Alternative Browsers

Robben · May 2, 2024

Edwin said:
I'm skeptical! I'd be interested to see a screen recording of that happening successfully!

I'm skeptical too LOL It's probably why I lost 'em several times in the past, but not in a good while.

I have yet to build the new PC in my specs and am on a new cheap laptop ATM, but I stand by what I said.

I'm probably already at several hundreds now on this laptop. I don't know if there's an easy way to count tabs and forgot how I know I had 1000+ in the past. If not, I for sure had between 500 and 1000.

So again, I'm happy you don't need a plugin anymore to recall all tabs and that it has become more solid.

In theory it should not be that hard either, especially as the tabs are just showing up but are not actually loading until you click on one.

Edwin · May 2, 2024

A Guy said:
Some guy named Edwin at Eleven Forums scared some people off here

Yeah..., I still have some reservations about it..., whaddaya gonna do!?

I just fool around with it under complete anonymity.

Edwin · May 2, 2024

Robben said:
If not, I for sure had between 500 and 1000.

Please explain how you go about that. Do you load 500 - 1000 tabs then slowly browse through them all!?!?!? You must have a lot of interests!!!
I'm only interested in elevenforums and my mail! I wouldn't know where the hell to start with 1000 tabs open!!!

NormanF · May 2, 2024

Flashorn said:
Download Netscape Navigator - free - latest version

AOL ends support for Netscape

netscape-browser.en.softonic.com

Was superseded by Firefox. Its very outdated and full of unpatched security vulnerabilities.

NormanF · May 2, 2024

Qtwebkit: The only Webkit based browsers still available for Windows are Falkon and Otter.

Apple halted its Windows Safari around 2011. The installer is still on the Internet but the browser will never be updated.

johnlgalt · May 2, 2024

Edwin said:
I was hoping to hear from some who have tried Arc Browser..., I tried it a few times..., I just can't get into it, maybe it's just what you're used to!
It's similar to Sleipnir 6

I've been doing some reading on Arc, and it has a couple of cool features, like auto file download renaming, and auto tab renaming, that seems like they might be a win. Also, that easy profiles and the Split View - being able to view multiple tabs side by side, I think is a really good feature that all browsers should have (without having to decouple individual tabs from the main browser interface). And Native Profiles *and* a separate Spaces feature, too.

The biggest issue I can see is that there are a lot of reports of it going stupid (particularly on Windows installs). After installation and a use or a couple of uses, you go to run it and it acts like it is not even there. I suspect that it might be a failure in an automatic update procedure, but I'm only just now trying it.

As for Tab Grouping - Chrome does it very well, with the ability to not only group, but save (and hide completely from the tab bar). But, you may have to enable a Chrome flag or two to get the new functionality (I did it manually, so I've had it for a while, IO don't know if it is now on by default or not).

On Firefox, my browser of choice, I use Container Tab Groups - it brings the mobility of tab grouping and takes it to a whole new level, with each group being isolated from the others, allowing for multiple unique logins to the same site, and has one major advantage over Edge's tab grouping, in that it only loads the pages as you actually view them, instead of refreshing every page in every group every time you open the browser.

Which is how I have 172 tabs 'open' (but grouped, and thus not actually refreshed) in Firefox:

Josey Wales · May 2, 2024

I use Firefox in Windows 11 as Default. Opera in MX Linux 23.2 AHS and SlimJet in Arch Linux.

adu78 · May 2, 2024

Firefox for my daily websites.
Brave for Funsites and other Stuff like that.

pseymour · May 5, 2024

@Robben and @Edwin

A Firefox user has kept 7,400+ browser tabs alive for two years

In a surprising turn of events, a Firefox power user managed to keep over 7,400 browser tabs alive for more than two years. The user has plans to keep them open in the foreseeable future.

www.neowin.net

Edwin · May 5, 2024

pseymour said:
@Robben and @Edwin

A Firefox user has kept 7,400+ browser tabs alive for two years

In a surprising turn of events, a Firefox power user managed to keep over 7,400 browser tabs alive for more than two years. The user has plans to keep them open in the foreseeable future.

www.neowin.net

Guud Lurd!!!
I haven't got time for 7 tabs, let alone 7400!!! :what:

Try3 · May 5, 2024

I think power user is a misprint.
It does begin with p though.

