4 ms·

Finally! a stable Chrome alternative that allows an average Chrome user to switch away from Google without any loss of comfort! This is genius!

jackfoxy 7y ago
I've been using whatever the current Edge browser is in Windows10 for several years. (I don't know if that is current the "Chorme" Edge or not.) But I am tired of 2 problems that never seem to get fixed and am contemplating switching to Firefox because of this: 1) Bookmark (favorite) maintenance still sucks. As one example, try moving a folder in the favorites bar from the bar to the ordered favorites list. 2) Edge advertises syncing (bookmarks, open tabs, etc.) across machines with the same user signed-in, but I have never gotten this to work.
- jackfoxy 7y ago
  I even got 2nd tier Microsoft support on a call for the second problem. That level of MS support is usually quite good, but in this case it was totally ridiculous. The engineer did not even understand the advertised functionality, but instead kept steering me to bookmark export/import.
- rinchik 7y ago
  > I don't know if that is current the "Chorme" Edge or not. It's not. But hey! Good news! When this Beta will become stable Edge release, all you issues will be solved!
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Not necessarily, in some ways the Chromium-based Favorites tools feel like a regression from current Edge's, even accounting for how buggy it [production Edge's favorites side panel] still sometimes feels. Also, the synchronization engine is entirely different from both past Edge and Google's proprietary Chrome stuff, so all new places for all sorts of new bugs. Switching to Chromium won't be a magic fix for Edge's issues.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Current Edge is not the "Chrome Edge" (or "Edgmium" has become a common name I've seen), which is linked to download here, as "Chrome Edge" only just made it out of Developer-focused Alpha testing to user-focused Beta testing (which is why it was reposted to the HN front page today). As a user of current Edge: 1) The Favorites Bar shows up as a folder in the Favorites list sidebar, and doing in the list sidebar seems to work better for moving things around, in my experience. (I currently feel like favorites management is worse in Chrome Edge, but mostly because I don't like a lot of the feel of Chrome.) 2) Syncing has more worked than not for me over the years, but it's never been entirely reliable. Bookmarks have seemed reliable, but I don't use them much and wouldn't likely notice if they synced very slowly. Open Tabs have never synced, but the History of them does (and shows up in the Windows Timeline thingamajigger), and faster usually than I expected, but sometimes hit or miss. Overall reliability seems to fluctuate with project priorities, and right now with Edge work on "Chrome Edge" being the focus and it having an entirely different synchronization system, I am not surprised that reliability is especially all over the place right now.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> Finally! a stable Chrome alternative that allows an average Chrome user to switch away from Google without any loss of comfort! Firefox?
- wayneftw 7y ago
  Firefox isn't as stable in a few areas. Since it's been released, the main UI has changed drastically many times compared to Chrome which has been the same forever. Not the settings UI, but the main UI and menu system... Furthermore, nobody fucks with Chrome's settings on any Linux distro like they do with Firefox. And then the integration occasionally resets settings and other bad things happen when packages get updated. Can't stand that. The other kind of instability with Firefox surrounds the corporation that produces it. Mozilla is a bit of a wildcard because you never know what sort of guerrilla marketing advertisement or third party integration they're going to throw into your browser without giving you much of a choice. I actually trust them less than Google because there are way fewer eyes on them. Finally, in my opinion, it's just not as consistently good as Chrome. I don't think Mozilla can compete with the level of production quality that Google has put into Chrome. Not even close. Where Chrome is modern, crisp, clean and beautiful looking with a great UX, Firefox is just ugly, primitive, old smelling and annoying to use. I know Microsoft can do better than Moz on the production quality front. Who knows what if their UX will remain stable though. They kinda ruin everything with the constant push for signing up to a Microsoft account. Mostly I care about the production quality and the general UX though.

jackfoxy 7y ago

I've been using whatever the current Edge browser is in Windows10 for several years. (I don't know if that is current the "Chorme" Edge or not.) But I am tired of 2 problems that never seem to get fixed and am contemplating switching to Firefox because of this: 1) Bookmark (favorite) maintenance still sucks. As one example, try moving a folder in the favorites bar from the bar to the ordered favorites list. 2) Edge advertises syncing (bookmarks, open tabs, etc.) across machines with the same user signed-in, but I have never gotten this to work.

jackfoxy 7y ago
I even got 2nd tier Microsoft support on a call for the second problem. That level of MS support is usually quite good, but in this case it was totally ridiculous. The engineer did not even understand the advertised functionality, but instead kept steering me to bookmark export/import.
rinchik 7y ago
> I don't know if that is current the "Chorme" Edge or not. It's not. But hey! Good news! When this Beta will become stable Edge release, all you issues will be solved!
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Not necessarily, in some ways the Chromium-based Favorites tools feel like a regression from current Edge's, even accounting for how buggy it [production Edge's favorites side panel] still sometimes feels. Also, the synchronization engine is entirely different from both past Edge and Google's proprietary Chrome stuff, so all new places for all sorts of new bugs. Switching to Chromium won't be a magic fix for Edge's issues.
WorldMaker 7y ago
Current Edge is not the "Chrome Edge" (or "Edgmium" has become a common name I've seen), which is linked to download here, as "Chrome Edge" only just made it out of Developer-focused Alpha testing to user-focused Beta testing (which is why it was reposted to the HN front page today). As a user of current Edge: 1) The Favorites Bar shows up as a folder in the Favorites list sidebar, and doing in the list sidebar seems to work better for moving things around, in my experience. (I currently feel like favorites management is worse in Chrome Edge, but mostly because I don't like a lot of the feel of Chrome.) 2) Syncing has more worked than not for me over the years, but it's never been entirely reliable. Bookmarks have seemed reliable, but I don't use them much and wouldn't likely notice if they synced very slowly. Open Tabs have never synced, but the History of them does (and shows up in the Windows Timeline thingamajigger), and faster usually than I expected, but sometimes hit or miss. Overall reliability seems to fluctuate with project priorities, and right now with Edge work on "Chrome Edge" being the focus and it having an entirely different synchronization system, I am not surprised that reliability is especially all over the place right now.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

> Finally! a stable Chrome alternative that allows an average Chrome user to switch away from Google without any loss of comfort! Firefox?

wayneftw 7y ago
Firefox isn't as stable in a few areas. Since it's been released, the main UI has changed drastically many times compared to Chrome which has been the same forever. Not the settings UI, but the main UI and menu system... Furthermore, nobody fucks with Chrome's settings on any Linux distro like they do with Firefox. And then the integration occasionally resets settings and other bad things happen when packages get updated. Can't stand that. The other kind of instability with Firefox surrounds the corporation that produces it. Mozilla is a bit of a wildcard because you never know what sort of guerrilla marketing advertisement or third party integration they're going to throw into your browser without giving you much of a choice. I actually trust them less than Google because there are way fewer eyes on them. Finally, in my opinion, it's just not as consistently good as Chrome. I don't think Mozilla can compete with the level of production quality that Google has put into Chrome. Not even close. Where Chrome is modern, crisp, clean and beautiful looking with a great UX, Firefox is just ugly, primitive, old smelling and annoying to use. I know Microsoft can do better than Moz on the production quality front. Who knows what if their UX will remain stable though. They kinda ruin everything with the constant push for signing up to a Microsoft account. Mostly I care about the production quality and the general UX though.