this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Who uses chrome anyway even there's vivaldi
why are people that allergic to firefox?
vivaldi is chrome with extra steps
Mostly because the browsing experience IMO is much much worse with Firefox. I tried extensions to get functionality back, it made it worse - slower, buggy, extensions would stop being developed etc. I wish Firefox was better, I really do. But IME it's frozen functionality like it's 2010 or so. Like, they have tabs, who hoo. I really find save/restore, multi window control, tab stacks, sessions, workspaces, and easy UI config pretty important in day to day use. That said, I also think ads are a deal breaker, but I really wonder if this won't bring back some of the ad-blocking proxies you run locally or something.
Or, someone forks chromium to keep Manifest v2 or whatever.
I use both Firefox and Chrome-based browsers and I haven't come across any major differences in functionality. What are all these things Chrome can do that Firefox can't?
All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).
However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google's control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google's priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.
The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it's compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox's compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).
Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we're all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.
I don't see any reason to think Vivaldi is trying to monetize it's users, it seems to have a lot of privacy features and the like. They strip out the chromium spying.
All beautifully preached to the choir. Now: how to communicate all this to the unwashed masses who think the web and the internet and Chrome are all the same thing? Serious question.
Good one. I'd say it is too late already. USA big tech is almost everywhere, and countless people are addicted to USA big tech, especially on their phones, and do not ask critical questions anymore.
Who uses vivaldi anyway even there’s firefox
I just can't use a browser so... primitive? I wold gladly change to Firefox if it gave me all the customisation options Vivaldi has. Mouse gestures, synchronising my settings across 2 PCs and an android phone, shortcuts to different searchers etc. Plus it would need to be visually customisable so od doesn't irritate me every couple of minutes.
It sounds like perhaps you haven't looked into Firefox for a while, because out of the box it does all of the things you listed, except for gestures. There are multiple popular plugins that provide Firefox gestures easily. I'm not sure what visual customizations you're referring to, but Firefox also has had support for themes for ages now.
My problem is - last time I looked, which was a while ago to be fair - there weren't good tab management plugins that also supported tab title search, a list of tabs to easily close ones I didn't need anymore with ctrl+click or shift+click, no session management, problems with cross window tab viewing/searching, no tab stacks, and now workspaces are kind of awesome for me too.
I'm not saying there aren't extensions for each thing, I'm saying I could NOT get them all to work together, and have a fast performant browser without weird hangs, and the UI was kind of all over the place and hard to remember cause none of the extensions were designed to work together from what I could tell.
What I don't get is why Vivaldi didn't code on top of Firefox, but I think it's because there are sites that work in chromium and don't in Firefox, and fail silently - and just like in IE6 days, they're sites like my parents retirement site, they can't NOT use them.
2 finger swipe to the left or right is the gesture to go back and forward, don't know what other gestures you'd need.
I don't care for themes, just need night mode. I need the option to throw out any taskbars except fot tabs and address bar. Including any search window. I need a zoom slider at the bottom right corner, and this is a must. It's also nice to have these things built in instead of looking for extensions. And You are right, o haven't looked into Firefox for a long time.
Browser Wars!!!!!!!!!
Choose a Firefox-based browser instead for open source.