PotD: Browser Wars

[don't let's]

waterfox

also til this is a real thing, although i guess i'm not surprised as many browsers have forks and waterfox is an obvious choice for a firefox fork lol

Waterfox still supports the old firefox add-ons

Out of curiosity, what add-ons in particular would you be missing on nu-Firefox?

Downthemall, but apparently that guy's working on a compatible version for it. And session manager, I don't know if that got updated or not.

I don't remember what else, if any, because I do most of my browsing on the phone these days

[Thyme]

oh yeah definitely down them all too

[bluaki]

Firefox on PC, chrome on mobile. Since forever

one of the great things about using chrime on both is that a tab or full browsing session opened on one device can be accessed on the other at any time, which is extremely convenient

i would bet that firefox mobile and firefox desktop offer a similar feature, but i can't imagine there's any such cross compatibility between firefox and chrome

So why Firefox on one and Chrome on the other? Especially when Chrome on mobile, specifically, is polluted with unblockable (by traditional means) ads.

Yeah, I use that feature a lot, which is the main reason I stick to using the same browser on desktop and mobile. If I want to switch to firefox on one, I'd end up switching on the other platform at the same time because of this.

Having no viable adblock options on mobile Chrome is the biggest reason I kinda want to switch to Firefox, but I still haven't. The recent versions of Firefox actually seem really nice.

Too bad my favorite laptop to use is the Pixelbook and the dual-boot non-ChromeOS linux experience I've had so far on it is really subpar, which basically means sticking to Chrome.

By the way, you can set up both Chrome and Firefox to sync to a custom private server instead of to the Google and Mozilla owned clouds, so technically it's possible to set them up to cross-sync if you modify the server software to handle it.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Out of curiosity, what add-ons in particular would you be missing on nu-Firefox?

tab mix plus

rip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Mix_Plus#Functions

huh, a lot of its features are built into chrime natively

Duplicates tabs
Opens a new tab with the same page and back/forward history.

you can do this in chrime by middle clicking the refresh button on any tab

Reopen closed tabs and windows
Saves information about tabs and windows as they are closed, allowing the user to "undo" closing them. The reopened page will reopen in the condition it was at the moment it was closed - including containing any text the user had typed into text boxes thereon - such as those on a Wikipedia edit page.

built into chrime, although the fact that it even preserves text is enviable

Session Manager and Crash Recovery
Saves the current set of open windows and tabs (and associated history), at a preset interval and/or on command. This allows the user to recover from a crash, or to deliberately save the current session, to return to it at a later date, or share a copy with another user.
While Firefox contains a basic session manager functions, Tab Mix Plus has greater functionality in this area. In turn, the Session Manager extension has additional session management functions beyond those of Tab Mix Plus. These two extensions are known to "play nicely together": Tab Mix Plus detects the presence of Session Manager and deactivates its own session management functions, deferring to Session Manager.

built into chrime, although i'm wondering what the "greater functionality" wikipedia mentions is

JavaScript decompiling
Allows JavaScript to be forced into a separate tab instead of a pop-up box, and allows the user to view the URL of the JavaScript page.

that's certainly cool, though

[Mando Pandango]

But then what's the appeal of using Chrome on mobile?

it's default and i don't hate it

Why wouldn't you want things synced, anyway?

because it would be a pain in the ass. I use my browsers in wildly different ways on mobile vs. desktop, and I don't need them getting in each other's business thanks

[Thyme]

@Magyarorszag lol sure and so does firefox nowadays, but neither have the main feature i was using it for:

locking tabs, keeping you from accidentally closing them

[Kalahari Inkantation]

But then what's the appeal of using Chrome on mobile?

it's default and i don't hate it

Why wouldn't you want things synced, anyway?

because it would be a pain in the ass. I use my browsers in wildly different ways on mobile vs. desktop, and I don't need them getting in each other's business thanks

now i'm just curious as to how wildly different your usage on mobile vs. desktop could be, and why lol

my browsing habits are about the same on desktop and mobile, and the only real differences i can think of can largely be attributed to the general limitations/discomforts/inconveniences of mobile browsing

[Kalahari Inkantation]

@Magyarorszag lol sure and so does firefox nowadays, but neither have the main feature i was using it for:

locking tabs, keeping you from accidentally closing them

How useful is this when you can easily reopen a tab after accidentally closing it anyway?

i guess it would prevent you from accidentally closing one without even realizing it, and prevent you from having to reopen an accidentally closed tab even if you did realize it

[Mando Pandango]

I think I use my phone how you use your desktop, my just keeping shit open to refer to later. My desktop I just do whatever, and I usually don't have a tab open for more than a few minutes unless I'm doing assignments, which I would obviously never do on my phone.

It's more like I'm used to them not butting into each other and I'd like to keep it that way.

[bluaki]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Mix_Plus#Functions

huh, a lot of its features are built into chrime natively

I just opened Firefox (for Linux) and checked which of these it has now, with zero addons installed:

* Duplicate tab works just like Chrome: You can either middle-click the refresh icon or open the tab's right-click menu
* Undo close tab works like Chrome: Press Ctrl+Shift+T to open the most recently closed tab, and you can open older ones either by repeatedly pressing Ctrl+Shift+T or opening the Library->History->Recently Closed Tabs menu.
* I think Session Manager works similarly too but I'd never use it since I set all my browsers to reopen all previous tabs

Undo Close Window is a bit different than Chrome: Firefox tracks window closing separately, so you have to press Ctrl+Shift+N to reopen a window. If you close one tab in Window 1 then close Window 2 then press Ctrl+Shift+T, Firefox will reopen the Window 1 tab while Chrome will reopen Window 2 with all its tabs.