funbil

funbil

@funbil

γ€Žπƒπ«πžπšπ¦ π‚π‘πšπ¬πžπ«γ€

  • they/them

music composer, writer, game designer and freakshow forever

log inask
Linktree
linktr.ee/funbil
Patreon
www.patreon.com/MaxMiller
Bandcamp
funbil.bandcamp.com/music
Blog
funbil.bearblog.dev/blog/
funbil
@funbil
Cania
@Cania
ticky
@ticky

Genuinely feeling like we need to organise an anti-Chrome movement in the same way we needed an anti-Internet Explorer movement a decade ago, the difference I guess being that Microsoft eventually joined the movement to kill it, whereas Google are unlikely to

Chrome is almost as dominant now (north of 60%) as Internet Explorer was during the second browser war

Unlike Internet Explorer, which did much of its damage by becoming the market leader and stagnating, the team behind Chrome is taking steps to actively sabotage user safety features and the standards upon which the open web is based

There are at least a couple of attempts to combat this but they're very basic

Anyway tl;dr for the health of the web please stop using Chrome and its derivatives1; use Firefox or Safari, or consider other non-Chrome-based alternatives like iCab. Google do not deserve to be entrusted with this much influence in this post-Don't Be Evil era

  1. Yes, that includes Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.; they all use Chrome's rendering engine and will almost certainly follow Google's lead on technical implementation and engine features. And that's on top of Brave being founded by one of the worst people in tech, and Opera being pretty much as bad these days.

vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

please use Firefox. it's not perfect but it's far better than anything else out there in my opinion. there are also versions for Android and iOS. i am happy to help anyone switch from Chrome or a Chromium-derived browser to Firefox.

also please do not use Brave, it has a long history of doing super shady shit and its CEO is a politically active homophobe.

Cania
@Cania

if i can switch to firefox you can switch to firefox

i made the switch about 3 months ago and it's relatively painless, plus firefox has cool features like:

  • actually its pretty much the same experience for me, which is ideal

i'm tremendously momentum-bound so you know it's bad when i switch. but it was easy!! really, really easy

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @ticky's post:

aetataureate
@aetataureate

i'm firefox on my pc laptop, but wondering about mobile. do android versions of other things exist that will continue to work with the other apps and stuff? your post made me really curious, because i always want to say "oh yeah i don't use chrome" but, of course, i do on my phone.

login to reply
Osmose
@Osmose

I use Firefox for Android as my default browser on mobile and have never run into any issues, in fact it's more stable than Chrome for me mainly because it can run uBlock Origin even for apps that want an embedded webview (if they're using the webview API that can use non-Chrome browsers, which not all apps use).

login to reply
vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

+1 for Firefox on Android - it's what i'm typing this comment on, and it supports "add a website to your home screen as a Progressive Web App" so that takes care of cohost on mobile.

login to reply
Luarvik
@Luarvik

Sort of tangential to this, I've found that Firefox mobile + uBlock + web YouTube is a VASTLY better experience than the YouTube mobile app. Obviously it gets rid of ads, but it also just, like, works better? If I watch part of a video, pause it, and come back a day or two later, it starts right back from where I paused it. With the app, that SOMETIMES works but usually it doesn't.

login to reply
shork
@shork

I don't use Chrome on my Google Pixel phone using stock software. Firefox is perfectly capable of spawning a browser popover for an app if it asks for one (which is nice cuz Firefox knows my passwords).

There's the odd app that depends on the system webview (which is Chrome and afaik not that easy to replace) but now that my reddit app stopped working I don't think any of the stuff I do regularly needs it

edit: I should add what I did to make this happen:

  1. install Firefox (and uBlock origin in it because it's nice)
  2. uninstall (disable cuz it's a "system" app) Chrome
  3. be happy
login to reply
BrodyBr
@BrodyBr

Stating the obvious here, but it's scary that literally the only two viable non-Chromium-based browsers out here right now are Firefox and Safari, with Firefox being the only one that's not locked to one OS ecosystem.

