Um actually… Opera and Edge weren’t always based on chromium!
Chrome was not always based on chromeium. Chrome was based on Apple WebKit until 2013 when they forked WebKit and made the Blink engine.
Wha- hold up… I’m not sure I understand…
Chrome was based on WebKit?
I’m not aware about the old stuff as much so if someone could fill me in…
WebKit is a rendering engine which is one of the major components of a web browser. Chrome/Chromium was released in 2008 using a modified version of WebKit as its rendering engine. Eventually in 2013 they created a fork of WebKit called Blink, which is the current rendering engine for Chrome/Chromium.
I have an installer for Opera 12.18, the last one to use their Presto engine. Every once in a while I test it out to see how it has aged.
It’s not pretty haha. It barely works.
Pre-Chromium Edge wasn’t even that bad. Sure, the engine had its issues and there was probably a bit of Edge-specific JS on some websites, but I’m sure they would’ve eventually got there.
But seeing that even Microsoft abandoned making their own browser engine, it goes to show how complex it is to make one nowadays and with new web APIs/features coming out every few weeks it feels like, it’s almost impossible to keep up.
But seeing that even Microsoft abandoned making their own browser engine, it goes to show how complex it is to make one nowadays and with new web APIs/features coming out every few weeks it feels like, it’s almost impossible to keep up.
No, Microsoft is just historically bad at making browsers. It was not until Internet Explorer 7 that they finally implemented HTML 4 and CSS 2 without major glaring bugs.
Microsoft was never bad at making browsers, their issue is that they tied browser release to Windows release cycle. IE6 was the best and the most compatible browser on the market in its release date. But it didn’t get a single update during its long life. 5 years old Chrome is completely useless today even if it was a pinnacle back then.
Opera was the shit back in the early days. It could pretend to be any other browser.
Yeah:
Sent from Internet Explorer 9
I’m not sure how long you’ve been able to change the user agent in config pages tbh, I just remember Opera had it as an option in the GUI settings and even the right click menu.
Also there’s now a DuckDuckGo browser!
Everything on iOS uses Safari tho, Apple doesn’t allow other browser engines but at least they don’t nerf the Webkit version for third parties anymore!
That is going to chance soon and Apple will be forced to allow other web engines, as well as other app stores.
This is why I’ve stuck with firefox through thick and thin
Now that KHTML is dead, not very much at all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_browser_engines
Been using FF for about 2 decades now and I have never seen a single good reason to switch.
Ditto. As much as people pretend Firefox is niche, it is the only browser with lineage back to the start of the web.
Truly. I don’t get this new “switch to Firefox!!” hype, are the people writing this very young, or am I missing something? I’ve been using Firefox since beta, I’ve never seen a reason to switch since it’s always been the superior browser, why have people been running anything else in the first place?
Firefox with add-ons. Especially, but not only, Ublock Origin.
IMO any of the forks are inherently weaker than the main and there’s nothing stopping you from making Firefox work exactly like whichever flavor of fork you prefer, but with security updates the day they come out.
I love it in theory… but it just broke so many websites I needed to use. And not always in obvious ways.
Then just put those sites on your trust list?
You can go through all the sites the initial HTTP request calls out to and decide which ones get a pass. This is how I ensure sites like gstatic, googletagmanager, etc. don’t collect data even though the rest of the site works.
If that’s too much, just open the flood gates for that site and trust everything there. At least it isn’t just sending all your data out by DEFAULT.
Add-ons are a pretty huge security risk, though. Someone was just posting an article about how tempting it is to sell out with your extension, and how many offers you actually get.
And I’ve already been burned once, and it’s not pretty. Also nothing you can do against this.
The best solution is actually not Firefox, but Mullvad. No need for extensions, based on Tor Browser and can be bundled with a VPN that’s full of other people using the same browser - so you have exactly the same fingerprint, and they can’t tell you apart. Not by extensions, not by IP.
Based on his history it seems unlikely that gorhill, the creator of uBlock Origin would sell out.
And if something did change, there would be enough news about it to notify you. (Like the extension Avast bought a while ago)
From this band, I get more and more in love with Vivaldi, especially their Workspaces feature.
Yeah, I use Vivaldi at work. I love it.
It’s not on my personal devices, but if work is going to default to Chrome anyway, I may as well be using the best version of it.
I went whole hog. The sync features are great between computer and phone app (phone app is excellent!) and they actively disable all the terrible shit from chrome. It works with bing/chat gpt too which is nice. They have been very vocal against Google proposed changes and I’m confident they will work around them if at all possible. If not, hell yeah, I’m jumping ship, but I give Vivaldi a lot of credit for what they’ve done this far. I’m hanging in there for now.
I tried FF the other day instead of Vivaldi and I was like, no scroll wheel to switch tabs? No quick commands? No workspaces? Ugh I am prepared to keep using a chromium engine rather than give up all the “power user” features. It’s just sooo good.
Been using gestures for so long I constantly catch myself using them in other apps where it doesn’t work and getting frustrated at myself.