Denis

erpster4 · Monday at 12:45 PM

for me:

Firefox ESR
Vivaldi
Brave
Opera
Pale Moon (a little surprised nobody else has mentioned this one)

johnlgalt · Monday at 1:59 PM

antspants said:
Any browser that doesn’t use Chromium. Firefox is heading to become the last man standing.
I heard about the SeaMonkey project, will give it a try one day, maybe.

I'm a big fan of Alphabet (because every company out there is collecting your data, whether you like it or not), and I'm vested heavily into Google's ecosystem, with 4 independent Workspace accounts (aka 4 domains), along with numerous individual accounts.

That being said, Firefox has always been a favorite of mine.

cereberus said:
I actualy preferred original edge before it was "chrominated". It was faster and used less resources, particularly on the old 1GB Windows tablets.

I have to agree - The 'new' (now old) Edge browser was a ton faster, and well suited for use - it gave everything out there a good run for its money for all but perhaps (maybe) the most hardcore testing.

The move to Chromium-based browser didn't make sense then - but with everything they've incorporated now into Edge, it makes total sense - it allowed Microsoft to shift development away from the entire core of the browser, and shift that to just the addons and integrations that they want Edge to have, because the core comes from The Chromium Project - smart on their part.

Edwin said:
Those are Tab Groups, (done properly, I might add), they can be collapsed.

View attachment 90336

Chrome does groups at least as well as other browsers do now, with a few functions enabled in `chrome://flags` for early adopters (like me) - though I think they are now live for everyone.

You can easily add tabs to / remove tabs from groups. Enabling Saving them keeps them persistent even through Chrome restarts (Manually or automatic). And you can hide groups, which places them in a small part of the Browser toolbar area at the top left (and if you have many groups, also provides a nice overflow menu for them).

One of my groups:

Same group collapsed (simply click on the group name):

All of my groups:

How to hide a group to the Toolbar:

Don't let that Pr0nBuk one fool you - my domain registrar is porkbun.com | An oddly satisfying experience. - and that is an anagram of Pr0nBuk (if you replace the "0" with an "o"). So I made a humorous (group) name that I would never forget - and raises quite a few eyebrows when folks see it, creating a natural talking point).

pseymour said:
I've just started messing with Arc. It takes some getting used to, especially if you've been using Firefox since the Blake days.

Took me a minute to get used to the Spaces idea, but I see why it's useful. I also like the Split feature. All-in-all, I think I'll keep going with it, but it'll take a lot to supplant Firefox for me.

johnlgalt said:
I've been doing some reading on Arc, and it has a couple of cool features, like auto file download renaming, and auto tab renaming, that seems like they might be a win. Also, that easy profiles and the Split View - being able to view multiple tabs side by side, I think is a really good feature that all browsers should have (without having to decouple individual tabs from the main browser interface). And Native Profiles *and* a separate Spaces feature, too.

The biggest issue I can see is that there are a lot of reports of it going stupid (particularly on Windows installs). After installation and a use or a couple of uses, you go to run it and it acts like it is not even there. I suspect that it might be a failure in an automatic update procedure, but I'm only just now trying it.

As for Tab Grouping - Chrome does it very well, with the ability to not only group, but save (and hide completely from the tab bar). But, you may have to enable a Chrome flag or two to get the new functionality (I did it manually, so I've had it for a while, IO don't know if it is now on by default or not).

On Firefox, my browser of choice, I use Container Tab Groups - it brings the mobility of tab grouping and takes it to a whole new level, with each group being isolated from the others, allowing for multiple unique logins to the same site, and has one major advantage over Edge's tab grouping, in that it only loads the pages as you actually view them, instead of refreshing every page in every group every time you open the browser.

Which is how I have 172 tabs 'open' (but grouped, and thus not actually refreshed) in Firefox:

View attachment 95024

I've used Arc a lot more in the last week, finally getting a chance to take a closer look at it.

For one thing, it will (most likely) require that a user affirm that it is a paradigm shift in terms of how it deals with the web and presents it to the user. You will literally need to change the way that you think about browsing before Arc will become something that you are comfortable with.

And these are words I'm paraphrasing from a tech journalist - see Arc browser for Windows — better than Chrome? (By Chris Hoffman, formerly of How-To Geek - We Explain Technology

I had access to Arc for Windows for months during its waitlist-only, pre-release period before its official stable launch last week. It’s a compelling web browser, although it requires you transform how you think about your browsing experience.