Hoping it stays excellent, and more alternatives eventually arise. Mozilla have generally been good stewards of the ideal of an open internet, but they sure haven't been perfect.

login to reply
shork
@shork

that said, Safari's engine, WebKit, is FOSS and famously on everything you might occasionally need a browser on, like game consoles or appliances so someone could totally put it into a general-purpose desktop browser

login to reply
modulusshift
@modulusshift

DuckDuckGo for Mac, iCab are both actively updated WebKit browsers, and Orion is now in public beta looks like.

But none on Windows, right. DuckDuckGo just released a browser beta on Windows, but it's also Blink.

login to reply
internet-janitor
@internet-janitor

Worse, Mozilla gets most of their funding from Google. Safari is the only mature Chrome/Chromium alternative that isn't directly funded by an advertising company.

Apple could ship Safari with an adblocker by default and in one fell swoop crater the entire online advertsing industry, but they choose not to. Hard not to imagine there's some kind of backroom deal behind it.

login to reply
vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

Apple has their own advertising business. they run it pretty different from google et al strategically, but they are not going to suddenly become a friend of ad blocking, or of the open web for that matter.

login to reply
lynndotpy
@lynndotpy

someday i need to sit down with a firefox expert, ive ran into an unusable state that i couldn't fix with firefox across all major mobile and desktop OSes :( hate chrome but i have no other choice

login to reply
julez
@julez

Bc I'm not super adept at this, is Brave a Chrome derivative? I use Brave bc of a lot of the surveillance economy/privacy concerns seem to be a priority but idk if there's a case to be made for why Brave isn't ideal?

login to reply
nightfield
@nightfield

Have you tried turning on hardware acceleration? Go to Settings > General > Performance > Use recommended performance settings > Use hardware acceleration when available

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/performance-settings

I think Firefox is important, but if it doesn't work on your machine its not worth feeling guilty over. I would recommend Vivaldi or plain Jane Chrome/Chromium over Brave though. Lots of reasons to not like that browser

login to reply
julez
@julez

Thank you, unfortunately the firefox thing seems to be a bug specific to Surface touchscreen keyboards, basically Firefox won’t let me use the keyboard and if I can’t type on the browser I can hardly do anything. Already researched some of the methods to fix it to no avail, but my partner who is more tech savvy than I has said she’ll look at it for me.

login to reply
armaina
@armaina

Have you considered checking out one of the FireFox forks? Personally I've been using Waterfox for ages back when it was the first 64 bit build and haven't had issues. LibreWolf is also an option though I personally have not used it.

login to reply
epimetheon
@epimetheon

I was excited about Edge when it had its own rendering engine. I was disappointed when they switched to being Chromium-based instead, but it's still pretty good. It's got Reader mode, text-to-speech, and vertical tabs built in. And Microsoft doesn't seem as antagonistic to ad blockers.

login to reply
Ezel
@Ezel

What are some good alternatives to Chrome on mobile? I've been moving away from chromium based apps for the most part, but idk what's a good mobile browser. I lowkey feel like Chrome is still as popular as it is due to mobile users

login to reply
lifning
@lifning

safari already does remote attestation, firefox at this point feels like controlled opposition, and that "wow a whole new browser engine!!" from serenityOS is by a very-weird-about-codes-of-conduct type of guy. it's gonna be really hard making a rallying cry against chrome without a positive message about what to do about it, which sucks because it's extremely necessary

login to reply
mira-drgn
@mira-drgn

the threat of killing adblock was enough to finally make me switch to firefox on my new windows install, but man i really wish there was an alternative that actually worked as well as chrome. every way in which my firefox experience has deviated from my chrome experience has been an annoyance, whether it's certain extensions not having a firefox equivalent that actually works, or hotkeys on video sites becoming fiddly and inconsistent, or certain websites just straight up not working and forcing me to open them in edge. every nerd online has loved to sing firefox's praises for ages, but for me in the ways that are actually visible and tangible in day-to-day use, it has in all respects been either the same or slightly worse than chrome. the fact that it's The Only Other Option and lacking in those small but very noticeable and obnoxious ways is frustrating

login to reply
mira-drgn
@mira-drgn

if my comment came off as "i think chrome is good and we should all just stick with it and give up on any alternatives" i promise you that is the opposite of my intent. i want firefox to get better and/or more actual alternatives to pop up. i want firefox to iron out the annoyances that are still present from the last time i tried and then gave up on it years ago. i want embracing other options to be something i can do and recommend enthusiastically instead of having to hold my nose and take firefox like a dose of castor oil because the option that tastes good is making itself more actively poisonous every month

