Thanks for the info. I couldn’t believe they sold Vivaldi to a Chinese outfit, but given the state of the World economy you never know If all Vivaldi use is the rendering engine - Blink - then they can’t be using any of the Google tracking stuff which is good to know.
Like Suavito, for some reason the latest versions of Firefox make Little Snitch work overtime. I suspect much of it is connections to ad servers.
Since I installed u-Block Origin, the number of connection attempts has dropped significantly. I think you can get u-Block for Vivaldi/Chrome/Edge etc as well, so I might give Vivaldi another look.
I have never liked Firefox, though I haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is that grates on me. I don’t like Safari either, though I use it as my secondary browser, particularly for accessing government and bank websites. My all time favourite browser was the late lamented (by me, at least!) Omniweb.
For a long time, I used Vivaldi, but for some reason, several years ago, I found it was giving me problems, so I switched to Opera. Then I had problems with that (maybe it started when it was sold to the Chinese, but I knew nothing about that) and I moved on to Brave, which is my current go-to browser.
I have been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for at least a decade, and on my iPhone and iPad I use the DuckDuckGo browser, though I also have Brave.
I’m now finding with Brave that many sites ask me to allow cookies on each page change, again and again; it’s driving me mad! The only extension I have is 1Password, so it’s the built in Ad-blocker etc. that is causing this. It’s a dilemma.
I also use iCab for some purposes, and like it. The only thing against it is lack of integration with 1Password. So I’ll give Vivaldi another try, and I’ve heard good things about Arc too.
Does it have custom filter list setup? uBlock has selections for blocking the cookie notices themselves, so I never even see these things to begin with in most cases. You only need to switch it off temporarily for sites where you really do want some cookies, so you can log in or whatever. Look for EasyList - Cookie Notices, or if it’s not there and you can add your own lists, here is the link to it.
Nice to hear iCab is still around. I used that browser way back in the Mac OS 8 and 9 days.
I have banned Chrome and don’t particularly like Firefox. My two main browsers on the Mac are Safari and Opera One. I use the latter more and more because it’s modern, fast and has lots of useful features - and it’s a European project.
I’m currently using Zen Browser, which is an offshoot of Firefox. If you’re familiar with Arc Browser and how that looks but don’t want to use a Chrome based app, Zen is pretty much a direct copy!
Firefox. I have it locked down tight with adblockers and similar add-ons plus custom privacy settings. Safari exist in my mind only to bootstrap Firefox on a new Mac.
I know I’ve answered this one already, but I feel compelled to answer again for some reason.
I used to use Firefox, but had to quit using it becuase the near constant harrassment to update the app was incredibly annoying to me. Just build an app that works, dammit! Frankly the only reason I used Firefox was because I fell for the ‘ooo you need a good browser’ hype without any actual need on my part (and I had romantic memories of their Thunderbird mail app on Windows).
I don’t use Chrome because I just don’t get on with the overwhelming googleness of it all, and frankly Safari works (and doesn’t feel the need to update itself ever).
For me, browsers should be transparent; as close to an empty window to the internet as possible. I don’t want embedded mail and calendar, nor any other such stuff. I don’t even particuarly need any bookmark storage. Just play nicely with my password manager, please!
I’ve been on Firefox forever. I’ve never trusted Google, and haven’t seen anything to change that view in decades. I try Safari from time to time, but just can’t get on with it for a number of reasons: lack of gestures, lack of native ad-blocking, lack of keyword shortcuts. I could probably solve some of those with tools I now have, but inertia, y’know.
Like @pigfender, it would be nice if Firefox integrated macOS’s password management. But then that might introduce a security/privacy attack vector, so I can live with it.
tl;dr; I’d prefer to use Safari, but it’s not quite there for my need, so I stick with Firefox.
You all must lead much more interesting lives than me to be that concerned about what I suspect are really very marginal changes in security / privacy, especially if it makes other things that you do (or I do, anyway) use regularly (like password mgmt) more clunky.
Then again, I visit a grand total of about 4 websites. This is one of them. Another is Google Maps which pretty much makes any attempt at privacy moot.
I’ve been using Arc for a little while now. There is much to like about it, even though it is Chromium-based. But its integration with 1Password is slightly annoying as it doesn’t populate across different “spaces”.
I’ll have a look at Zen (thank you @auxbuss). I’d actually use iCab as default, but it doesn’t integrate with 1Password (it does use Apple Keychain, but that is to double up password management).
I agree with @pigfender, password management is my primary concern in terms of browser, with cleanness of interface coming next. I too only access a very limited number of websites on a regular basis.
Firefox continues to have two major issues. 1) It significantly lags behind various web standard (some by multiple years now), and… 2) it’s almost entirely funded by Google anyway (the majority of Mozilla’s funds are from the search fees paid my Google).
I’m a web engineer by day. Firefox has just a few % of overall users. This plus the missing capabilities (mostly video and CSS features) means it drops outside the usual “will support” list for most projects I work on, sadly. Firefox just isn’t very good at modern web things.
Commercially, most things are engineered for Chrome (or Chromium-based) browsers and Safari.
Nope. Google may fund development but I use DuckDuckGo and have it set as my default search engine. And a long long time ago removed Google from the list of search engine possibilites. Also I refrain from using Google Maps unlesss I have to and instead use either Apple Maps or OpenStreetMap.org. The only Google thing I deliberately use is Google Scholar.
Not noticed any issues playing videos from on-demand, streaming sites or my university’s lecture archive.
As to CSS I have overriden fonts and font sizes to ameliorate my dyslexia and very few UXers give me and fellow dyslexics anything approaching good design. I want informtion not pretty-pretty.
I’m not sure what their current deal is, but in 2020, Mozilla received $450m in a 3-year deal to be the default search engine in Firefox. I personally avoid most Google stuff where I can, but there’s no escaping that Mozilla is funded by Google, whether you use Google features or not.
Video: Firefox lacks some codecs that all other browsers have, so you may receive lower-quality video that requires more bandwidth/CPU on some sites.
CSS: Firefox lacks several of the newer display units, especially around mobile device support and UI elements. Firefox struggles with hardware acceleration, gradients and so on… Given the vast majority of web consumption is mobile these days (where efficiency & screen space really matters), this is a pretty big problem.
This pains me, because I love Firefox. It was my main development browser for a long time, and I contribute to Mozilla & their developer network (MDN). As a software engineer for web things, I absolutely want to support the most number of users, give them experiences that work for them (or that they can adapt to work for them). Unfortunately, as the majority of people are using Chrome or Safari, that’s where the resource gets spent
If all Vivaldi use is the rendering engine - Blink - then they can’t be using any of the Google tracking stuff which is good to know.
