this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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I don't know why anyone ever installed Brave
I think it's more, "may contain ads, if you opt-in to earning BAT."
Make it
So the browser itself is like an ad
The ads were the propagandas we met along the way!
Brave still does include ads enabled by default. You need to disable sponsored images in the New Tab page.
Vanilla Firefox is not clean either. It
Though, these are trivial to disable and even come pre-done on the linux distro I'm using to writ this comment.
Honestly, I'm fine with Google being the default search engine (since they pay a lot for the priviledge and it's trivial to remove). What I acrually have a problem with is Firefox using Google Firebase for analytics and Google whatever for "safe search" queries, etc. These are a lot more hidden, which I find borderline malicious. With the search engine you at least get the notification of "fuck I'm on Google" whenever you search for something, so it doesn't do all that much harm since it's very opaque, unlike having to refer people to ffprofiles to purge google completely.
On that note - if you want to get rid of Google from Firefox as much as possible visit ffprofiles. It has it all nicely explained. You just tick some boxes and apply the profile as per the ~5-step instructions. You'll be done in less than 20 minutes.
Haven't found anything on Android to replace it with, and on Desktop swapped to it after Chrome Manifest V3.
I work as a web dev, and after the install I just disabled the wallet etc, and am left with a browser with native quick dark mode toggle, built in support for ublock lists, and otherwise familiar Chrome experience, with full extension support and foldable device support.
Firefox has certain UI/UX choices I dislike, and they are behind in implementing lots of features (that are rarely an issue to non devs).
Cromite. Every time you use Brave you help promote their right-wing CEO known for donating money to ban gay marriage.
Could you explain how that logic works? I don't support their CEOs points of views by simply browsing the web with the app.
I can understand how mentioning this, I would, but I was compelled to reply to your question.
Edit: Naos question*
Edit 2: I don't see Cromite in the app store, and have near zero will for tinkering/manual updating after a days work in tech.
CEOs don't just make money on ads, they also make money on users that use their apps. Every download or ping then Brendan Eich can go to investors & say that he now has more potential to make them money, so they give him investments in return, which then he can pocket a few million & when/if Trump tries to get legislation passed to ban gay marriage, then Eich is going to likely be helping fund getting that passed again.
https://github.com/uazo/cromite
I find this weird, as I've seen trans and lqbtq ads in brave befofe disabling ads. I checked Eich out now, is the whole controversy really just due a 1000$ donation to a christian group (which had anti gay agendas among other things)?
I'm honestly just a bit baffled, might be I'm just very out of the loop.
The money was for the campaign for Prop 8 itself, not some organization that he had no clue what it was going for. Plus, despite claiming he regrets it, he then has continued to defend his antigay position on social media.
CEO's get money from people using their products, and Google's CEO spends a lot of that money lobbying in order to push the government further right. It's not a tough thing to follow. "Support" isn't about whether or not you agree with them, it's about whether or not you help fund their actions when you have other options that wouldn't.
CEOs* get money
Doing the Lords work.
Just a small rec: Obtainium has been great for managing git sources (how I get my Cromite), I don't think I really needed any dev experience at all.
A small pain is that some repo owners only publish source code, but you know, that's just how it goes
I feel you. I use Firefox on Android (technically Mull), and it's generally pretty good. It does seem like some sites don't work properly on mobile Firefox that work fine on desktop, but I haven't looked into why (and I'm guessing it's those missing features you're talking about).
Im guessing the website hasn't been optimized for mobile.
You're blaming your car for the roadwork.
I'm blaming a browser that hasn't implemented as many standards as it's competitors, and choosing therefore to use a free car that runs well on said roads.
Which standards exactly?
And do the websites in question follow those too?
Websites would use more things more liberally if support didn't lag behind. Used to be that Safari was the new IE9 in that aspect, but Firefox has gradually been getting behind past few years.
https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+135%2Cedge+131%2Csafari+18.3%2Cfirefox+137&compareCats=all
How many of these "lacking features" are actually standardized? Of course some draft under development by Google will only work in the latest version of Chrome. It might not even work in future versions of Chrome, since it's not standardized.
If you built something that requires such a feature, it's you who is choosing to write code that is incompatible with the standards and only works on a particular browser version. You can't blame others for that.
I'm sorry. I don't think you understand the relationship between a browser and a websites settings.
