Posted on 10/26/2017 6:42:43 PM PDT by CatOwner
I've been a user of Firefox since a SysAdmin at work recommended it back in 2004 when they were at version 0.8. Over the years, some of the features I like disappeared from Firefox in their updated versions, most of which were added back in via extensions. At this point, I have 10 extensions installed, half of which deal exclusively with look and feel.
With the latest warning about losing most/all of these legacy extensions with the release of Firefox 57, I decided to look at other browsers. When you add in the SJW nonsense the Mozilla people have associated themselves with, I would like to move away from Firefox. But moving to a less secure browser is not necessarily a good compromise.
One of the issues I have is some web sites require specific browsers. My work's Employee and Retiree Service Center indicates they are compatible with Firefox, Chrome, or IE 11. I find it funny the latter is acceptable when it is considered one of the weakest browsers on the market.
I am currently testing Opera 48, and for the most part, I like it. I am not an "app" person, so the whole "start page/speed dial" layout is not my cup of tea. I have been able to work around most of it, but the lack of adjustments to the look and feel of the menus, tabs, etc. is a little frustrating. Opera 48 has a very good built-in ad blocker, and I find ScriptSafe to be easier to monitor scripts than with Firefox/NoScript. The latter combination has had an increasing number of failings.
But then I go and read about Opera being sold to the Chinese last year, and I wonder if I would be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. One of the features being touted as a huge plus for Opera, its built-in (and free) VPN, seems less secure knowing the Chinese are monitoring it.
Chrome seems to be popular with many, but I also read about it being very memory and CPU hungry. I have been dealing with memory leak issues with Firefox for years now, and I have no interest moving to a browser that mismanages memory via bloated software. I also can't shake the nagging feeling that Google uses Chrome to build up its database on personal habits even more than it does in general.
I've tried Brave, but so far, I am not a fan of its interface or how it handles script control. It certainly is not as flexible as Firefox/NoScript or Opera/ScirptSafe. I want to like this browse for political reasons, but that in of itself is not a good reason to switch.
There are other browsers for PC, but we're really getting into the bit players or new ones with little history. At a minimum, I likely will need to keep Firefox (or Chrome) around to deal with my former company's service center site, assuming any other browse I select ends up not being completely compatible with that site.
Feedback is most welcomed.
Someone recently recommended Pale Moon to me https://www.palemoon.org/
I haven’t had an opportunity to try it out yet; I’m trying to see how long I can stall off Firefox updates while I play with Brave and get used to it.
bttt
I am on Firefox Nightly.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly
Nightly is remarkably stable! And fast! Firefox has come a LONG WAY in the past few releases. It is a much, much better browser than it has been in YEARS.
I’ve been using Nightly for the past few years and have had very few crashes.
True: A lot of the old extensions no longer work. But I’m getting used to browser life without my old favorites. Overall, I am very pleased!
I use Opera, Epic, of which I like a lot. Brave a little bit, as well as Firefox for FB only, Hardly any Chrome, but mostly Safari.
I don’t pick browsers based on politics or paranoia. Right now is use and like Google Chrome.
The SJW nonsense associated with Mozilla ownership doesn’t bother you?
I don’t care much about “look and feel” but have nearly 10 Firefox add-ons too, which I use because they do things I need doing. I’ll be very disappointed if they don’t work with the new version. Maybe the add-on developers will use the beta versions and prepare for the change, most of them, anyway.
So far I’ve been fairly well satisfied with Firefox, and don’t want to change to a new interface, either within or without Firefox.
Well, that's a different take than about 95% of this forum in recent weeks. They have been hitting Mozilla hard on the SJW nonsense. Like I said, I am not moving to a browser I am not comfortable with. I just wish my interests weren't inadvertently funding Antifa.
Brave
Take another look at the latest Brave build, it fixed some things had had kept me from using it. Still waiting for a darker theme.
I use a like Chrome.
“The SJW nonsense associated with Mozilla ownership doesn’t bother you?”
—
Why would something like that bother anyone?
If they provide exactly what you want,who cares?
If my airline pilot and surgeon do a good job I don’t give a damn what their politics are.
.
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However, XUL-based extensions are phased out in favor of the cross-browser standard WebExtensions API. There are a ton of XUL-based extensions that will need to be ported.
> “I find ScriptSafe to be easier to monitor scripts than with Firefox/NoScript.”
I’ve been using NoScript in recent years, and go to a fair number of unsavory and probably dangerous sites. I don’t turn on scripts unnecessarily, though, and almost never do so when explicitly warned. Of course, I also don’t download software from sites I don’t trust (though I download a lot of software in general).
I’ve been on the internet since the early days and — knock on wood — have never knowingly had a virus (had some caught by my antivirus program, of course, but never had any that ran and caused noticeable problems to my computer). Maybe that’s mostly luck, but in the recent years that I’ve been using NoScript, it seems to have done its job.
(The biggest problem I’ve had with NoScript is that some pages need so many scripts that it takes a long time to check out enough of them individually to get the essential parts of the page running, so sometimes I just leave. If ScriptSafe will check them all at once, and give me some kind of readout showing which ones may be a problem, then that’s a feature I’d appreciate.)
> The SJW nonsense associated with Mozilla ownership doesn’t bother you?
I don’t like supporting corporations with whose political policies I disagree. Alas, nearly all establishment corporations fall into that category (some have merely made them more conspicuous than others). I myself am not paying any money to Mozilla, though, and I don’t really see how I’m helping them make money.
I suppose the stats which show browser, obtainable every time a site is accessed, do help them, but how do they make their money? I’m not giving it to them.
I have heard that Chrome is more secure than FF.
“Isn’t there a concern about the lack of security fixes sticking with an older version of a browser that isn’t updated?”
i personally think browser “security” is a shibboleth. It’s the job of the OS to provide security, not the individual applications. And yes, ALL versions of Windows provide horrible security, so one thing I do to vastly increase security is to emulate Unix-type security where one login ID is a superuser, and all the other logins are ordinary users that can use the facilities and applications provided by the OS, but cannot alter the OS or the applications. In Windows, this is done by having one account that has Administrative privilege and the rest are limited user accounts. One uses only limited user accounts for ordinary work and utilizes the administrative account only for OS and application add, removes, changes and updates. Fundamentally, this technique is the only one that offers any kind of security at all on a Windows OS.
“I can’t remember when I started having memory leaks/usage issues with Firefox.”
from day one. EVERY version of FF leaks memory like a sieve and the developers could care less, they’re too busy copying every bad feature possible from Chrome, Edge and Safari
Midori, Vivaldi, Pale Moon, Chromium, QupZilla.
I personally prefer pale moon. I uses a different engine from the forked mozilla code, and runs a bit snappier at the end of the day.
Interesting comments about user privileges in Windows. I’d probably rarely need administrator privileges when doing ordinary surfing, so I may consider some changes. (As I said, though, I’ve never knowingly had a problem with viruses.)
> “I have heard that Chrome is more secure than FF.”
Maybe so. I haven’t been hurt so far by Firefox, though, so my inclination is to keep using it. I wonder if “more secure” means that Chrome with no special security add-ons is safer than Firefox with no addons. If so, that leaves open the question of whether Chrome without addons is safer than Firefox with NoScript (of course, the safety of NoScript depends to a great degree on your own choices about which scripts to allow).
If I learned that another browser was definitely safer, I’d probably keep using the Firefox interface (with addons) that I’m used to for most sites, and switch occasionally for a few sites that I suspect may be dangerous.
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