10 ms·

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge,

by dbish 3y ago

The problem is there are almost 0 alternatives beyond Firefox so if you don’t like their UX you’re stuck. All the “new” browsers are just chromium skins (edge, arc, etc.) Are there any real competitors building a new browser?

colordrops 3y ago
Aa long as chromium is open source and various entities are able to build and remove/modify anti-user features, i don't see a problem with alternatives being a "skin". If Google makes moves to make it difficult to modify chromium then browser maintainers will quickly migrate to other engines.
- viscousviolin 3y ago
  Yes, it's not a problem. For now. There are so many software projects that depend on chromium for their basic functionality, and so many users that indirectly rely on chromium. It's hard to switch to an alternative if the need arises. So when Google inevitably turns chromium into a problem, you don't have enough time to switch, no matter how badly you want to. It's time to preventatively switch to a project that's more reliable. Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need. It would take a lot of effort, but we'd be protecting ourselves from a pretty realistic scenario where Google just pushes through whatever they want.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need." No, sadly it does not. And then I would be just dependant on mozillas leadership and sadly I do not trust them either. Ladybird and Kling I would trust, but it is not advanced enough yet. But they are making progress!
    - viscousviolin 3y ago
      What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.
        misnome 3y ago
        This. The first thing I have to do on firefox is turn off a load of advertising. That, crypto, and the Mr.Robot extension fiasco burned a _lot_ of goodwill.
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Are you talking about firefox not blocking website adds by default? I hadn't heard about the Mr.Robot fiasco, that's seriously troubling..
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for? As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        "Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?" Game engine. "As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage" And the thing is, that firefox itself is tracking you and sends that data home. Maybe look up what "studies" mean. But so far at least you can opt out of it, unlike with chrome.
  - rvnx 3y ago
    Most Chromium-forks are not interested at all (or do not have the resources, considering the tons of costs it has) into doing any core changes to fight against Google, only Vivaldi… all the others are either doing nothing or just PR bullshit. If a feature is rolled out to 95% of users, then websites have to adapt. If you have a browser and are part of these remaining 5% you will be the one blamed by the users and by the websites. So there is no incentive to remove any hostile feature.
    - viscousviolin 3y ago
      I get that, which is exactly why you don't want any one browser having just under 70% marketshare like Chrome. If there are multiple options for people to switch between, then they can switch to another one if their current browser does something they don't agree with. If there isn't another option, you're stuck. We open ourselves up to horrific effects of browser monopolies like all the security issues that Microsoft didn't give a damn about back when internet explorer had a monopoly. It takes effort to switch to a different browser stack, like moving away from Chromium for example, but in the long term you do not want everyone stuck with only one option, because that will be even more costly.
- soco 3y ago
  Other engines? There must be a reason everybody is building on Chromium nowadays...
- asaddhamani 3y ago
  What other engines?
  - kmlx 3y ago
    webkit
- blibble 3y ago
  WEI will make chromium effectively unusable yes you'll have the source, but it won't remotely attest unless you're Google/MS so it is effectively closed source
  - colordrops 3y ago
    Brave uses chromium and they cut WEI out of their build already.
    - blibble 3y ago
      so shortly after WEI goes live in Chrome, Brave users won't be able to: - use youtube - watch "premium" video content (disney/netflix/...) - use online banking - visit sites with adwords and will be presented with endless captchas on e.g. cloudflare sites
      - colordrops 3y ago
        Yes and? How does that contradict my original point?
        blibble 3y ago
        it doesn't but you're missing the entire point if brave doesn't implement WEI then brave ceases to be a functional web browser it will have voluntarily removed itself from the market
        colordrops 3y ago