and yes, websites getting away with being chromium-only, whether due to incompetence/laziness or deliberate malicious incompatibility, is a thing that can only happen because of chrome's chokehold. however, as one end user i am completely powerless to do anything about it. i'm disabled and can't drive so when the one food delivery service in my area breaks on firefox my choices are "never let myself order out again" or "keep edge on hand for this particular use case"

login to reply
lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

sometimes i wonder if windows firefox is completely different software, because the way people describe it every now and then makes it sound like it has bonzai buddy integrated or something. meanwhile my experience with chrome has always been marred by incredibly basic things like "tabs simply disappear if you open too many" and "text selection is a big mess", so it doesn't seem like the bar should be all that high

i don't think it's unreasonable to use another browser when a thing doesn't work. i guess i've just been through this rodeo once before, so it's disheartening to see website compat in a list of reasons firefox experience is worse. sorry for misunderstanding

login to reply
upthorn
@upthorn

I do think a full retreat from all chromium-derived browsers is perhaps a bit excessive.
Projects such as Ungoogled Chromium exist, and Vivaldi has previously shown their willingness to break from Google's technical lead on FLoC, at least, due to similar reasons.

That said, Vivaldi, at least, does still depend on and trust Google's security-related updates, so there is currently still a channel for these sorts of user-hostile features to infiltrate when Google's chromium team stops operating in good faith and includes them in "essential security patches".

login to reply
ticky
@ticky

It's not good enough, we have to break not only Google's first-party dominance but also the dominance of their rendering engine, if we are going to escape the curse of of sorry, you need to use Chrome to use this site.

login to reply
coryoon
@coryoon

Just leaving an extra comment here to say that if you've tried using Firefox in the past couple of years and had issues with it seemingly breaking at random that
(1) you're absolutely not alone there and
(2) try Firefox ESR on desktop. it's the version intended for use by businesses and enterprise types but it's freely available on mozilla's site as any other version of Firefox. feature related updates take longer to show up (and in some cases just dont at all) while security updates are pushed out as frequently as regular updates, sometimes more often depending on how severe it is.

you can still install all the usual extensions you'd want like ublock origin etc on ESR, it just basically makes it update less often with whatever random flavour-of-the-month feature bs that mozilla likes to jam into their browser because they're one of the most actively mismanaged tech companies ive seen in a long time.

login to reply
milliesquilly
@milliesquilly

I'm generally a happy Firefox user, like I'm very happy with the tracking blocking features and such. But I do find myself wondering, like Safari is built on Webkit as an engine, is there any kind of Windows port of Webkit that's usable as a day-to-day browser, or is the choice as a Windows user just either Firefox or one of the Chromium-based monstrosities?

login to reply
modulusshift
@modulusshift

No, unfortunately. Ever since Safari left Windows over a decade ago, because Chrome was using effectively the same engine and was much more popular, no one's bothered to maintain a WebKit port to Windows. The right time to start one was when Chrome forked WebKit to make Blink but for some reason Google was still relatively trusted at the time. At this point you'd effectively have to re-port WebKit to get anywhere.

login to reply
GreenGale2000
@GreenGale2000

Man, sucks to read that Opera is about as bad as Brave and Chrome. It was one of the ones I actually thought was cool when I found it.

Still, I'll gladly keep using Firefox. It's one of the few browsers I wholeheartedly trust. Hasn't let me down in the last 18 years.

login to reply
modulusshift
@modulusshift

Classic Opera was fantastic, it was a truly innovative browser with a really good engine at the time. They just decided to ditch it for Chrome's engine at some point. Probably because nobody bothered testing on Opera.

login to reply

in reply to @vectorpoem's post:

Jama
@Jama

My biggest gripe with Firefox right now is that it wants to default to the base page for any site I type, rather than autofilling my most often viewed page on the site, like Opera would when I used to use it.

login to reply
noahtheduke
@noahtheduke

That's very funny because I (a Firefox user) had to use Chrome recently and it was driving me nuts that it defaulted to the "most often viewed page" instead of the base url. Kept going to some random cohost page I'd loaded twice instead of the home page.

login to reply
Pinned Tags