocating for "no data collection" and "no telemetry" I would at least expect no referral links or Google Analytics on their homepage.
  - needle0 7y ago
    Well, they did say "ANY telemetry", capitalization emphasis by them. That's an awfully strong claim to make.
cbsks 7y ago
Why does it need to send your OS and browser version to check for updates? Couldn't it just look up whatever the latest versions are?
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  Well, I guess you can check for update without disclosing OS, but since binaries differ between OS you need to disclose OS to actually download the update. Browser version is not necessary, but sending browser version allows serving smaller binary diff instead of full binary, which Firefox actually does.
  - itslennysfault 7y ago
    No way! Just download the binary for every OS then only install the one for your OS and delete the rest (/s)
  - cbsks 7y ago
    Ah! That makes sense. I had forgotten about binary diffs. I guess I can put my tinfoil hat back on the shelf...
paxys 7y ago
I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  Isn't this the source code? https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox
  - paxys 7y ago
    It isn't linked from https://www.waterfox.net https://www.waterfox.net at all, so hard to say
    - sanxiyn 7y ago
      I mean, about page says Alex Kontos, MrAlex94 is Alex Kontos, so it almost certainly is. Not linking the source code is somewhat understandable because it is likely to increase support burden without any increase in contribution.
      - mort96 7y ago
        What empirical data do you have to back up that claim?
      - couchand 7y ago
        I would say matching a repository based solely on a person's name is not a great way to ensure you have the right code.
        sanxiyn 7y ago
        Note that while website does not link to repository, repository does link to website.
        7y ago
godelski 7y ago
> Waterfox does not collect ANY telemetry, meaning you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information about what you do inside YOUR browser. This is woefully uninformed or malicious. There's a lot of tracking that is out of your hands. Such as canvas fingerprinting. Even sending back 0's (like tor does) doesn't prevent fingerprinting. In either case I lost confidence for the browser just by reading what was on their landing page. Either they don't know that tactics like this are common, which means that they likely aren't aware of other basic security flaws. Or they are aware and lying, which begs the question of how we can trust anything else. In either case it doesn't build trust for a tool that is so highly dependent upon trust.
- bscphil 7y ago
  It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. Obviously if you don't block tracking scripts that doesn't protect you from websites that want to track you, but that's not the point of the statement.
  - tuesdayrain 7y ago
    > It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. That was my interpretation. If I tell someone "I'm not collecting any data on you, so you don't have to worry about being tracked", it would be odd for them to accuse me of lying or being incompetent since obviously the government is tracking them.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      > obviously No, it's not obvious. If you don't have any idea how it works, it's easy to read in that statement that not including telemetry in the browser prevents all tracking, including by sites.
      - Liquix 7y ago
        This seems more like people having different ideas of what the word 'telemetry' means than a malicious statement meant to mislead users. Telemetry metrics were used before the digital age in diving equipment, rockets, airplanes, factory equipment, etc. Traditionally, they are used exclusively to better understand and improve the performance of the device collecting them (and nothing else). Recent unethical practices of either using true telemetry metrics for advertising purposes or collecting data not used to improve the software under the guise of 'telemetry' have muddied the meaning of the term. I agree that the author could change the phrasing in that blurb to use a different word which has not shifted meanings in the last decade.
barnaclejive 7y ago
Dumb question maybe, but regardless of the browser you use, isn't your ISP able to collect a ton of data either way just based on the network traffic? How happy should I really be that the browser vendor (Watermark or any other browser) itself might not also be doing it also?
dallbee 7y ago