        I didn't miss that point. I'm well aware of that point - WEI is a nightmare. This thread is about something else though.
- xethos 3y ago
  Once upon a time Lineage OS had Privacy Guard settings. You could feed an app fake data for things like location and contacts, leaving you with the best of both worlds: apps that "require" location will open, but you remain anonymous. Over time, AOSP became harder and harder to build this feature back in to. AOSP (and Chromium) is Open Source in name only. One may view, download, and build the source, but maintaining modifications long-term isn't feasible without massive amounts of dev time and/or cash.
  - colordrops 3y ago
    There was no intention by Google to go after forks with the changes they made that made Privacy Guard difficult to maintain, and in fact I believe it was because they added their own version of it. What could you do with Privacy Guard that you can't now with Permission Hub? I'm using Lineage right now and I have full control over all perms for all apps including network access.
worrycue 3y ago
Frankly Firefox is barely a hedge against Chrome. When it comes to things like JPEG-XL they are in lock step with Chrome. Safari ended up being JPEG-XL’s unlikely champion. I kind of wished Apple would release Safari for other platforms again.
- bawolff 3y ago
  HN is weirdly obsessed with jpeg-xl. The logic for removing it totally made sense.
  - febusravenga 3y ago
    true, I'm web fronted developer and I don't care ... more, I have no ida that there's some drama going on let alone normal users
  - dvtkrlbs 3y ago
    I personally don't agree. They did a test with limited users and than complained the audience was limited.
  - rhn_mk1 3y ago
    There's nothing weird about the obsession. It's the most technically impresive format so far.
    - kmlx 3y ago
      avif? webp?
      - rhn_mk1 3y ago
        https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ > AVIF has an image resolution limit of 65536 x 65536 pixels. but from https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ > Max image size is limited to 4K (3840x2160) in AVIF, which is a deal breaker to me. You can tile images, but seams are visible at the edges, > WebP also has a hard limit to an image's frame size, with its maximum dimension being 16,383 x 16,383 > WebP supports a max bit depth of 8-bit > AVIF flexes a max bit depth of 10 Jpeg XL has progressive rendering support https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-progressive-jpeg-xl-images.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-... AVIF spec doesn't (although it might gain it: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1221717 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=122171...) JPEG-XL manages to be more efficient than other current formats: https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-going https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-g... All of that while being a good all-around image format (rather than a specialized one like webp and avif): same format for web, photos, raw photos, etc. To me, this makes it the most noteworthy image format now.
ksey3 3y ago
I have been using Brave for about a year. Dont miss Firefox or Chrome.
- dbish 3y ago
  Brave is built on chromium. Cool concept, but not a new browser
  - k__ 3y ago
    They often say they don't use problematic features.
    - ohgodplsno 3y ago
      They're still beholden to Google. Their own repo is a set of patches that disable some features. For now, it's mostly feature flags being turned on/off. What happens when Google starts being more hostile and makes disabling features harder ? Can Brave have the manpower to disable that, forever? What if there's a new rendering engine that's 10 times faster but it's so intertwined with a restrictive API that you can't have one without the other? Brave, for all their talk, are at Google's mercy. And no, don't give me "but Chromium isn't just Google anymore": it is 90% Google.
      - k__ 3y ago
        I'd expect them to have the skills to fork Blink.
        bjord 3y ago
        not sure about the resources to support its development long-term, though
    - goku12 3y ago
      That's like people who don't like what Chromium does, but still uses it along with uBlock. It feels to me like the web needs another engine, not chromium reskins, to stay healthy.
nathias 3y ago
if you don't like their UX you make your own, ff is the only browser that actually lets you customize
chungy 3y ago
There is Ladybird.
- dbish 3y ago
  Nice. This is legitimately a new browser. Hadn’t heard of them. Will check it out.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  > Are there any real competitors
  - paddim8 3y ago
    It might be in the future
