I've been trying to find a Chrome replacement since they finally cut the cord on manifest v2.
I know Firefox is the "right" option, and I'm fully in favour of chipping away at Chromium marketshare (even if the EU is determined to solidify it further with demands of Apple to allow non-Safari rendering in iOS) but I've used it in the past, and even if it's fine 99% of the time, there is that occasional website that has issues because web devs only test in Chromium. And it leaves me with an ever-looming sense of "is this broken because the site is actually broken or was it just not tested with anything but Chrome?" and then I'm obsessively opening Chrome every time I have an issue to test it there.
So I figured I'll just use one of the many Chromium-based alternatives that's going to continue supporting manifest V2, and I've generally heard good things about them anyway. Edge is off the table since Microsoft said they'd only support it as long as Google did, and I already swore it off after using it for like the first year after they switched to Chromium and it was okay, but it quickly got destroyed by the typical suspects at Microsoft, turning it into a Microsoft adware shitshow. Not to mention their quality control was clearly not up to snuff cause they frequently pushed terribly broken builds to stable, which I rarely experienced with Chrome in 15-ish years of using it.
I tried Arc a little bit but something about the onboarding process and browser experience feels more like their top priority is being cute and unique rather than just making a good browser.
I've settled on Brave for now. After disabling all their crapware, it's been... okay. But like Edge, it seems to have some quality control issues. I have very weird performance issues, like for a long time typing in the youtube comment box would be incredibly laggy. I think that's mostly fixed now? But I still get regular issues where the entire browser will lock up if I'm playing a video and I pull the tab into a separate window, and I have to kill the window to unfreeze everything. The bugs are annoying on their own but it also gives me concern about the skillset of the people making it. I'm trusting my browser with fairly sensitive data, and who knows how difficult it will be in a few years to continue supporting manifest V2. They got all that work done for them by Google/open source contributors. Wouldn't surprise me if Google maliciously made manifest V2 more and more difficult to support by moving Chromium in a direction that's increasingly incompatible with it.
If you think Firefox is the right choice, and it works 99% of the time, and you're worried about lack of competition... you should probably be using Firefox. That will support its marketshare (by definition).
If you see bugs, you can probably assume they're just regular ol' bugs most of the time. A lot of the web is just plain broken or badly designed.
I'm giving it a shot on my work machine. Device management doesn't give me any options other than Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari anyway. I do like and use Safari for non-work tasks (mainly HN scrolling) but it has some issues that prevent it from being a main browser for me.
So I'll see if I can make FF work but it's mostly cause it's the best option at this point.
Maybe you should try Zen. Like Firefox, it's one of the few browsers that use Gecko, but it also aims to have modern design sensibilities similar to Arc. Or if you want to use non-Chromium WebKit, try Orion.
> Edge is off the table since Microsoft said they'd only support it as long as Google did
could've shortened this to 'Edge is off the table since its Microsoft' :)
I figure if anyone should be able to financially support putting out a decent, well-tested browser it should be the second most valuable company on the planet. But indeed, like nearly everything else Microsoft makes, it's trash.
This calls for a plug for https://webcompat.com/
Report compatibility issues and they'll either try to work with the websites or browser vendors to mitigate the issue.
What about ignoring that 0.1% of the websites that are so badly made they don't work on firefox? Do they really deserve your attention?
Or keep Chrome (or Chromium or even Edge if you have it installed anyway) for the rare use case when Firefox won't work?
Sometimes yes. That 0.1% of sites could be me trying to buy a movie ticket or something. I'm not gonna cancel plans with a friend to see a movie because I need to protest Google that badly.
Did that really happen or is that theorical? I've never been unable to buy a ticket on firefox.
Vivaldi has a built in adblocker, no crapware, and is by the original founder of Opera. Also based on Chromium. My personal fav right now.