This has been around for a while. I used it as my primary driver several years ago, back when its main feature was that it had 64-bit support. After Firefox implemented a 64-bit build, I sort of just assumed waterfox would die off. Neat to see they've kept around and changed focus.
bscphil 7y ago
Alternatives that allow you to still get your security and stability updates from Mozilla include two Gnu soft-forks. There's IceCat, which is the best-supported version and runs off of ESR. [1] There's also "abrowser" (that's literally what it's called) that is part of the Gnu Trisquel distribution, which is based on the most recent release. Both patch the browser to be more security and privacy friendly. [2] There are also several projects that provide patches for Firefox or user.js files [3] to minimize the privacy impact of recent Mozilla decisions. (I publish patches that remove Pocket and disable various forms of tracking in Firefox.) The problem with the patch-based approach is that you have to build Firefox yourself, which most people are unable or unwilling to do. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ [2] https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/abrowser-help https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/abrowser-help [3] https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js
- 66fm472tjy7 7y ago
  The most recent version of IceCat at this time is 60.3.0, published on 2018-11-09 [1], 18 days after upstream [2]. Upstream is currently at 60.7.0, published on 2019-05-20 [3]. This puts IceCat more than half a year behind upstream. Waterfox published their version merging upstream 60.7.0 security fixes before upstream [4]. Using IceCat thus seems to a bad idea security-wise. I use upstream ESR ever since FF disabled add-ons since they let their cert expire [5] and the release channel version ignores the 'xpinstall.signatures.required' flag. [1] http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/60.3.0/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/60.3.0/ [2] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.3.0esr/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.3.0esr/ [3] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.7.0esr/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.7.0esr/ [4] https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-56.2.10-release-download/ https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-56.2.10-release-downl... [5] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/firefox-add-ons-mass-disabled-by-certificate-bug-hotfix-for-some-ready/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/firef...
  - bscphil 7y ago
    I'm not sure what URL is technically supposed to be the correct one, but they do seem to have updated through at least 60.5: http://devel.trisquel.info/repos/packages/icecat/pool/main/i/icecat/ http://devel.trisquel.info/repos/packages/icecat/pool/main/i... Trisquel in general seems to be pretty dead, looking at their git. While I'm not sure whether that includes any backported security fixes or not, you're right that this is concerning. Perhaps building it yourself is the way to go. >I use upstream ESR ever since FF disabled add-ons since they let their cert expire [5] Unless I'm mistaken that bug would have bitten you on ESR as well. The expired certificate was an intermediate used to sign most of the addons on AMO. If ESR wasn't using that certificate then it wouldn't have been able to validate those addons. Correct me if I'm wrong.
kbumsik 7y ago
> They should be used responsibly, but Waterfox still supports the use of Java and Silverlight plugins, as well as any other 64-Bit NPAPI plugins. Are Java and NPAPI still a thing? I have never come across such plugins lately.
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  Java NPAPI is still maintained AFAIK, but not sure for how much longer. And a few of my friends say that they have Waterfox deployed company wide because of NPAPI support, which means they don't have to still use an out-dated browser which is cool!
unicornporn 7y ago
So, here's a thing to work on... This is what I did: I went to the landing page and though: sounds good. But version 56? When was this last updated? Firefox is long beyond 56. Went to the "releases" page and found nothing about when 56.2.10 was released. Had to go to their Twitter account to find out it's dated 2019-05-20. I would also recommend renaming the "releases" page to "download" if you wish to reach beyond the geek pool. EDIT: release dates are also in the blog...
etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
I really think that it is cool that there is a browser that is looking towards maintenance of what we had (XPCOM, NPAPI for old plugins) versus creating something new. Very little of that out there nowadays. It seems like a very conservative project. It is good that we have this choice.