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Only if things like WEI don't make it impossible to use for most sites.
tgv 3y ago
What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.
- kramerger 3y ago
  People have all kinds of weird excuses for not using Firefox. Sometimes it feels like "Sure, Chrome sold my kids data to human traffickers. But I can't switch to Firefox because I really _need_ MIDI-2 over websocket support" Sure, FF is not perfect but a lot of issues is due to sites being optimised for webkit and that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom.
  - oblio 3y ago
    > that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom. And herein lies the rub. 20% of people, at best, will sacrifice convenience for freedom. Firefox and Chrome overtook IE because they were move convenient to use (Firefox had tabs and extensions, Chrome had a more reliable multi-process architecture and more CSS/JS/... features faster).
    - ChoHag 3y ago
      IE didn't die until YouTube publicly dropped support for it.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Chrome is a lot more robust and secure against exploitation than Firefox is. This is a very unpopular fact, and every time I point it out the rabid Mozilla people get upset, despite it being the truth. I use Ungoogled Chromium.
    - robin_reala 3y ago
      There’s no such thing. You use a Chromium that doesn’t report data back to Google, but the entire project is a Google project that pushes Google’s aims on the web.
have_faith 3y ago
This a problem for me. I've been a long time Firefox user, but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. I'm enjoying using Arc at the moment because it's rethinking a lot of things that bug me about the traditional browser UI paradigm but I also know that it's a trendy startup that could either: explode, decide to change features radically at the drop of a hat (pivot), or simple do something distasteful to please investors. Extensions technically fill in the gap on the Firefox side, like Containers, but the UX is just an afterthought.
- chickenfeed 3y ago
  Out the box the squashed tabs vs the silly tab scroll thing on Firefox is horrible. But it reminds me I have too many tabs open anyway. I mainly use FF, but the UI really is behind the times. Notice MS marketing stuff like chatGPT in their browser. They are tooling it up. I want my browser to help me. The tab/workflow/history/sandboxing, I feel could all be a bit more ingrained in the desktop OS/UI. Google is the plugin on Chrome. If you unwittingly walk blindfold into using it on say Android etc. You'll have all that Google stuff activated, and it's a real boon. Difficult to give up. Heck hard enough to sign out. You unknowingly can sign in. Yeah there are different options, and yeah there are extensions. But why would I install an extension that basically says it can spy on every tab in my browser? And why would I even trust Google in my browser?
- cesarb 3y ago
  > but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. What some people call "stagnation", others call "stability".
  - have_faith 3y ago
    Stability is great but if the UX doesn't fit how I'd like to interact with the internet it doesn't really matter what you call it. The general shape of the browser, how you interact with it and how you get it to do things for you has been stagnant in my mind. This is why I'm trying out other options.
- dbish 3y ago
kmlx 3y ago
i’ve been a happy safari user (desktop and mobile) for years now.
- kvrck 3y ago
  What adblock do you use with Safari? Last time I've tried, I couldn't find one and returned back to Firefox.
  - kmlx 3y ago
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027
  - bob1029 3y ago
    I just checked mine and its using this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/id1018301773 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/... I have zero issues with this setup.
  - AndroidKitKat 3y ago
    I've been using AdGuard and haven't seen a single ad since I installed it. AdGuard seems to offer a much of the same functionality from uBlock that I enjoyed, like being able to selectively block elements on the page, and choosing what filter lists I want. The only 'downside' is that I believe you have to pay for it, but I believe there is a free version that I use on my mother's MacBook. AdGuard also offers a pi-hole-esque ad-blackhole that I deploy on my home network and it's got much better UX than pi-hole.
  - mercacona 3y ago
    Does NextDNS count as adblock?
asddubs 3y ago
"Real" competitors as in having any amount of market share, no. But there are a few projects, like ladybird, palemoon (which is a fork of ancient FF which does have original implementations of things that came since) and Servo is being revived.

