Testing the Firefox Alternatives

> You can totally still stick with Firefox… but remember to download userChrome.css from GitHub. And if you want vertical tabs, be sure to install Sidebery until Mozilla get around to implementing native vertical tabs.

I'm a constant critic of most things Mozilla (as well as an avid Firefox user... there's a lot of overlap in that venn diagram) and most of what this intro rails against resonates, but I'll never understand why they get hammered for not implementing vertical tabs.

This is a feature that a small but passionate subset of their users use, but it's also a feature that already has an extension that said subset of their users uses. Further, said subset has a strong overlap with the never-Chromium crowd, so they're not going to lose them any time soon. Out of the thousand and one things that Mozilla could be doing to make Firefox more competitive, vertical tabs is solidly in the second half of the list.

One minor nitpick: Firefox has vertical tabs, they were recently added in version 131 nightly builds. (Blog was probably written before it was added)

Also Edge/Vivaldi have sidebar/vertical tabs, but they don't nest which reduces their utility in my opinion.

The Miller Columns view implemented in a recent HN post[1] would be great way to view history. Each column could be linked visually with its sidebar tab. I use my sidebar tab tree structure to give additional context on what I've viewed, I can see that page G is a child of B, etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263203

Waterfox is nearly same as Librewolf; it comes with own set of additional settings and tweaks. From what I saw around some users weren't fond of the arrangements the author of the project went into (startpage, fastly) and bundling of tree tabs extension that had to be disabled by about:config entry change.

Pale Moon: IIRC initially it was a fork of Firefox ESR then project switched to own Goanna engine, which in turn is a fork of Gecko; it also tries to keep alive XUL extensions platform. There were some dramas happening in the past around the project, esp. regarding porting browser to OpenBSD. It's kinda a niche project I'd say - surely it has some community but it's not that big.

As for IceCat - I'm surprised it's still around; seems it runs own extensions database (https://gnuzilla.gnu.org/mozzarella/) but these aren't keeping up with official releases, at least on the page. Perhaps autoupdate bumps these to the current versions; still, uBlock Origin is stuck at 1.51.0 from last December, while the current version is 1.59.0.

I tried Zen recently - it's kinda hard to get used to tabs sidebar. For some people this might be useful but not for me - I prefer tabs on top.

I may get some naysayers for this, maybe because I'm on macOS and not Linux or Windows but...

Two features I love about Safari is:

- Pinch/Zoom to view all my tabs as windows to switch between tabs

- What at least appears to be total isolation between tabs when in private browsing mode. If I login to Facebook in one tab, then open up a new tab and go to Facebook, it will not see me as logged in.

Chrome nor Firefox have either of those features.

> And if you want vertical tabs, be sure to install Sidebery until Mozilla get around to implementing native vertical tabs. (You know, like Chromium-based browsers including Edge and Vivaldi already have.)

I've been using vertical tabs in Firefox ever since Mozilla implemented it back in 2016 as "Tab Center" long before any Chromium-based browser decided to do so too. Of course the official feature has been discontinued long time ago, but I've been a happy user of its webext-based replacement ever since. Just a bit of CSS goes a long way in making it compact and well-integrated, unlike stuff like Sidebery or Tree Style Tabs that always felt big, clunky and filled with stuff I never use. For the past 8 years, my Firefox looked like this: https://dosowisko.net/firefox-tabcenter.gif and I never stumbled upon a reasonable alternative, including the native implementation Mozilla recently added back into Firefox (though it's a step in the right direction).

Given that this whole "AI" integration shtick is minimal effort thing with negligibly small value (if any), I suspect it was either an attempt to just ride on "AI" hype (certainly didn't work, feedback comments are virtually univocally "AI" hate), or attempt to find new monetization source (e.g. for a default provider).

My own thoughts on the AI feature: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedba... - LLM integrations can be useful and actually supporting end-users, but it must be based on entirely different paradigm (all about user agent automation, not a website in a sidebar) and it's probably best left out of the core application itself and rather be a external co-program.

As for the alternatives - to be honest, I don't really see much difference beyond various cosmetics. Both Zen and Floorp are basically the same Firefox for me, containing all the things I hate about Firefox ("sponsored" stuff everywhere, Firefox Account and Sync overengineering abomination, all the "safety" features that "protect" browser from its users, hardcoded built-in things that should be pluggable rather than fixed), while bringing nothing I actually care about and want to see (such as decluttering websites aggressively minimizing all the noise I don't care about - kinda like improved reader mode for everything by default, flexible automatic workflows for personal routine things, advanced history with optional content indexing for finding back things I vaguely remember seeing somewhere, automatic tab management to solve 100 open tabs problem, removal of tightly integrated bits like password or download management in favor of replaceable classic UNIX-way style external programs so I can use any tool I want while feeling those tools are properly truly and fully integrated and aren't some hacks like those password manager extensions messing with HTML).