- TorKlingberg 7y ago
  It feels a bit like SeaMonkey, repeated a decade later.
  - Paianni 7y ago
    At least Seamonkey was somewhat well maintained for a while, for at least the first eight years of its existence.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Seems like a security nightmare, especially as the development team appears to consist of one person.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
Looks like there is another version of waterfox at the .org domain. Which domain is the correct one? Can you get the incorrect domain de-listed from google search results? https://waterfoxproject.org/en-US/ https://waterfoxproject.org/en-US/
- tazard 7y ago
  When you go to the blog/web log on the. Org site, it redirects you too the .net site, so I would guess the .net is the legit one
- __HYde 7y ago
  If you add www[0] to the beginning of the org website it redirects you to the net website[1]. The downloads on both sites are hosted on the same site but they do point to different versions[2][3]. Both pages link to the same BuyMeACoffee page[4]. The GitHub repository has a link to the net[5]. But the GitHub profile of the developer links the the org[6]. Very old versions[7] and the current version[8] of the wikipedia page list the org as the official website. The org seems to have been the site for the project since as early as 2012 according to the wayback[9]. However the net doesn't seem to have been associated with the project (or anything) before 2019[10]. The most recent crawls of the org got 301 redirected to the net[11]. [0] https://www.waterfoxproject.org https://www.waterfoxproject.org [1] https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/ [2] https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/installer/waterfox-56.2.8.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/ins... [3] https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/installer/waterfox-56.2.10.en-US.linux-x86_64-1.tar.bz2 https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/ins... [4] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterfox https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterfox [5] https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox [6] https://github.com/MrAlex94 https://github.com/MrAlex94 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=592684463 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=59... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=899331601 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=89... [9] http://web.archive.org/web/20120117003924/http://waterfoxproject.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20120117003924/http://waterfoxpro... [10] http://web.archive.org/web/20190418195027/https://www.waterfox.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20190418195027/https://www.waterf... [11] http://web.archive.org/web/20190527072632/https://waterfoxproject.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20190527072632/https://waterfoxpr...
theandrewbailey 7y ago
Nice to know this project is still going. I used Waterfox about 8 years ago, since standard Firefox didn't provide 64-bit Windows releases. After about a year, I got frustrated that it was skipping every other release, so I went back to standard Firefox. Between using NoScript (blocking most scripts), and benchmarks showing 64-bit wasn't much (if any) faster, I didn't notice standard Firefox being slow.
guilhas 7y ago
I think it is visibly faster. And there are still some nice classical addons that you can install using the addon archive. Together with the newer addons.
terrycody 7y ago
waterfox, LOL hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha, lovely name!
lproven 7y ago
Glad to see some coverage of this. It's my default browser, since Firefox Quantum. It still allows rich customisation, via classic XUL addons. I have a vertical tab bar, merged with a vertical bookmarks bar, which is flattened via another addon. I have a rich download manager with multi-streaming, resuming, and more. When Firefox Quantum came out, 13 of my 17 add-ons stopped working. Several versions later, I can customise it a bit, but only in limited, clunky ways, requiring manual hacking of userChrome.css, and it's not very widescreen-friendly. I don't care about privacy. Scott McNeally was right in 1999, and he's still right: "You have no privacy on the Internet. Get over it." I don't like the new Firefox and I probably won't be back. Waterfox fills the need nicely.
bjnord 7y ago
Can Airfox and Earthfox be far behind?