by dbish 3y ago

colordrops 3y ago

Aa long as chromium is open source and various entities are able to build and remove/modify anti-user features, i don't see a problem with alternatives being a "skin". If Google makes moves to make it difficult to modify chromium then browser maintainers will quickly migrate to other engines.

viscousviolin 3y ago
Yes, it's not a problem. For now. There are so many software projects that depend on chromium for their basic functionality, and so many users that indirectly rely on chromium. It's hard to switch to an alternative if the need arises. So when Google inevitably turns chromium into a problem, you don't have enough time to switch, no matter how badly you want to. It's time to preventatively switch to a project that's more reliable. Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need. It would take a lot of effort, but we'd be protecting ourselves from a pretty realistic scenario where Google just pushes through whatever they want.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "Give Firefox's Gecko engine a chance, it has all the features you need." No, sadly it does not. And then I would be just dependant on mozillas leadership and sadly I do not trust them either. Ladybird and Kling I would trust, but it is not advanced enough yet. But they are making progress!
  - viscousviolin 3y ago
    What makes you not trust firefox? I don't remember hearing about them acting in bad faith, but I'd love to hear if they did. What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Ads and tracking(called studies) enabled by default from the browser - and marketing itself as privacy orientated. "What features do you need that only Chromium can give you?" WebGPU and sone features with webworkers.
      - misnome 3y ago
        This. The first thing I have to do on firefox is turn off a load of advertising. That, crypto, and the Mr.Robot extension fiasco burned a _lot_ of goodwill.
        viscousviolin 3y ago
        Are you talking about firefox not blocking website adds by default? I hadn't heard about the Mr.Robot fiasco, that's seriously troubling..
      - viscousviolin 3y ago
        Oh interesting! Seems like a pretty specific requirement to have. Do you mind if I ask what you use those for? As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage. It's not 100% effective, but if them making an effort to do the right thing pushes you away, you might be asking too much unfortunately. Building an entire browser takes a lot of energy and time, and Firefox seems like the kind of browser that's worth it in the long term.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        "Do you mind if I ask what you use those for?" Game engine. "As for the tracking - I'm pretty sure Firefox blocks a lot of those by default, last time I checked it was plastered all across their homepage" And the thing is, that firefox itself is tracking you and sends that data home. Maybe look up what "studies" mean. But so far at least you can opt out of it, unlike with chrome.
- rvnx 3y ago
  Most Chromium-forks are not interested at all (or do not have the resources, considering the tons of costs it has) into doing any core changes to fight against Google, only Vivaldi… all the others are either doing nothing or just PR bullshit. If a feature is rolled out to 95% of users, then websites have to adapt. If you have a browser and are part of these remaining 5% you will be the one blamed by the users and by the websites. So there is no incentive to remove any hostile feature.
  - viscousviolin 3y ago
    I get that, which is exactly why you don't want any one browser having just under 70% marketshare like Chrome. If there are multiple options for people to switch between, then they can switch to another one if their current browser does something they don't agree with. If there isn't another option, you're stuck. We open ourselves up to horrific effects of browser monopolies like all the security issues that Microsoft didn't give a damn about back when internet explorer had a monopoly. It takes effort to switch to a different browser stack, like moving away from Chromium for example, but in the long term you do not want everyone stuck with only one option, because that will be even more costly.
soco 3y ago
Other engines? There must be a reason everybody is building on Chromium nowadays...
asaddhamani 3y ago
What other engines?
- kmlx 3y ago
  webkit
blibble 3y ago
WEI will make chromium effectively unusable yes you'll have the source, but it won't remotely attest unless you're Google/MS so it is effectively closed source
- colordrops 3y ago
  Brave uses chromium and they cut WEI out of their build already.
  - blibble 3y ago
    so shortly after WEI goes live in Chrome, Brave users won't be able to: - use youtube - watch "premium" video content (disney/netflix/...) - use online banking - visit sites with adwords and will be presented with endless captchas on e.g. cloudflare sites
    - colordrops 3y ago
      Yes and? How does that contradict my original point?
      - blibble 3y ago
        it doesn't but you're missing the entire point if brave doesn't implement WEI then brave ceases to be a functional web browser it will have voluntarily removed itself from the market
        colordrops 3y ago
        I didn't miss that point. I'm well aware of that point - WEI is a nightmare. This thread is about something else though.
xethos 3y ago
Once upon a time Lineage OS had Privacy Guard settings. You could feed an app fake data for things like location and contacts, leaving you with the best of both worlds: apps that "require" location will open, but you remain anonymous. Over time, AOSP became harder and harder to build this feature back in to. AOSP (and Chromium) is Open Source in name only. One may view, download, and build the source, but maintaining modifications long-term isn't feasible without massive amounts of dev time and/or cash.
- colordrops 3y ago
  There was no intention by Google to go after forks with the changes they made that made Privacy Guard difficult to maintain, and in fact I believe it was because they added their own version of it. What could you do with Privacy Guard that you can't now with Permission Hub? I'm using Lineage right now and I have full control over all perms for all apps including network access.