Whether you want to do that is up to you — but there are serious potential productivity boosts if you do.

Now, on to my review.

OK, so I’ve created a bunch of Spaces with their own dedicated Profiles, and this looks promising - But it still has some bugs to work out.

According to Arc documentation, you can add a Profile to a Space, which to me seems counterintuitive - I would think you add Spaces to a Profile, by the definition of what a profile actually is.

https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/19227964556183-Profiles-Separate-Work-Personal-Browsing

However, it does it all reasonably well.

Navigating Spaces is a bit of a PITA.

https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/19228064149143-Spaces-Distinct-Browsing-Areas

Which happen to be tiny dots at the bottom of the nav panel:

However, there is one other shortcut: To move left, [CTRL] + [ALT] + [<–], and similarly, to move right, [CTRL] + [ALT] + [–>]. And this can be done without having to click in the sidebar, too.

Deleting profiles is a bit tricky - it says to remove the Profile from all your Spaces, but even with a single profile I had for a single Space, deleting the Space had no effect - so it seems you actually have to move a Space to another Profile (or, in their vernacular, Associate a different profile with the current Space associated with the Profile that you want to delete) and then you can delete the Profile.
There is no way to re-organize the layout, as you create new Spaces, they appear sequentially to the right of the last space. Hopefully this will change.

Now, bear in mind that active Spaces, and particularly with Arc’s pre-loading feature enabled, means after a while it will suck up some serious RAM. I had 13 profiles, each a unique Space, and each space had 2-3 tabs open (The vast majority only had 2, one the Google.com website, and another the GMail interface, for 10 different Google and Workspace accounts), and it was at 4 GB. Now, having 128 GB of RAM, not a big deal for me - but for someone who has a laptop with only 8 (or even 16) GB, and running Windows, this could be a problem. If you tend to keep tabs open a lot, might need to look into the archiving feature, and more importantly, adjust the default 12 hour auto-archive time down to something more aggressive).

Also, a really interesting bug I’ve run into is that sometimes when taking tabs and making them favorites at the top (aka pinning them) Arc would inadvertently take me to my first custom Space. Not cool, but it happened to me 6 different times when setting up other Spaces. Fortunately, though, it didn’t also bring the tab over to the other Space, so that helped.

I think the next Space I’m going to make is one for here and the various URLs I also keep open with here (9to5, AA, DL, Ars and Neowin), and start using that Space instead of my normal Firefox + CTG addon. I’m going to push the limit of Arc since I do have such a lot of RAM, but I suspect that some of my stuff will remain in Firefox (like all my banking stuff) for now.

As Chris mentioned - this requires a retraining of your mind on how things work.

Fortunately for me, I’m already pretty used to a similar setup thanks to Fx + CTG - it has almost all the same features as Arc does, though packaged and presented to Fx users in a very different way. I’d love to see Arc incorporate one or two features from CTG - like this listing of all the different containers I have in Firefox:

Including that New Temporary Container (Space in Arc vernacular) at the bottom - I don’t want to have to name it every single time if I am going to throw it away - just make it.

Oh, and Arc is good about not opening all the tabs and verifying them after you close it and open it again, much like Firefox - but it has a ways to go in terms of efficiency.

Pretty close in use right now - but I only have one active tab in Firefox, and one in Arc. Total, I think around 30 tabs across all the Spaces in Arc, and 138 tabs across all the Containers in Fx:

But going to another space and just opening the 'Pinned" GMail tab, and Arc shoots up dramatically:

Regardless of this, though, I am still gonna recommend this for everyone to try - it’s a game changer, especially since it can help you eliminate having to run multiple browsers / Multiple (separately loaded) Profiles. And their system of Routes is a great feature, one I’ve also had and been using for a while with CTG - for example, in my screenshot above, I have specific sites always opening in specific containers - so if I happen to run across a site that wants to open Gentoo.org, for example, I get a nice little popup asking me if I want to open it in the current container or in the Gentoo container.

If you do try it - give it at least a few weeks - you really need to actively use it for a while before you get to see how well this works. It was the same for me with CTG in Fx - As I learned more of its features and started using it more, I realized that I could never again use a regular Fx browser without it installed. I suspect I’ll have some of the same sentiments with Arc soon enough.