this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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The DRM will be so interwoven into the core engine that they won't be able to remove it. chromium is a sinking ship
Time to switch to Firefox as the base.
This is the way.
Amen. I'm just waiting for them to screw everything up and I'll follow along.
t. Currently using Brave
Just use Firefox. I already like it better than brave personally.
It really isn't though. I also started using Firefox recently and I miss tab groups on mobile as well as on my PC. Yes, there is the simple tab groups add-on, but it just doesn't compare.
Brave is also easier to set up ad-blocking, because it comes with ad-block enabled and script-blocking two clicks away.
Don't get me wrong, I will continue to use FF, but Brave has some features, FF does not have (yet).
Tab groups is the biggest thing I'm missing after I made the switch the other week. I'm used to having loads of tabs open, so not being able to easily minimize the ones I'm currently using is annoying to say the least.
One plus is containers. Only opening Meta sites in their own container, same with Google/Youtube is pretty neat.
time to return using bookmarks, at least those can be categorized much better
Oh I hate bookmarks for that purpose, I already have too many as is. Found a way to make the tabs even smaller though, so not having a scroll bar for them will be very nice!
Tab groups and container tabs are the two things I want. Tab groups I'm missing a lot. The extension is not available on mobile.
Remembered one more thing; in Firefox I can only have 31 tabs open before the scroll bar appears. In Chrome it's closer to 90-100! That's kinda huge imo.
If you go to the about:config page you can edit
browser.tabs.tabMinWidthdown to 50 (default is 76) which lets you fit a bit moreIf you want more than that it's possible by editing the userchrome:
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/zda0ov/can_i_get_below_50_tab_width/
Modifying userchrome is admittedly difficult if you're not a developer.. but not out of reach if you're able to follow a guide.
I did set the tabMinWidth first, but the result was... lackluster... to say the least (I like having ~50-100 tabs per window....). However, I JUST found out about userChrome.css before you wrote, and also found code that worked for it!
For anyone else interested:
Guide on creating the userChrome.css file: https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html
Code that should be added to the file: .tabbrowser-tab { min-width: 1em !important; clip-width: 1em !important; }
I moved from FF to Brave but I'm currently testing Vivaldi, I quite like it.
I found FF on mobile to be flakey.
Some sites don't adhere to standards, it's like old IE all over again. You go to load the site on FF and some check form doesn't work. This happens on 3 sites that I have to use.
I left chrome for FF. Used it almost exclusively for a few years, it's good enough. Recently it got some needed boosts via Microsoft not screwing them.
About 6 months ago I started working with IPFS a lot. Brave baked in support and it's pretty good, so I use brave as my primary and FF as my secondary. I was using some tools to sync bookmarks, but now I just pop into FF and import from brave every now and then.
Brave is better and anti-fingerprinting, if someone is going to sell my data, I think I'd rather give it to brave than google.
Vivaldi is my default browser, but isnt it chromium though?
The more that use Chromiun, the more likely WEI will be rolled out and the death of ad blockers comes quicker.
No need to wait, Firefox is already a strong competitor (in terms of features, not market share). Adblock on Firefox mobile makes mobile sites so much easier to use.
I don't know how people navigate the internet without adblock on mobile. Each website is a nightmare with the majority of the screen being ads.
Yeah, ff mobile may be complete garbage UX/security wise, but its the only usable mobile browser IMO, simply because of ublock support.
What makes Firefox on mobile complete garbage security wise? Genuinely curious.
According to the GrapheneOS docs
Apparently Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker than chromium and it is currently much more vulnerable to exploitation.
Oh that's right. I read the same thing some time ago and had completely forgotten. Thanks for bringing it up.
I guess you could argue that having ublock is a pretty big deal for security though. Regardless I won't consider an alternative unless it offers ublock, even if ux or security is better - happy to sacrifice convenience for privacy and usability.
It might be interwoven, but at the end there are three interfaces:
It should be enough to disable/sabotage nr. 1. If not, you can sabotage nr. 2 so it simply doesn't attest shit. And finally you can suppress adding the verdict to the responses.
If the actual "fingerprinting" or whatever else is in there is still intact doesn't matter if you just don't trigger it.
Of course webservers would simply deny serving brave then. But it's still a good move. The more browsers get "denied", the easier it will be to make a case against websites for some kind of discrimination.
God I hope so, Google's definitely in that "Live long enough to become the villain" camp of the infamous dichotomy (is that the right word) offered from that line from Dark Knight.
Chromium is open source. Brave can just fork it.
"Just" fork it. Right.
It's a massive undertaking to maintain a fork of something that large and continue pulling in patches of later developments.
Not to say that Brave doesn't have the resources to do so - I really don't know their scale - but this notion of "just fork" gets thrown around a lot with these kinds of scenarios. It's an idealistic view and the noble goal of open source software, but in practical and pragmatic terms it doesn't always win, because it takes time and effort and resources that may not just be available.
Did you read the tweet from Brendan Eich linked in the OP? According to him, Brave already is a fork, and he provides a link to a (surprisingly) extensive list of things that are removed / disabled from chromium on their browser.
This is correct - any “Chromium-based” browser is literally a fork unless it’s completely unchanged from upstream (even rebranding and changing the logo and name would require maintaining a fork).
Sure. And the further a fork diverges from upstream the more difficult maintenance becomes. My point is that relying on the open source model to fork projects making hostile changes only works so long as the community is actually able to maintain the fork(s), and so long as those forks actually have a reasonable chance of being adopted. It's equally important, if not even more important, to try to ensure these large projects steer in consumer friendly directions than to react and fork to try to remove anti-consumer features.
Google has enough market and mind share that they can push this and it's a real risk of becoming an anti-consumer standard regardless of any attempts to maintain a fork.
So what do I think we, as a body of users of the Internet, should do? Simple. Stop using Google Chrome and any other Chromium based browsers. Google has the ability to push these changes and make them defacto standards (and later, codified standards) because we collectively give them the power to by using Chromium downstreams.
That may be true, but it's a fork where I doubt any company has the capability to do the engine development needed to be totally independent from Google. There is a reason Apple and Mozilla are the only two alternative engines left. It costs a lot to develop a browser
"Don't like it? Just fork it!" is the software equivalent of "Are you sad? Just be happy!"
What do you mean Brave "can" fork it? It's already a fork.
Yes, and Brave employs software developers that do this sort of thing as a primary task of their job.
I believe someone will make a patch and add a big WEI on/off switch. It's open-source, hey!