worrycue 3y ago

Frankly Firefox is barely a hedge against Chrome. When it comes to things like JPEG-XL they are in lock step with Chrome. Safari ended up being JPEG-XL’s unlikely champion. I kind of wished Apple would release Safari for other platforms again.

bawolff 3y ago
HN is weirdly obsessed with jpeg-xl. The logic for removing it totally made sense.
- febusravenga 3y ago
  true, I'm web fronted developer and I don't care ... more, I have no ida that there's some drama going on let alone normal users
- dvtkrlbs 3y ago
  I personally don't agree. They did a test with limited users and than complained the audience was limited.
- rhn_mk1 3y ago
  There's nothing weird about the obsession. It's the most technically impresive format so far.
  - kmlx 3y ago
    avif? webp?
    - rhn_mk1 3y ago
      https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ https://avif.io/blog/comparisons/avif-vs-webp/ > AVIF has an image resolution limit of 65536 x 65536 pixels. but from https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2023/jpegxl-vs-avif/ > Max image size is limited to 4K (3840x2160) in AVIF, which is a deal breaker to me. You can tile images, but seams are visible at the edges, > WebP also has a hard limit to an image's frame size, with its maximum dimension being 16,383 x 16,383 > WebP supports a max bit depth of 8-bit > AVIF flexes a max bit depth of 10 Jpeg XL has progressive rendering support https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-progressive-jpeg-xl-images.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/09/using-saliency-in-... AVIF spec doesn't (although it might gain it: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1221717 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=122171...) JPEG-XL manages to be more efficient than other current formats: https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-going https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-how-it-started-how-its-g... All of that while being a good all-around image format (rather than a specialized one like webp and avif): same format for web, photos, raw photos, etc. To me, this makes it the most noteworthy image format now.

ksey3 3y ago

I have been using Brave for about a year. Dont miss Firefox or Chrome.

dbish 3y ago
Brave is built on chromium. Cool concept, but not a new browser
- k__ 3y ago
  They often say they don't use problematic features.
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    They're still beholden to Google. Their own repo is a set of patches that disable some features. For now, it's mostly feature flags being turned on/off. What happens when Google starts being more hostile and makes disabling features harder ? Can Brave have the manpower to disable that, forever? What if there's a new rendering engine that's 10 times faster but it's so intertwined with a restrictive API that you can't have one without the other? Brave, for all their talk, are at Google's mercy. And no, don't give me "but Chromium isn't just Google anymore": it is 90% Google.
    - k__ 3y ago
      I'd expect them to have the skills to fork Blink.
      - bjord 3y ago
        not sure about the resources to support its development long-term, though
  - goku12 3y ago
    That's like people who don't like what Chromium does, but still uses it along with uBlock. It feels to me like the web needs another engine, not chromium reskins, to stay healthy.

nathias 3y ago

if you don't like their UX you make your own, ff is the only browser that actually lets you customize

chungy 3y ago

There is Ladybird.

dbish 3y ago
Nice. This is legitimately a new browser. Hadn’t heard of them. Will check it out.
deafpolygon 3y ago
> Are there any real competitors
- paddim8 3y ago
  It might be in the future
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Only if things like WEI don't make it impossible to use for most sites.

tgv 3y ago

What would you think the problem with Firefox' UX that keeps so many people from switching is? I think it's not UX, but pure marketing.

