I think we need all support we can get to fight Google on this, so I welcome Brave here actually.
Use this link to avoid going to Twitter:
https://nitter.kavin.rocks/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
Firefox gang
I personally switched back to Firefox after 13 years earlier this year and was surprised just how easy it was. All my main extensions exist on Firefox and it gave me an opportunity to remove some extension bloat at the same time. Highly recommend.
Try container tabs!
They have separate sessions so you can be logged in to the same site on multiple accounts. This is extreamly useful for stuff like being logged in to github using work account and company account or other sites where you just need many accounts. Aws is another good example.
There is also temporary containers that leave no trace at all.
Containers are one of the best features Firefox has gained in recent years. They make managing multiple website accounts so much easier than trying to use multiple browsers or browser profiles. They are also useful for developers in lots of ways.
I don’t know why Mozilla doesn’t promote Containers more, they can’t even be used out of the box because they have to be enabled with an extension. It’s a far better feature than many of the other recent gimmicks like time limited colour schemes.
just in case someone is looking for that feature: it’s a Firefox addon
omg i’ve left my ‘work’ stuff on edge because of this reason but i guess i’ll migrate this to firefox too 🤯
You can also use that to separate spying websites. Eg. Any site with Facebook integration will think you are logged out, but when you go to facebook.com, it’s open in a different container where you are in fact logged in, cuttin on Facebook spying on third party websites.
Container Tabs sounds so useful, but fair warning to anyone else looking to check it out… I think it’s kinda buggy. My sessions got all fucked up when I tried using it. I ended up removing it entirely and just going without.
I love Firefox but It’s not as good as chrome profiles. You can’t just have a container with Honey and whatever tracking extensions just for shopping. It’s all or nothing.
This, I didn’t move from chrome for so long because I had my passwords stored on the google password manager, but then I started using bitwarden and I could move to Edge, and then I found a speed dial extension that could backup every dial and its properties and is available on every browser, so I moved to Firefox and it was so easy and fast. The only thing I miss is being able to make apps or shortcuts from websites that will open on their own fullscreen window, but it is not a big deal.
Yea when I started my Degoogle thing a few months back, I also switched to Firefox and it’s been great.
How has your degoogle process being coming along? For Google Photos, I’ve just switched to Immich and it’s perfect
I switched over what probably was a small thing, but is big to me.
I like to have my tabs in a list, and google enforced the grid and kept breaking ways to put it back to list.
Once they blocked me from being able to revert, that was it.
I still use it on my work machine as I find the syncing works beautifully, important as I have need to swap between desktop and laptop occasionally, and there are other desktop features I enjoy.
But as for mobile - I am done.
I adored the fox when I used Mozilla everything back in the day, so it’s like coming home.
I switched over what probably was a small thing, but is big to me.
I like to have my tabs in a list, and google enforced the grid and kept breaking ways to put it back to list.
Once they blocked me from being able to revert, that was it.
I still use it on my work machine as I find the syncing works beautifully, important as I have need to swap between desktop and laptop occasionally, and there are other desktop features I enjoy.
But as for mobile - I am done.
I adored the fox when I used Mozilla everything back in the day, so it’s like coming home.
Wait, will Firefox be immune to this whole website DRM thing Google is trying to pull? That would be awesome. Fennec on Android gang.
The issue is less about which browsers will roll this out and more about which websites will require it. How soon until we can’t access banking information? Will filing taxes require this?
Oh, bummer. Got my hopes up and then dashed them quite expertly, sir. Bravo!
Yea, but you can’t read news, cause they want to remove scrapers, you can’t watch youtube, since they want to block downloaders etc etc. It’s a procentage game. If enough of people won’t have the DRM enabled, it won’t be worth for websites to use it. Not implementing it yet, means that firefox won’t be contributing to the amount of users, but if high enough procentage of websites starts using it, firefox will be forced to implement this DRM or they will be killed off by browsers that support all the websites you want to browse.
What’s the Firefox equivalent to:
Brave.exe --app="http://lemmy.world"
I use this a lot as I detest electron based applications. Mozilla dropped prism years ago and before that there was xulrunner and you cant open a JavaScript popup window without clicking a bookmark.
When Firefox has this very basic function perhaps I’ll consider moving.
This just changes the OS chrome on a browser tab right ? I generally dislike electron apps, but when they’re literally just a browser tab I’d rather just leave it in the browser.
This just changes the OS chrome on a browser tab right ?
No this just opens the website in it’s own window so it looks similar to an electron app, another way to do this is to open chrome://apps, drag any bookmark to this window/tab and right click to create icons.
It does nothing to the “OS” of the browser.
I would recommend this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
It adds support for PWA in Firefox. I use it because Firefox dropped native support for PWA in Firefox.
I used this for awhile but it’s more of a framework that requires vcredist and a local install of pwaforff binary to work around the short comings of mozilla pulling the plumbing out of the browser.
It’s a good workaround can have it’s issues when one part receives an update that the rest isn’t aware of.
You can use ferdium for that. I also made a profile, that has hidden all possible buttons and I made links to open website in that cut down profile. You can also use user.js to make it really slick.