Honestly, I'm sad that niche stuff like surf and Uzbl had essentially died, instead of evolving towards a pre-packaged "batteries included out of the box, but you can replace everything with your own" suites. I wished for a non-monolithic browser for technical/power users, with replaceable components for about a decade now - don't think I'll ever see it happening.

https://zen-browser.app/ killer features for me:

- web panel: to show/hide messenger/mail quickly. I don’t see it — no distractions — but it is instantly there when I need it - hor/vert. grid/tiling on keyboard shortcut: pair some web pages together so that they are visible/hidden at the same time - Firefox addons work (that I use) e.g., Vimium C - vertical tabs combined with compact mode that show/hides them on keyboard shortcut

I'm hoping Ladybird makes it across the finish line.

https://ladybird.org/

I just don't get all the hate for Firefox "AI" integration. Probably I am out of the loop, but to get access to all chatbots that are actually collecting user data and using questions for more training, are "locked" behind some API and requires for user to enter login credentials? Please correct me if I am wrong. Sure, I hate Pocket as any other Firefox user, and always disable it on new install, and I assume I will be able to disable all those chatbot integrations too? Oh, and I forgot about the new weather widget... Yes, situation is dire.

There is a fork of Pale Moon that is compatible with Windows XP called "New Moon". It's based on Palemoon 28.10.7a1. While an old version of the browser, it is still compatible with modern websites, such as Github.

It is available at http://o.rthost.win/palemoon/ , but make sure you don't download a 64-bit version by mistake. (Providing a non-secure http link because the MSIE version that ships with Windows XP is not compatible with modern https websites)

I wish someone would release a good mobile fork. Firefox Mobile probably has the worst UX of any mobile browser I've used since 2009 and I'm convinced whatever intern they have locked in a closet coding it doesn't use it themselves. It's as if they used a supercomputer to predict user behavior for the sole purpose of making sure their obnoxious purple toast messages cover the exact button you need to use and that they last exactly one second short of the time required to make you uninstall it in fury.

Librewolf ships with uBlock Origin preinstalled, however the default installation of uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by default. EasyPrivacy blocks legitimate websites, and there is no recourse to try to have a false positive become unblocked. Because of this, I do not recommend enabling EasyPrivacy if you are installing the browser for another person, unless they are comfortable with changing extension settings to disable the filter.

I remember the times when I had three or more different browsers installed, just because each had their own unique and useful features. Had some workflows for each too. Now, I ended up using the least worst browser, and that must tell something about current situation in "browser market".

This part is misleading. It is possible to make the same point without having to make it sounds the feature has been introduced nefariously:

> Yes, I get that some people want it, and you can turn it off.

It is already off. You have to opt in to the 'experiments' area.

Nice little article, posted via eww on emacs :)

Edit: via Firefox. The odd thing about eww and ycombinator, the line size is limited on eww and you are limited to 1 line in eww. It is a eww thing, but surprisingly eww renders pages rather well.

I use ~10 desktops across the day (physical, remote and virtual). They all have Firefox (rel, ESR, nightly) as their primary browser. I also use of Ffx alts every day (presently Waterfox).

I co-use Ffx alts to segment browsing - and as a quick fix for when sites develop Broken Control Syndrome.

Outside of the Ffx ecosystem, I'm using Brave (today) to test Google products and deal with Google's passive-aggressive hostility to Firefox.

I had tried Opera before Brave but it felt like being trolled. Something is very wrong in that house.

Man, Firefox users are something else. So many of these complaints are kind of annoying or have internal contradictions.

"That’s rather disconcerting if you’d like Mozilla to focus on making a good browser instead of chasing the new and shiny because it is new and shiny." - contradiction, you just conceded that there are Firefox users that want these new AI features, so no it's not just a shiny because it's shiny. Just because you don't want it doesn't mean it's "shiny for shiny".

"I’ll note that some of the AI stuff Mozilla is pursing is reasonable. The translation feature uses a local model for translation, which is a great idea. It doesn’t support all the languages that Google Translate does, but it’s good."

Great, it's not as good as one of the largest, richest companies on the planet, that has had translation as a feature for what like 20 years now. Firefox introduced translation like this year! Can't we just celebrate the successes when they happen and recognize it as an important step?

"the rollout of the ghastly Proton UI, which necessitated (and still necessitates) setting up Lepton aka Firefox-UI-Fix"

I'm so tired of this view, why can't people recognize when a UI preference is just a preference? The UI is fine. This is why browsers are configurable, so you can shape it to your preferences.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of problems with Mozilla and things they could be doing better, but when these are being touted as the primary problems at the top of the article, it just seems petty and overly negative.

aren't all "antifeatures" disabled by default on most linux distro packaged firefox?