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A great video about the Manifest v3 and how Google is trying to make you view ads.
Give me some of that closed source browser goodness, yes. Vivaldi and Chrome are the same thing from a privacy perspective precisely because you cannot verify that they’re not.
Although you could take into account what the makers are telling you. You have to trust someone, and at least to my knowledge, Google fails and it’s all over the news, Vivaldi has not. It’s not like I can validate the Firefox source either, I’m just trusting the website I download it from, or more likely my distro packaging. And people do look at call outs browsers make etc.
You don’t have to. Thousand of people who know what they’re doing does.
But why would I trust any of them? I’m pointing out you have to choose who you trust, and from the history with the makers of Vivaldi, I trust them. Same as I don’t trust Google given their history.
Of course, I’m screwed anyway because there’s not reasonable competition in the phone space, and I have to use Microsoft products for work, and… {insert a dozen more things here}. Given all that, I’d like the browser that works better for me.
that works better for me.
sure, I could not care less what browsers others use.
Trusting a company to do right by you (for unknown reasons) vs. trusting thousands of independent researchers who have no incentive to wrong you. Though pick, I guess.
Mostly because the browsing experience IMO is much much worse with Firefox. I tried extensions to get functionality back, it made it worse - slower, buggy, extensions would stop being developed etc. I wish Firefox was better, I really do. But IME it’s frozen functionality like it’s 2010 or so. Like, they have tabs, who hoo. I really find save/restore, multi window control, tab stacks, sessions, workspaces, and easy UI config pretty important in day to day use. That said, I also think ads are a deal breaker, but I really wonder if this won’t bring back some of the ad-blocking proxies you run locally or something.
Or, someone forks chromium to keep Manifest v2 or whatever.
I use both Firefox and Chrome-based browsers and I haven’t come across any major differences in functionality. What are all these things Chrome can do that Firefox can’t?
I just can’t use a browser so… primitive? I wold gladly change to Firefox if it gave me all the customisation options Vivaldi has. Mouse gestures, synchronising my settings across 2 PCs and an android phone, shortcuts to different searchers etc. Plus it would need to be visually customisable so od doesn’t irritate me every couple of minutes.
Mouse gestures, synchronising my settings across 2 PCs and an android phone, shortcuts to different searchers etc. Plus it would need to be visually customisable
It sounds like perhaps you haven’t looked into Firefox for a while, because out of the box it does all of the things you listed, except for gestures. There are multiple popular plugins that provide Firefox gestures easily. I’m not sure what visual customizations you’re referring to, but Firefox also has had support for themes for ages now.
I don’t care for themes, just need night mode. I need the option to throw out any taskbars except fot tabs and address bar. Including any search window. I need a zoom slider at the bottom right corner, and this is a must. It’s also nice to have these things built in instead of looking for extensions. And You are right, o haven’t looked into Firefox for a long time.
My problem is - last time I looked, which was a while ago to be fair - there weren’t good tab management plugins that also supported tab title search, a list of tabs to easily close ones I didn’t need anymore with ctrl+click or shift+click, no session management, problems with cross window tab viewing/searching, no tab stacks, and now workspaces are kind of awesome for me too.
I’m not saying there aren’t extensions for each thing, I’m saying I could NOT get them all to work together, and have a fast performant browser without weird hangs, and the UI was kind of all over the place and hard to remember cause none of the extensions were designed to work together from what I could tell.
What I don’t get is why Vivaldi didn’t code on top of Firefox, but I think it’s because there are sites that work in chromium and don’t in Firefox, and fail silently - and just like in IE6 days, they’re sites like my parents retirement site, they can’t NOT use them.
All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).
However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.
The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).
Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.
All beautifully preached to the choir. Now: how to communicate all this to the unwashed masses who think the web and the internet and Chrome are all the same thing? Serious question.
Good one. I’d say it is too late already. USA big tech is almost everywhere, and countless people are addicted to USA big tech, especially on their phones, and do not ask critical questions anymore.
I don’t see any reason to think Vivaldi is trying to monetize it’s users, it seems to have a lot of privacy features and the like. They strip out the chromium spying.
Who uses chrome anyway even there’s vivaldi
Give me some of that closed source browser goodness, yes. Vivaldi and Chrome are the same thing from a privacy perspective precisely because you cannot verify that they’re not.