111 points by cameronbrown 7y ago

Is this the same Waterfox that was a Firefox build for 64-bit Windows? Is it moving towards privacy now that Firefox is 64-bit on Windows, or do the projects just share (an obvious) name?

jusob 7y ago
Same project. It kept the old extension API from Firefox, this is why I use it.
slondr 7y ago
Same project. It switched focus after Firefox 57 released to become a continuation of pre-Quantum Firefox.

erikpukinskis 7y ago

I don’t get it, the concern is that Firefox sends telemetry to Mozilla? Can’t you turn that off?

gruez 7y ago
AFAIK the main selling point is xul (legacy) extension support.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  I guess if someone really needs to use a legacy extension, it's a good thing that it's around, but I'm personally glad that XUL is dead both from a developer standpoint and as a user.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them, but that's because (1) people hate change, even when it's good for them and (2) they don't really appreciate all the security baggage those old APIs were lugging around with them. Projects that assure those users that they can keep on trucking with their old plugins like there's no problem just encourage them to do dangerous things they really should not be doing.
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      The problem is that the replacement is crippled and Google is clearly more interested in stripping features from the extension API. I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now.
      - frenchy 7y ago
        I'm not sure what Google has to do with this, but Mozilla have been adding features to the extention API since Quantum first came out.
      - sjwright 7y ago
        Being compatible with the Extension API doesn't require Mozilla to follow Google on every decision. As long as the deviations are well documented and developers perform feature detection, Mozilla won't ever have to make changes that serve the interests of Google ahead of their users.
      - ronjouch 7y ago
        > "I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now" userChrome.css to the rescue: - Tree Style Tab's wiki offers tips to do exactly that: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... . - Or you can combine the address and tab bar: https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox If none is to your exact taste, https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ may help.
  - simula67 7y ago
    Not me. I lost DownThemAll[1] and TabWheelScroll after the extension overhaul [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll!
    - sjwright 7y ago
      I loved DownThemAll, but I'm not sad to see it go because I realised how rarely it was actually needed these days. The downloading interface built into Firefox really is fine 99% of the time. On the rarer occasions that I need to download extremely large files, I send them to an HTTP download client (pyload) that runs directly on my NAS in docker.
      - bscphil 7y ago
        I didn't really use the segmented downloads feature. The important part of it for me was the fact that I could download all the files of a particular type and download URL ranges. Stuff like https://example.com/[0-999].png https://example.com/[0-999].png.
        ce4 7y ago
        You can do that rather easily with curl (comes with Windows nowadays) or wget. Just copy the resource location of the object you want as curl command line string from developer tools (cf https://stackoverflow.com/a/33384016 https://stackoverflow.com/a/33384016 ) and adjust the range (same syntax as DownThemAll) and download it manually.
      - ubercow13 7y ago
        One thing that DownThemAll got right that I am not sure any other downloader I have found does is that if a download is terminated by the server before the reported file size of the file had been downloaded, it would see that as a failure and retry. Unreliable servers often terminate the download partway through and it seems most other download mangers, browsers etc. will just leave the truncated file on the disk and report the download as successful, not allowing you to continue from where it got to.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    I don't care about the technical details as a user as long as I can get the functionality I want. I want to be able to move UI elements around like menu bars, tabs, bookmarks bar, address bar. I need DownThemAll or something equal to it to work because I use it a dozen times a day.
  - drilldrive 7y ago
    I am glad Mozilla made the much needed change and don't have long-term problems with Mozilla other than perhaps lack of trust. I did not like how Mozilla made the swift change with little announcement for long-term add-ons though, particularly making the change right after allowing for multi-processing.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      My recollection of the change is that they did announce it well in advance, but left many of the needed replacement APIs missing or broken until it was far too late for many developers to make the switch before XUL got deprecated. (We're still feeling the effects of the lacking WebExtenions APIs, actually.)
      - drilldrive 7y ago
        It was a bit of both as I see it. Tab-groups developer quit soon after rewriting the add-on to fit the multi-processing update (which was announced several years in advance I believe, and was anticipated nonetheless), and then right after Mozilla announced the depreciation of XUL in favor of WebExtensions in a year's time, forcing another rewrite and wouldn't be fully functional until the replacement API's are developed. Besides, that replacement API's haven't even now been fully developed points all the same to Mozilla forcing WebExtensions much too quick, as waiting more would have fixed this problem from occurring.
  - flukus 7y ago
    I'm still waiting for a working vertical tabs extension that doesn't leave the tab bar across the top wasting space. Dumping XUL is why it's hard to see firefox as a viable browser.
    - opencl 7y ago
      You can still remove the top tab bar in the current version of Firefox, though it is significantly more annoying to do so than it used to be. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...
  - _florians 7y ago
    To this day I miss vimperator. There are substitutes but they don't come near the glory of vimperator.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  That was my determination as well. Reading the features of the browsers just lead me to believe they were unhappy with the changes Mozilla was making to Firefox which both improve security and performance. I wonder what performance is like? I can't imagine it's great.
ab8 7y ago
I suppose the difference is that in Firefox you have to opt out of it, and in Waterfox you opt in (?). The default makes a difference, since most users don't know about it.
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  It's about the audience. People who don't know or care about telemetry tracking are also probably not going to know about Waterfox. The ones that do know about waterfox are probably technically savvy enough to disable telemetry in regular old Firefox.

vecplane 7y ago

I wanted to use Waterfox, but I wasn't sure about the security side of things. When vulnerabilities are found in Firefox, we can expect them to be fixed pretty quickly. Can the same be said for this project?

sjwright 7y ago
Given the project is so small, I wouldn't trust their future response to be rapid even if they have been in the past. Right now most security fixes come in the form of merging upstream security fixes from Mozilla. As their code base becomes increasingly divergent to the Firefox head, merging in upstream security fixes will become increasingly difficult and increasingly cumbersome.
MrAlex94 7y ago
I managed to get the security patches out from ESR the same time, I don’t think I do too badly on that front. Not always easy though!

RyanShook 7y ago

Are there any similar projects in the Chromium world?

