Aye, and when I started writing that post I thought that Safari was cross-platform. I was going to say “But only a sadist would run Safari on Windows or Linux”, when the thought occurred to me that I don’t know if there actually is a Linux version. Then I learned that the Windows version was discontinued… … … in 2012! I’ve been looking into non-Chromium browsers off and on for a good few years. The fact that I didn’t even realise that Safari on Windows was no longer a thing demonstrates just how little relevance Safari had outside of Apple devices! It’s not a terrible browser though. I use it on my work MacBook Pro alongside Firefox, it’s an easier way of keeping two different Microsoft accounts signed in without mucking about with Firefox profiles.
Brave is my main Browser - I have found the ad blocking to be superb without additional plugins Avast is my other go to Chrome has always died on me at some point with a certain website, and I needed to create new profile to get it working again. Firefox is, as has already been mentioned, is brilliant and and a great Chromium alternative, but I like a ton of tabs open and have found it can become unresponsive and slow.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-terms-of-use/ "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox." *insert weary emoji here*
Remember when Google tried that **** in Chrome?, Pepperidge Farm The Internet Remembers. Anyway Mozilla are an ai and ads company now...
Sadly, that ain't the bad part of the new TOS. This is: (Source.) Now, why exactly would a company with a digital advertising business remove a pledge not to sell your personal data? Why would it stop promising to "protect your privacy?" I WONDER. Now, if everyone could just roll back all the modern web shite that stops stuff working in SeaMonkey, that'd be great, ta.
Oh ffs… So… My options for a web browser that isn’t owned by or connected to a company that has a vested interest in harvesting data to sell to advertisers and actually works on the modern web are… erm… nothing…? Chrome is… just… no. Edge is a Chromium skin and has Microsoft’s tendrils running through it. Brave is a Chromium skin and has shady crypto nonsense built in. Vivaldi is a Chromium skin. The Chromium codebase itself is owned and controlled by Google. Safari is macOS or iOS only. And now Firefox has a ToS update which removes their promise against data harvesting & selling. I’ve seen the updates and “clarifications” from Mozilla about this and they are absolutely not reassuring.
Lots! There's... Oh. Well, then... you've got a bunch of Firefox forks, and... No, that's about it. I'm actually trying Vivaldi. Yes, it's built atop Chromium, which isn't ideal. Yes, it's closed-source - but, then again, Firefox is open-source and still trying to screw everyone over, so... First (second, I installed it back when Firefox first started adding AI shite) impressions are it's got a lot of whizz-bang features I immediately want to turn off.
The main thing against Chromium for me is the cessation of support for Manifest V2 - as of June this year, Manifest V2 will no longer be supported in the Chromium codebase. For those who don’t know what that means (I know you probably do @Gareth Halfacree ), Manifest V2 is why uBlock Origin can do what it does. uBlock Origin Lite does exist for Manifest V3, the newer standard, but from what I understand, it’s a pale shadow of the full-fat Manifest V2 extension. Google say they’re writing it out of existence because they can’t always keep “legacy standards” around, but it does hobble ad-blocking and privacy protection extensions. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that it’s a good idea to let the largest advertising company on the planet have the biggest influence on web standards. But it’s getting harder and harder to stand against it…
This is true - but Vivaldi says it's going to maintain Manifest V2 in the Vivaldi codebase for as long as it can. Which, to be fair, might be, like, a week, but that's a problem for Future Gareth. Set everything up in Vivaldi ready for the afternoon's work. Seems nice so far, couple of little bugs but no show-stoppers. Tell you one thing I like: big, chunky, always-visible scrollbars. Oh, how I've missed those!
“As long as it can” is the operative phrase in that sentence, as you pointed out. Chromium will deprecate it by the end of June, but if Vivaldi are committing to forking the codebase in order to maintain the manifest V2 functionality then I’ll happily swap to Vivaldi. It is also a problem for Future Byron to solve. Right now, Mozilla are still claiming that anything done with your data will only be with your consent, but their ToS change opens the door to abuse. Right now, other Chromium browsers are at least talking about keeping manifest V2, but they may well change their tune after June. So it’s “wait and see” at the moment. IMO Firefox is still my least worst option because there really isn’t a “good” option.
The problem with sticking with Firefox is, sure, you get to keep (at least the important part of) Manifest V2... but what good is it having Proper uBlock Origin if the browser itself is adtech? The problem with switching to a Firefox fork is it's still Firefox. If Mozilla goes tits-up 'cos Google was forced to stop propping it up financially and the pivot to AI and adtech didn't pay dividends, the forks go bye-bye as well - not a single one of 'em is doing any actual browser development, they're all just taking the Firefox codebase and stripping out the bits they don't like. The problem with not doing either of the above is that everything's chuffin' Google if you dig deep enough. Le sigh.
I'm sticking with Vivaldi for the foreseeable and, will continue to do the best I can to avoid Googleism. I am also keeping an eye on the development of DuckDuckGo's browser for Windows.
First day of work in Vivaldi over. Had to tweak a few things along the way, but it's been fine so far. Feels a *lot* snappier than Firefox, that's for sure. My one biggest annoyance so far: if I move my cursor to the very right edge of the monitor to grab the scrollbar, it doesn't; it grabs the edge of the window and I end up resizing it. I have to move my cursor to the very right edge of the monitor and then a little bit left. There's an option to use the DE's window decorations instead of Vivalid's own, dunno if that'd fix it. EDIT: It does not. Well, it does a bit: I still can't grab the scrollbar, but it stops me accidentally resizing the window. I lose some vertical space for native titlebars, though, so there's that.
ahhhhhhhhh my eyeeeeeeeeees! the searing light! I think the tiling extension I've got gives you the option to remove title bars for tiled windows? I'll have to check, but probably will only happen on Monday.
I got curious and booted up the laptop. I use tiling shell, it has a lot of options, though I didn't see anything about title bars unfortunately.
Well, I think I'm done with Vivaldi (already): the scrollbars are screwed up. You've seen my layout up thither, right? Two not-maximised windows, side-by-side. Typically, when I want to rapidly scroll on the right-hand window, I throw my mouse cursor to the right-hand edge, click, and drag. Works in every browser... except Vivaldi. As I mentioned, Vivaldi kept trying to resize the window instead - unless I enabled Native Windows, in which case it did nothing. I did some digging... Left-hand scrollbar, active: mouse cursor five pixels from the edge. Right-hand scrollbar, inactive: mouse cursor four pixels from the edge, but still very much on the scrollbar. Found mention of the same bug on the forum: it's at least three years old this April and still hasn't been fixed. Guess I'm trying out a Firefox fork this weekend, then. Sorry, Vivaldi, but that's annoying the crap out of me. EDIT: Installed LibreWolf, and it's so far up its own backside with anti-fingerprinting efforts that it won't let websites query whether you like dark mode or not so everything defaults to light (and some things, like WhatsApp Web, don't have a manual toggle for dark mode) *and* it picks a random window size every time it's opened. Nope, not for me!