Although you could take into account what the makers are telling you. You have to trust someone, and at least to my knowledge, Google fails and it’s all over the news, Vivaldi has not. It’s not like I can validate the Firefox source either, I’m just trusting the website I download it from, or more likely my distro packaging. And people do look at call outs browsers make etc.
Google claims Chrome is private too.
Becauae not many gives a fuck about Vivaldi enough to reverse engineer it
You don’t have to. Thousand of people who know what they’re doing does.
This is a separate security, not privacy, issue resolved by trust chain model of distro packaging.
Of course, I’m screwed anyway because there’s not reasonable competition in the phone space, and I have to use Microsoft products for work, and… {insert a dozen more things here}. Given all that, I’d like the browser that works better for me.
Trusting a company to do right by you (for unknown reasons) vs. trusting thousands of independent researchers who have no incentive to wrong you. Though pick, I guess.
Choose a Firefox-based browser instead for open source.
why are people that allergic to firefox?
vivaldi is chrome with extra steps
Mostly because the browsing experience IMO is much much worse with Firefox. I tried extensions to get functionality back, it made it worse - slower, buggy, extensions would stop being developed etc. I wish Firefox was better, I really do. But IME it’s frozen functionality like it’s 2010 or so. Like, they have tabs, who hoo. I really find save/restore, multi window control, tab stacks, sessions, workspaces, and easy UI config pretty important in day to day use. That said, I also think ads are a deal breaker, but I really wonder if this won’t bring back some of the ad-blocking proxies you run locally or something.
Or, someone forks chromium to keep Manifest v2 or whatever.
Vivaldi doesn’t have to use v3, Brave won’t. If Vivaldi does upgrade to v3, that should tell you something.
I use both Firefox and Chrome-based browsers and I haven’t come across any major differences in functionality. What are all these things Chrome can do that Firefox can’t?
those are all things that don’t exist on most browsers without many extensions
Who uses vivaldi anyway even there’s firefox
I just can’t use a browser so… primitive? I wold gladly change to Firefox if it gave me all the customisation options Vivaldi has. Mouse gestures, synchronising my settings across 2 PCs and an android phone, shortcuts to different searchers etc. Plus it would need to be visually customisable so od doesn’t irritate me every couple of minutes.
It sounds like perhaps you haven’t looked into Firefox for a while, because out of the box it does all of the things you listed, except for gestures. There are multiple popular plugins that provide Firefox gestures easily. I’m not sure what visual customizations you’re referring to, but Firefox also has had support for themes for ages now.
2 finger swipe to the left or right is the gesture to go back and forward, don’t know what other gestures you’d need.
The “cradle” for going forward and backwards plus swipes for closing a tab, refreshing and opening a new tab.
I don’t care for themes, just need night mode. I need the option to throw out any taskbars except fot tabs and address bar. Including any search window. I need a zoom slider at the bottom right corner, and this is a must. It’s also nice to have these things built in instead of looking for extensions. And You are right, o haven’t looked into Firefox for a long time.
My problem is - last time I looked, which was a while ago to be fair - there weren’t good tab management plugins that also supported tab title search, a list of tabs to easily close ones I didn’t need anymore with ctrl+click or shift+click, no session management, problems with cross window tab viewing/searching, no tab stacks, and now workspaces are kind of awesome for me too.
I’m not saying there aren’t extensions for each thing, I’m saying I could NOT get them all to work together, and have a fast performant browser without weird hangs, and the UI was kind of all over the place and hard to remember cause none of the extensions were designed to work together from what I could tell.
What I don’t get is why Vivaldi didn’t code on top of Firefox, but I think it’s because there are sites that work in chromium and don’t in Firefox, and fail silently - and just like in IE6 days, they’re sites like my parents retirement site, they can’t NOT use them.
To paraphrase ’ a Chrome by any other name would smell as sweet’
All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).
However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.
The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).
Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.
All beautifully preached to the choir. Now: how to communicate all this to the unwashed masses who think the web and the internet and Chrome are all the same thing? Serious question.
Good one. I’d say it is too late already. USA big tech is almost everywhere, and countless people are addicted to USA big tech, especially on their phones, and do not ask critical questions anymore.
I don’t see any reason to think Vivaldi is trying to monetize it’s users, it seems to have a lot of privacy features and the like. They strip out the chromium spying.
If they’re honest then Vivaldi really sounds pretty good for privacy:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/
But they’d certainly win a lot more trust if they went open source.
Putting Brave and Vivaldi in the same bucket is just Mozilla shilling.
Browser Wars!!!