What browser do you use, and why?

[RockSolid1106]

I'm trying to get a general idea of the pros and cons of the various browsers that exist, and why people use one browser over another.

 

So until recently, I was the kind of "use chrome because everybody does" person. But I started working on my extension, and well Chrome Web Store needs you to pay to submit an extension, which I can't. But Edge Addons doesn't need you to pay, so I switched to Edge. There wasn't anything I particularly liked about Edge though.

Edge's pros:

- PDF annotation

- Chromium based so wasn't difficult to switch to.

- Smooth scrolling

 

Cons:

- Memory hog for PDFs. Used over a gigabyte for a 10 page PDF I'd opened in Edge(had nothing else open other than that PDF).

- A fairly flat UI. I'd like if there were more colors, and not just gray everywhere.

- Full screen ads when you open it sometimes.

- Cluttered with unnecessary features(screenshot tool? I have win shift s for that dude)

 

 

But, @J-from-Nucleon asked if I could make my extension available for Firefox too. So I rewrote the extension's code a bit to make it compatible with FF. While working on it, I started to like FF too. The UI looked pretty good. One thing I liked about FF was the fast "send tab to device" feature. This is also available on other browsers, but on Chrome and Edge it was really slow, and took well over 20 seconds for it to appear on the other device. FF one the other hand was quick, and tabs appeared within 2 seconds. This is useful for me as I constantly switch between my iPad, laptop and desktop, and is useful to just send tabs rather than opening it all manually.

Pros:

- fast send to device

- Nice looking UI.

- I can also use my extension on mobile, yay! This is something other browsers didn't offer.

- Picture in Picture.

 

Cons:

- No tab grouping feature. I used that a lot.

- Even more of a memory hog. I find this using over 2 gigabytes with just 10 tabs. Also seems pretty reluctant to start pagefiling to reduce RAM usage.

- No PDF annotation

 

So I'm using Firefox right now.

 

So that's me. What were the features you looked for when choosing your browser? What were the things things you didn't like about other browsers?

 

[dizmo]

I use Firefox, because, back when I started using it, it was far lighter than Chrome. Now, they're about the same, if not Firefox being worse for RAM usage.

However I also have sufficient RAM in my machines now, so usage is a non-issue.

I just like how you can customize it. Not sure if Chrome has similar customization features (adjusting the size of the bar, the buttons, etc).

 

Firefox works. I don't really think another browser could have some implementation that'd make me switch. Though the bug with multiquote is getting pretty annoying.

[emosun]

i use chrome , firefox , and opera

opera because it's literally the only browser that functions on my phone , firefox becuase I've been using it for 16 years , and chrome becuase for a short time firefox just stopped working but now it works fine so i use chrome sometimes.

[8tg]

https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io
 

LibreWolf

Comes with adblock

basically everything else is disabled 

no extra nonsense

 

the chad browser

anyone using brave has a room temperature IQ

[HeroRareheart]

I used to use Google Chrome but when Microsoft switched Edge to be Chromium based I decided to just use it instead so I have one less browser cluttering up my Windows PC's. For my Linux devices I just stick to Firefox, if Edge was removable I'd likely use it on Windows too.

 

...also I'm lazy so built in browsers are easy lol.

[BondiBlue]

I use a mix of Chrome and Firefox. I'll probably end up moving over to Firefox more though - I like the UI. 

[WhitetailAni]

Chrome because I have to for school (managed gmail accounts only work on Chrome). I also have a personal gmail account but using 2 browsers is silly.

On Windows I also installed EdgeDeflector (then subsequently removed Edge) and I have an extension that redirects bing.com to google.com, don’t remember the name. I use Chrome on macOS because I don’t have to worry about storage space constraints, but on my phone I use Safari because I can’t yeet it in favor of Chrome.

I’ve tried Firefox and don’t like it all that much.

[shoutingsteve]

I use opera 99% of the time.  And when a particular page won't let me proceed with opera I use chrome.

[Mark Kaine]

Chrome because it "just works" has my logins, has pretty good / fast translation , is highly customizable,  and uses very little resources (yes, seriously)

 

 

[Gork]

21 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

I use a mix of Chrome and Firefox. I'll probably end up moving over to Firefox more though - I like the UI. 

Same here. I think I use chrome a bit more. Honestly partially from habbit, and like others said it works. Though a part of me prefers firefox. Ublock and nanoblock. Chrome is just rediculoous for how agressively anti addblockers they are. I think I just have a softspot for them and seamonkey because of a older retro type of feal. For downloading cat videos and totally not at all getting music and what not off of youtube? Firefox is teh sex. Chrome and firefox are about the same for how much they hate my ram and CPU. Chrome works better, ish, for webtexting and messenger. The one thing from facebook I still use lol. A friend of is on it a lot. 