I use brave and this is built in and still gives me the protections offered by Brave.
What protections does this offer?
Additionally I see mention of electron in the code!!!
https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
Nitter link.
Also, the Chromium forks need to get onboard. I think Opera doesn’t care about ads either so it will likely go against it but Microsoft will definitely add it to Edge.
Use Firefox :)
I really hope Microsoft sees the light. Edge is the best browser for my productivity. Can’t work without their implementation of vertical tabs and tab groups.
Every so often I try it out on firefox and any option is just still not ideal.
As long as websites/advertisers see their visitors as using a Chromium based browser they will continue to target for Chromium, regardless of whatever front facing UI is used.
The inherent problem is Google has an outsized voice in Chromium’s developmental trajectory, and any major changes to Chromium will have downstream impacts, whether in actual implemented feature sets or forks making continued modifications on top.
The best way to protest is to not use a Chromium browser. Switching from Chrome to another Chromium browser is at best a side grade; everyone using Chromium is subject to Google’s whimsy.
Pragmatically it doesn’t matter if Microsoft chooses not to implement it; as long as Edge is on Chromium, Google can leverage this to continue to bully the web to their own devices.
Vivaldi is against it. might want to look at it instead of edge, it’s extremely customizable. Still chromium based though.
Their business model is replacing ads with ads they get paid for. Obviously they aren’t going to like Google making that harder.
Brendan Eich is an asshole deep in the Conspiracy Victim Complex too. I like Brave search as an alternative to Google but I’m still using Firefox
Have you given Ecosia a shot? I find it better than Brave’s search, with the side-effect of not having a shithole CEO.
Ecosia “tree planting” is bullshit though. They only raise funds towards the statutory goal when you click ads, so if you have an ad blocker in your browser or purposefully skip over sponsored search results then they don’t make money towards the tree planting programme.
You may be right but I have been using Brave on iOS simply because you can’t just install Firefox and uBlock, and since I reconfigured the new tab page I haven’t seen any ads anywhere at all.
From now on, any browser that refuses to implement Google‘s evil shit should be worth a look.
Why not stick with Safari with the Adblock extension and all the others that are available?
Because this way, instead of two apps it’s just one and with better control over content blocking.
At least there is a big (ish?) player in the Chromium-sphere pushing back against this.
The more browsers that don’t initially support this, the slower adoption by web sites will be. If enough of the browser market share remains incompatibe, and if we’re lucky, maybe this technology won’t stick.
I don’t agree with Brave’s business model, and the shady stuff they did, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Had been using Brave for 4 years. Switched from it to Firefox after the Google DRM news came out. Firefox is awesome!
I never liked Brave. The whole “allow ads to get awards” thing doesn’t sit right with me. The only adblockers that do that are the ones that are in bed with the ad companies. Firefox with UBlock Origin and NoScript is all you need.
(I mean, there are other good addons for privacy as well, but it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole and next thing you know you have 30 different extensions installed and websites are breaking. Then you have to start disabling things one-by-one until you find the culprit. Setting your security settings in FF to “Strict” and using those two addons should be good enough without going overboard.)
Edit: only thing that sucks about Firefox is that it still doesn’t support HDR and RTX Video Super Resolution yet, so in the meantime I use the “Open in Chromium” browser extension when I’m watching videos on YouTube, so that they display properly with all the enhancements.
I like NoScript exactly for the rabbit hole it opens! Now I’m very aware of what scripts are running on which pages! Actively blocking blatant ad scripts & data scraping scripts makes me feel good.
I’ve been able to sidestep the entire rat race between ublock and Twitch trying to force ads thanks to NoScript. I block amazon-adsystem.com through NoScript, and I haven’t seen a single ad on Twitch in over a decade.
I’m an avid YouTube watcher on Firefox. What does HDR and RTX Video Super Resolution do?
HDR is High Dynamic Range. Makes your monitor more colorful and realistic, closer to what you see in real life. Bright scenes are brighter, colors are more vibrant and accurate (for example, you can actually see teal properly with an HDR monitor, which normal monitors can’t display accurately). Requires a compatible monitor. You would know if you had one cause most people don’t spend extra money on a display unless they know/care about this feature.
RTX Video Super Resolution uses AI to sharpen and upscale lower resolution video. It’s useful for watching 1080p videos on a 4K monitor. Or for watching 720p videos at 1080-quality because your internet sucks and can’t handle 1080p. Requires an Nvidia RTX graphics card (again, you would know if you had one cause they’re expensive and meant for PC gamers).
Basically I’m complaining about features that only enthusiasts care about, but Chrome supports them so why not Firefox too?
When Google chrome was released in 2008, I read about it in a tech magazine and it described how much it’s going to be spying on you. I was immediately put off by it, and decided not to install it. At the time I wondered why would anyone ever install this junk. Oh boy, was I in for a surprise! Pretty much everyone installed it, and within the next 10 years chrome had become the most popular browser.
Obviously, I never switched from FF.
Imagine if everyone started using a browser made by an advertising company, such that they pretty much had complete control of the way we use and view the web.
Make sure to install plugins like ublock origin. Firefox still supports this and a few other plugins on mobile, like Bitwarden etc.