ronilan 7y ago
ChromiumWater might be trademarked by PG&E.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  Firefox - Waterfox Chrome - Matte
paxys 7y ago
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
- keyle 7y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted, this project answers the question exactly. People downvote nowadays withtout giving any information as to why the post is bad. When it's sarcasm, I get it, but when it's an actual answer...
alexhawke 7y ago
There's Brave https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ https://github.com/brave/brave-browser https://github.com/brave/brave-browser
frogpelt 7y ago
https://vivaldi.com/# https://vivaldi.com/#
imiric 7y ago
There's an extensive list here[0]. There's even more if you include WebKit-based browsers[1]. Out of those I would strongly recommend surf[2], which is not discontinued despite what Wikipedia says (latest upstream commit was a few months ago[3], but there are many active forks as well). Shameless plug, but I've used my own fork[4] as main web browser for the past few months, and despite the amount of hacks and limitations, it fits my workflow on Linux quite well. It does involve some external tooling and configuration, and I still keep Firefox and Chromium around for tricky sites, but it's provided a great user experience more often than not. The key benefit of surf is its simplicity, which we should all strive for as programmers and consumers of technology. The entire browser is under 3KLOC of very readable and well-documented C code. Granted, it relies heavily on WebKitGTK, but it avoids all the mess and complexity of modern browsers, extensions and security concerns simply because of its minimalism. I would encourage anyone willing to make certain compromises to give it a try and contribute so we can make it easier to use and approachable for a larger and non-technical user base. As web browsers have become the main gateway to the Internet for a vast majority of people, we should actively work towards preventing abuses of user freedoms via aggressive advertising, fueled by corporate greed. We need to take the web back, and simplicity is key. My goal would be to eventually strip out WebKit entirely, but that's a gargantuan task with no clear way forward, unfortunately. As mentioned in today's Google/ad-blocking thread, we need new and alternative browser engines, outside of the sphere of influence of large corporations. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Blink-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Blink-bas... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-ba... [2]: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/ [3]: https://git.suckless.org/surf/ https://git.suckless.org/surf/ [4]: https://github.com/imiric/surf https://github.com/imiric/surf

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sdan 7y ago

Doesn't collect any data Proceeds to links to Stackpath (in the footer) with a bunch of query tags: https://www.stackpath.com/?utm_campaign=Partner%20Display&ut.. https://www.stackpath.com/?utm_campaign=Partner%20Display&ut....

trufflepig 7y ago
What’s stackpath
- pheeney 7y ago
  Looks like its a sponsor of their CDN. The link doesn't embed any tracking that I can see. Its simply a referral link so that stackpath can determine how many people clicked from waterfox.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  From a quick search, it's a CDN.
unreal37 7y ago
I have no problem with "utm" parameters. They're static and not personal to you. You can see them.

sdan 7y ago

Says limited data collection Proceeds to use Google Analytics on waterfox.net

unreal37 7y ago
You seem obsessed with this. :)
- sdan 7y ago
  Yes :). But in either case, if the browser is advocating for "no data collection" and "no telemetry" I would at least expect no referral links or Google Analytics on their homepage.
- needle0 7y ago
  Well, they did say "ANY telemetry", capitalization emphasis by them. That's an awfully strong claim to make.

cbsks 7y ago

Why does it need to send your OS and browser version to check for updates? Couldn't it just look up whatever the latest versions are?

sanxiyn 7y ago
Well, I guess you can check for update without disclosing OS, but since binaries differ between OS you need to disclose OS to actually download the update. Browser version is not necessary, but sending browser version allows serving smaller binary diff instead of full binary, which Firefox actually does.
- itslennysfault 7y ago
  No way! Just download the binary for every OS then only install the one for your OS and delete the rest (/s)
- cbsks 7y ago
  Ah! That makes sense. I had forgotten about binary diffs. I guess I can put my tinfoil hat back on the shelf...

paxys 7y ago

I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.

sanxiyn 7y ago
Isn't this the source code? https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox
- paxys 7y ago
  It isn't linked from https://www.waterfox.net https://www.waterfox.net at all, so hard to say
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    I mean, about page says Alex Kontos, MrAlex94 is Alex Kontos, so it almost certainly is. Not linking the source code is somewhat understandable because it is likely to increase support burden without any increase in contribution.
    - mort96 7y ago
      What empirical data do you have to back up that claim?
    - couchand 7y ago
      I would say matching a repository based solely on a person's name is not a great way to ensure you have the right code.
      - sanxiyn 7y ago
        Note that while website does not link to repository, repository does link to website.
        7y ago

godelski 7y ago

> Waterfox does not collect ANY telemetry, meaning you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information about what you do inside YOUR browser. This is woefully uninformed or malicious. There's a lot of tracking that is out of your hands. Such as canvas fingerprinting. Even sending back 0's (like tor does) doesn't prevent fingerprinting. In either case I lost confidence for the browser just by reading what was on their landing page. Either they don't know that tactics like this are common, which means that they likely aren't aware of other basic security flaws. Or they are aware and lying, which begs the question of how we can trust anything else. In either case it doesn't build trust for a tool that is so highly dependent upon trust.