If a website is not made to be compatible with a certain browser, that is the websites fault. Not the browser.
That link is a wall of checkboxes with no explanation, btw.
(Also, not touching Chrome. Pretty sorry for you that you're defending it so much.)
Like i said earliier, im a web dev, and that's a list of web standards, and a comparison which browser has implemented which spec.
You literally said you don't understand them, so maybe brush up on the subject you are discussing instead of telling others how things are?
I'm not defending anything, just providing info and saying why I use what I use.
If a browser is missing official standards features, then the browser is objectively lagging behind. Yes, the web devs are at fault for using things that lack wider support, but that comes down to many factors such as having the time and money to implement things in a more complex manner to support more browsers. That's not always feasible or possible if a certain core feature lets us save hours or days.
The web dev guy blames the browser. Classic.
When the browser can’t perform its end of the deal? Certainly. I don’t blame Netflix for no longer supporting IE5, either.
Stick with chromium, dude. Great choice. Crypto Ads for... the win?
DivestOS is discontinued, and together with it Mull. It won't receive further updates including security updates. Based on F-Droid there is a known vulnerability. It is recommended to cease usage of Mull ASAP.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2025-01/
Dang, good to know, thanks. I mostly used it because it was available on F-Droid.
You should have received a warning about Mull in fdroid. It recommends to uninstall asap.
Yeah, I probably did. I just took care of it, not sure why I totally spaced it.
A current forked up replacement is ironfox.
Vivaldi is working nice as my Chrome stand-in.
No extension support sadly, I still have it as my secondary on desktop.
Are Firefox's UX choices bad, or do you just want it to be another copy of Chrome and refuse to learn something new?
The fact that Firefox on Android actually supports extensions is more than enough reason for me to choose it over a chromium version.
In a perfect world the UI would be customizable to the extent that I feel at home and don't need to unlearn and relearn patterns ingrained in my brain. For me those patterns are very relevant as I work in the field and every time the tools force me to spend more time working around them instead of with them, lead to loss of efficiency.
Extension support exists in some Chrome based browsers, too. Kiwi Browser also comes to mind.
Remote debugging is also important to me, and even though you can install Chrome dev tools in Firefox, it doesn't work with remote debugging.
It "working for you and not against you" in this case is mostly down to just getting used to it. It's the same issue people have switching to Linux. Linux is the better and easier option, but if you expect it to work exactly like Windows then you'll have a bad time. If you attempt to learn how it works then it's great.
Firefox is fairly customizable, but most of that's hidden and you need to do some searching online and digging. You can also use something like Floorp.
I dabble in web development.
I use ungoogled chromium for that. LibreWolf for most other things.
If a website works in Chrome, it might not work in Firefox. If a website works in Firefox, it'll work in Chrome.
Develop on Firefox.
That's daft.
Develop wherever you like the dev tools, test everywhere.
Personally I really want to use one browser across all my systems so I can get tab and bookmark syncing. But Firefox is just so bad on both Android and iPad OS.
On my phone, I try and do the "framed" daily game. You start typing your guess and it pops up autocomplete suggestions. Except if I'm on Android on my phone, where I start typing and nothing happens. Even the letter I typed doesn't appear in the text box. The browser just completely freezes. On every other browser I've tried, including Firefox on desktop, it works perfectly. It also seems to have worse touch targets than other browsers. If I go to a poorly-mobile-optimised site in other browsers on Android, such as Lemmy's web UI, somehow other browsers are just really good at knowing what I was trying to click on. I can quite easily tap a small button or link that's near other buttons or links, and I manage to get the right one. In Firefox that doesn't happen. Much more often if I try that, the wrong link gets clicked, and I have to go back and pinch to zoom before carefully clicking what I wanted.
The iPad OS experience is not as fundamentally broken as that, but is instead just…clumsy. On some sites I'll scroll and elements of the page will move about or images will resize, in ways they don't on other browsers. More than once it has caused me to click something I didn't intend because it moved into the place that what I wanted was previously.
I really want to like Firefox. On desktop it's a particularly good experience, being able to install real extensions without Chrome's restrictions, while not shoving AI slop down your throat like Edge does these days. But it's just so very hard to fully commit when the experience on my phone is so poor.
Just tried framed out of curiosity, it works fine on my Pixel 9.