I've mostly been using Brave, but it's feeling awfully heavy lately with Brave Rewards, crypto Wallet, Leo AI, etc all built in.
What are you using these days and why?
I used Firefox from the Phoenix days until maybe 2014-2020 or so, but kept running into rendering and performance issues, especially with canvas. Several of my last few web dev jobs deprecated support for it, so I stopped using it altogether.
The Google tracking stuff doesn't bother me (I find it helpful, actually). But if they ever kill ad blocking, I'll for sure switch away (and probably use that opportunity to exit the Google ecosystem).
Until then, though, Chrome's been fantastic!
- UI settings and behaviors which in other browsers are considered excessive, confusing and inducing panic attacks for a mythical regular user. Pretty ordinary for detailed enumeration, that’s just my workflow and QoL for years.
- Not google.
That’s pretty much it. Popular browser UIs just suck. They are nothing more than a basic shell around a webview and do not feel like you’re using an app. To me they feel like notepad instead of I wouldn’t call it not heavy, pretty much the opposite. I also compared Chrome and Vivaldi on sites I use. The actual speed difference is marginal, but Vivaldi feels slower due to lack of common ui techniques. I don’t mind it cause I know how it works.
Why not? It's stable, respects privacy and has a thriving ecosystem of plugins.
If a campany's silly enough to make browser-specific websites any more, and some are, I just don't use that company.
People say there are websites which require Chrome, but I never encounter them.
Without uBlock Origin, I would find much of the modern web intolerable.
And Safari and DDG’s on my phone.
I don't install Chrome anymore.
Nowadays I use Firefox and, aside from a few annoying glitches, I'm very happy with it -- for me, the main point of a browser is that most of the time, I shouldn't have to be thinking about it. When I do have to (so, say, for Multiple Containers -- really good feature!), I expect it to provide a great experience.
Firefox generally does, and from my (unscientific testing) it is typically more resource-friendly than Chromium-based browsers (especially those with HTML-based UI addons, think sidebars, etc.)
I certainly don't agree with many of their decisions, but I'd say that they've ultimately succeeded in building a very solid competitor to Chromium. My main disappointment with it is that, as of 2023, it doesn't support PWAs[0]; I remain mindblown that this feature was cancelled.
For the curious, I'm currently utilising the following extensions:
uBlock Origin: The best ad-blocker out there
KeepassXC: Great password manager
Multiple Containers: very useful for isolating data stored by sites across different containers.
Web Scrobbler: for scrobbl... uhh, uploading YouTube [Music] activity to ListenBrainz
Enhancer for Youtube: provides additional functionality for YouTube (like disabling end cards, what a stupid feature)
Return YouTube Dislike: generally required for YouTube IMO
uBlacklist: allows for the blacklisting of URLs from search results; supports DuckDuckGo, Google, and many other search engines
Reddit Enhancement Suite
Old Reddit Redirect: redirects reddit.com to old.reddit.com, makes the experience much less annoying in general
P.S. As an anecdote, pinch to zoom doesn't work for me on Chromium (via X11). Surprising as it may sound, that's an absolute must for me: I use it all the time, so much so that it's very well engrained into muscle memory.
[0]: https://9to5google.com/2021/01/27/firefox-discontinues-work-...
Safari is OK, but I have everything in FFox.
Chrome is a no-go because Google nonsense, and Brave is a no-go because crypto nonsense.