bscphil 7y ago
It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. Obviously if you don't block tracking scripts that doesn't protect you from websites that want to track you, but that's not the point of the statement.
- tuesdayrain 7y ago
  > It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. That was my interpretation. If I tell someone "I'm not collecting any data on you, so you don't have to worry about being tracked", it would be odd for them to accuse me of lying or being incompetent since obviously the government is tracking them.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > obviously No, it's not obvious. If you don't have any idea how it works, it's easy to read in that statement that not including telemetry in the browser prevents all tracking, including by sites.
    - Liquix 7y ago
      This seems more like people having different ideas of what the word 'telemetry' means than a malicious statement meant to mislead users. Telemetry metrics were used before the digital age in diving equipment, rockets, airplanes, factory equipment, etc. Traditionally, they are used exclusively to better understand and improve the performance of the device collecting them (and nothing else). Recent unethical practices of either using true telemetry metrics for advertising purposes or collecting data not used to improve the software under the guise of 'telemetry' have muddied the meaning of the term. I agree that the author could change the phrasing in that blurb to use a different word which has not shifted meanings in the last decade.

barnaclejive 7y ago

Dumb question maybe, but regardless of the browser you use, isn't your ISP able to collect a ton of data either way just based on the network traffic? How happy should I really be that the browser vendor (Watermark or any other browser) itself might not also be doing it also?

dallbee 7y ago

This has been around for a while. I used it as my primary driver several years ago, back when its main feature was that it had 64-bit support. After Firefox implemented a 64-bit build, I sort of just assumed waterfox would die off. Neat to see they've kept around and changed focus.

bscphil 7y ago

Alternatives that allow you to still get your security and stability updates from Mozilla include two Gnu soft-forks. There's IceCat, which is the best-supported version and runs off of ESR. [1] There's also "abrowser" (that's literally what it's called) that is part of the Gnu Trisquel distribution, which is based on the most recent release. Both patch the browser to be more security and privacy friendly. [2] There are also several projects that provide patches for Firefox or user.js files [3] to minimize the privacy impact of recent Mozilla decisions. (I publish patches that remove Pocket and disable various forms of tracking in Firefox.) The problem with the patch-based approach is that you have to build Firefox yourself, which most people are unable or unwilling to do. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ [2] https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/abrowser-help https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/abrowser-help [3] https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js

66fm472tjy7 7y ago
The most recent version of IceCat at this time is 60.3.0, published on 2018-11-09 [1], 18 days after upstream [2]. Upstream is currently at 60.7.0, published on 2019-05-20 [3]. This puts IceCat more than half a year behind upstream. Waterfox published their version merging upstream 60.7.0 security fixes before upstream [4]. Using IceCat thus seems to a bad idea security-wise. I use upstream ESR ever since FF disabled add-ons since they let their cert expire [5] and the release channel version ignores the 'xpinstall.signatures.required' flag. [1] http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/60.3.0/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/60.3.0/ [2] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.3.0esr/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.3.0esr/ [3] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.7.0esr/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.7.0esr/ [4] https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-56.2.10-release-download/ https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-56.2.10-release-downl... [5] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/firefox-add-ons-mass-disabled-by-certificate-bug-hotfix-for-some-ready/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/firef...
- bscphil 7y ago
  I'm not sure what URL is technically supposed to be the correct one, but they do seem to have updated through at least 60.5: http://devel.trisquel.info/repos/packages/icecat/pool/main/i/icecat/ http://devel.trisquel.info/repos/packages/icecat/pool/main/i... Trisquel in general seems to be pretty dead, looking at their git. While I'm not sure whether that includes any backported security fixes or not, you're right that this is concerning. Perhaps building it yourself is the way to go. >I use upstream ESR ever since FF disabled add-ons since they let their cert expire [5] Unless I'm mistaken that bug would have bitten you on ESR as well. The expired certificate was an intermediate used to sign most of the addons on AMO. If ESR wasn't using that certificate then it wouldn't have been able to validate those addons. Correct me if I'm wrong.

kbumsik 7y ago

> They should be used responsibly, but Waterfox still supports the use of Java and Silverlight plugins, as well as any other 64-Bit NPAPI plugins. Are Java and NPAPI still a thing? I have never come across such plugins lately.