I am curius about Opera and OperaGX though. Though i confess I have no idea what the differences are. One has RGB neon glows. I would call it RGB lighting. but it's more like highlights.

 

[GoodBytes]

On 11/28/2021 at 9:54 PM, RockSolid1106 said:

- Cluttered with unnecessary features(screenshot tool? I have win shift s for that dude)

Many features you can disable from the Settings panel.

As for the Web capture feature, this allows you to capture the entire page at once (as if you take a screen shot, scroll down, take another, continue to scroll down, take another, and so on, until the end, and stich every segment together).

 

Don't forget also that Edge has some nice resource optimization in place. For example, sleeping tag feature, which after some time (configurable), you can have a tab unload (while still remain "physically" there) to free up RAM, the moment you click it back, it reloads the page. Very nice if you have a system with limited system memory, or/and weak CPU. It can also (disabled by default) perform JS slow downs to reduce CPU load by a web site. So at the expense of fancy JS visuals, if a page has such thing, it helps reduce the CPU load affecting your OS experience.

[Gork]

6 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Many features you can disable from the Settings panel.

As for the Web capture feature, this allows you to capture the entire page at once (as if you take a screen shot, scroll down, take another, continue to scroll down, take another, and so on, until the end, and stich every segment together).

 

Don't forget also that Edge has some nice resource optimization in place. For example, sleeping tag feature, which after some time (configurable), you can have a tab unload (while still remain "physically" there) to free up RAM, the moment you click it back, it reloads the page. Very nice if you have a system with limited system memory, or/and weak CPU. It can also (disabled by default) perform JS slow downs to reduce CPU load by a web site. So at the expense of fancy JS visuals, if a page has such thing, it helps reduce the CPU load affecting your OS experience.

That is nice. Opera GX does that to. I have no idea who came first. Their is a extension called the great suspendor for chrome. I found out about it on reddit. It suspends tabs. Helps some for memory. I have no idea if their are other better ones. Personally I like fire shot, just a neet quality of life, and why not thing.

[Kjennings92]

As for me, I tend to alternate between Yandex, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome, & Edge simply because having more than 1 browser can come in handy if you're someone who multitasks like I do.  [Chrome & Edge I don't use all that much unless I need to. Nothing against them, but you could say they are my secondary browsers.] Yandex I have REALLY grown to love just because how great it looks.  Plus, it has some other features the zen feed which sometimes I like to use & waste my time on.  Vivaldi is another browser that has gotten really useful with a plethora of extra goodies like their Hibernate Tabs feature. [It's basically the same approach more or less that Microsoft applied to Edge, but I think Vivaldi re-named it or something. Not sure if there approach is all that much different though.] I have tried Firefox, but don't really use it anymore simply because the performance sucks a bit compared to Chromium browsers. But all in all, I'm pretty much a Chromium user. 

[MatsNorway]

Firefox. Got everything i need, stable and easy to use. I miss nothing.

[Sam Wiltshire]

I use Chromium, Used to be big into Firefox but recently had a few websites that were only built for Chrome/Chromium browsers.

 

Thats on the desktop which is mainly Linux based.

 

For phone browser i use Chrome. 

[bredy]

I still use Chrome as my main browser even though I wanna switch away from as many google products as possible lately.

Brave was my favorit option as a successor, but was not an option in the end because my password manager (dashlane) does not work on the mobile version.

So I tried Firefox, which is absolutely fine on desktop but again mobile ... why can't I reload a bloody page by just swiping down?

 

So ... still Chrome it is ...

[RockSolid1106]

27 minutes ago, bredy said:

why can't I reload a bloody page by just swiping down?

Using Firefox Nightly here(the developer edition, using it cuz I'm working on an extension lately), and I can swipe down to refresh..

[LloydLynx]

I like Qutebrowser. It's pretty much QtWebEngine with a VIM frontend. It also has the option to use QtWebKit. It's a pretty simple browser; no menus, no big buttons, no spell check, everything is done with VIM like commands and keyboard shortcuts. You could use the browser and navigate the web using only the keyboard if you wanted to. The interface feels pretty at home in a tiling window manager. It really doesn't have any fancy features, it's just a window into the web as a browser should be. 

 

One downside is Google services hate it and won't let you sign in with Qutebrowser, but everything else seems to work fine. I do unfortunately have to keep Firefox around because of that and intensive websites and media slow Qutebrowser to less than 1 fps on old hardware like mine.