kramerger 3y ago
People have all kinds of weird excuses for not using Firefox. Sometimes it feels like "Sure, Chrome sold my kids data to human traffickers. But I can't switch to Firefox because I really _need_ MIDI-2 over websocket support" Sure, FF is not perfect but a lot of issues is due to sites being optimised for webkit and that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom.
- oblio 3y ago
  > that will not change as long as Chrome has 80% marketshare. You need to sacrifice a little for freedom. And herein lies the rub. 20% of people, at best, will sacrifice convenience for freedom. Firefox and Chrome overtook IE because they were move convenient to use (Firefox had tabs and extensions, Chrome had a more reliable multi-process architecture and more CSS/JS/... features faster).
  - ChoHag 3y ago
    IE didn't die until YouTube publicly dropped support for it.
- sneak 3y ago
  Chrome is a lot more robust and secure against exploitation than Firefox is. This is a very unpopular fact, and every time I point it out the rabid Mozilla people get upset, despite it being the truth. I use Ungoogled Chromium.
  - robin_reala 3y ago
    There’s no such thing. You use a Chromium that doesn’t report data back to Google, but the entire project is a Google project that pushes Google’s aims on the web.

have_faith 3y ago

This a problem for me. I've been a long time Firefox user, but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. I'm enjoying using Arc at the moment because it's rethinking a lot of things that bug me about the traditional browser UI paradigm but I also know that it's a trendy startup that could either: explode, decide to change features radically at the drop of a hat (pivot), or simple do something distasteful to please investors. Extensions technically fill in the gap on the Firefox side, like Containers, but the UX is just an afterthought.

chickenfeed 3y ago
Out the box the squashed tabs vs the silly tab scroll thing on Firefox is horrible. But it reminds me I have too many tabs open anyway. I mainly use FF, but the UI really is behind the times. Notice MS marketing stuff like chatGPT in their browser. They are tooling it up. I want my browser to help me. The tab/workflow/history/sandboxing, I feel could all be a bit more ingrained in the desktop OS/UI. Google is the plugin on Chrome. If you unwittingly walk blindfold into using it on say Android etc. You'll have all that Google stuff activated, and it's a real boon. Difficult to give up. Heck hard enough to sign out. You unknowingly can sign in. Yeah there are different options, and yeah there are extensions. But why would I install an extension that basically says it can spy on every tab in my browser? And why would I even trust Google in my browser?
cesarb 3y ago
> but the UI/UX has stagnated (like all browsers) for so long. What some people call "stagnation", others call "stability".
- have_faith 3y ago
  Stability is great but if the UX doesn't fit how I'd like to interact with the internet it doesn't really matter what you call it. The general shape of the browser, how you interact with it and how you get it to do things for you has been stagnant in my mind. This is why I'm trying out other options.
dbish 3y ago

kmlx 3y ago

i’ve been a happy safari user (desktop and mobile) for years now.

kvrck 3y ago
What adblock do you use with Safari? Last time I've tried, I couldn't find one and returned back to Firefox.
- kmlx 3y ago
  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027
- bob1029 3y ago
  I just checked mine and its using this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/id1018301773 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-pro-safari-ad-blocker/... I have zero issues with this setup.
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  I've been using AdGuard and haven't seen a single ad since I installed it. AdGuard seems to offer a much of the same functionality from uBlock that I enjoyed, like being able to selectively block elements on the page, and choosing what filter lists I want. The only 'downside' is that I believe you have to pay for it, but I believe there is a free version that I use on my mother's MacBook. AdGuard also offers a pi-hole-esque ad-blackhole that I deploy on my home network and it's got much better UX than pi-hole.
- mercacona 3y ago
  Does NextDNS count as adblock?

asddubs 3y ago

"Real" competitors as in having any amount of market share, no. But there are a few projects, like ladybird, palemoon (which is a fork of ancient FF which does have original implementations of things that came since) and Servo is being revived.