MrAlex94 7y ago
Java NPAPI is still maintained AFAIK, but not sure for how much longer. And a few of my friends say that they have Waterfox deployed company wide because of NPAPI support, which means they don't have to still use an out-dated browser which is cool!

unicornporn 7y ago

So, here's a thing to work on... This is what I did: I went to the landing page and though: sounds good. But version 56? When was this last updated? Firefox is long beyond 56. Went to the "releases" page and found nothing about when 56.2.10 was released. Had to go to their Twitter account to find out it's dated 2019-05-20. I would also recommend renaming the "releases" page to "download" if you wish to reach beyond the geek pool. EDIT: release dates are also in the blog...

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

I really think that it is cool that there is a browser that is looking towards maintenance of what we had (XPCOM, NPAPI for old plugins) versus creating something new. Very little of that out there nowadays. It seems like a very conservative project. It is good that we have this choice.

TorKlingberg 7y ago
It feels a bit like SeaMonkey, repeated a decade later.
- Paianni 7y ago
  At least Seamonkey was somewhat well maintained for a while, for at least the first eight years of its existence.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
Seems like a security nightmare, especially as the development team appears to consist of one person.

SamuelAdams 7y ago

Looks like there is another version of waterfox at the .org domain. Which domain is the correct one? Can you get the incorrect domain de-listed from google search results? https://waterfoxproject.org/en-US/ https://waterfoxproject.org/en-US/

tazard 7y ago
When you go to the blog/web log on the. Org site, it redirects you too the .net site, so I would guess the .net is the legit one
__HYde 7y ago
If you add www[0] to the beginning of the org website it redirects you to the net website[1]. The downloads on both sites are hosted on the same site but they do point to different versions[2][3]. Both pages link to the same BuyMeACoffee page[4]. The GitHub repository has a link to the net[5]. But the GitHub profile of the developer links the the org[6]. Very old versions[7] and the current version[8] of the wikipedia page list the org as the official website. The org seems to have been the site for the project since as early as 2012 according to the wayback[9]. However the net doesn't seem to have been associated with the project (or anything) before 2019[10]. The most recent crawls of the org got 301 redirected to the net[11]. [0] https://www.waterfoxproject.org https://www.waterfoxproject.org [1] https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/ [2] https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/installer/waterfox-56.2.8.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/ins... [3] https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/installer/waterfox-56.2.10.en-US.linux-x86_64-1.tar.bz2 https://storage-waterfox.netdna-ssl.com/releases/linux64/ins... [4] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterfox https://www.buymeacoffee.com/waterfox [5] https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox [6] https://github.com/MrAlex94 https://github.com/MrAlex94 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=592684463 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=59... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=899331601 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterfox&oldid=89... [9] http://web.archive.org/web/20120117003924/http://waterfoxproject.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20120117003924/http://waterfoxpro... [10] http://web.archive.org/web/20190418195027/https://www.waterfox.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20190418195027/https://www.waterf... [11] http://web.archive.org/web/20190527072632/https://waterfoxproject.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20190527072632/https://waterfoxpr...

theandrewbailey 7y ago

Nice to know this project is still going. I used Waterfox about 8 years ago, since standard Firefox didn't provide 64-bit Windows releases. After about a year, I got frustrated that it was skipping every other release, so I went back to standard Firefox. Between using NoScript (blocking most scripts), and benchmarks showing 64-bit wasn't much (if any) faster, I didn't notice standard Firefox being slow.

guilhas 7y ago

I think it is visibly faster. And there are still some nice classical addons that you can install using the addon archive. Together with the newer addons.

terrycody 7y ago

waterfox, LOL hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha, lovely name!

lproven 7y ago

Glad to see some coverage of this. It's my default browser, since Firefox Quantum. It still allows rich customisation, via classic XUL addons. I have a vertical tab bar, merged with a vertical bookmarks bar, which is flattened via another addon. I have a rich download manager with multi-streaming, resuming, and more. When Firefox Quantum came out, 13 of my 17 add-ons stopped working. Several versions later, I can customise it a bit, but only in limited, clunky ways, requiring manual hacking of userChrome.css, and it's not very widescreen-friendly. I don't care about privacy. Scott McNeally was right in 1999, and he's still right: "You have no privacy on the Internet. Get over it." I don't like the new Firefox and I probably won't be back. Waterfox fills the need nicely.

bjnord 7y ago

Can Airfox and Earthfox be far behind?