The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

greenjeans · 2017-11-02 22:53:19

Palemoon is still winning, barely. But it can't do mhtml or view pdfs like Chromium can. FF is pretty meh, slowest browser by far on my machine.

Midori is nice and light, I like it a lot, but I can't get video to work at all. If you don't need youtube it's nice and fast. Does require some symbolic icons that you might not have or you'll get the red x thing. Devuan dropped it from stable repo for some reason.

Next up, testing the Seamonkey suite.

nixer · 2017-11-03 00:26:35

Have you given Waterfox a trial run? I don't know about mhtml but the pdf viewing was flawless as well as a couple other things that I have had problems with both in firefox and palemoon.

In case you are interested, here is an unofficial build located on a repository:
https://github.com/hawkeye116477/waterfox-deb

cynwulf · 2017-11-03 08:30:33

Not sure about HTML5 video with regard to Midori.

You may be stuck with Chromium and it's forks, if that's a requirement. It tends to perform better than both firefox and seamonkey on lower end systems regardless.

greenjeans · 2017-11-03 20:48:12

cynwulf wrote:

Not sure about HTML5 video with regard to Midori.
You may be stuck with Chromium and it's forks, if that's a requirement. It tends to perform better than both firefox and seamonkey on lower end systems regardless.

It's weird, Midori is supposed to be able to run HTML5 stuff, webm, h.264 etc. And I have everything onboard it needs, Palemoon is working fine and it needs basically the same libraries, Chromium of course works....kinda stuck, I have seen some people reporting the same thing, but no answers for them have been posted. Sucks, it's very useable, pretty quick on startup, and with depends about half the size of palemoon and a third of the size of Chromium and FF.

@Nixer: Thanks for the heads-up, I will head that way now and give it a spin.

sgage · 2017-11-03 21:55:24

Firefox 57, due this month (beta available now), is different. It's very fast and snappy, and I find myself spending most of my time with it (the beta, for now). Many extensions are broken in the new model, but I have the ones I need - your mileage will obviously vary. Pale Moon is very nice in a lot of ways, and I've been using it for quite a while as much as I can, but still too many sites just don't work, and it's not a simple matter of fiddling with user agent strings. I will not have anything to do with anything associated with Google.

greenjeans · 2017-11-03 22:05:57

sgage wrote:

Firefox 57, due this month (beta available now), is different. It's very fast and snappy, and I find myself spending most of my time with it (the beta, for now). Many extensions are broken in the new model, but I have the ones I need - your mileage will obviously vary. Pale Moon is very nice in a lot of ways, and I've been using it for quite a while as much as I can, but still too many sites just don't work, and it's not a simple matter of fiddling with user agent strings. I will not have anything to do with anything associated with Google.

Duly noted, I will give it a try too.

I'm pretty happy with Palemoon so far in Vuu-do as it's been a decent compromise between size and useability, but I really want to fine-tune things now so i'm re-checking all the options again.

Really wish I could figure out the Midori thing, it's even better size-wise and i'm trying to reduce wherever possible while retaining functions.

The mhtml thing bugs me, I really prefer the format for saving pages for offline use, my time online is limited, so a lot of the time when I have a ton of reading/studying to do I just download content for later. Chromium is way ahead there.

greenjeans · 2017-11-03 23:46:53

*Update*

Problem is in webkit somewhere, I saw a thread on the Slitaz forums where someone had a similar issue, and a user pointed out that their version of webkit had been compiled with some video flag off.

It's only doing this with webkit browsers, that's why everything else works and both Midori and my python browser won't.

Can anyone confirm?

FYI I posted this with the python-browser 'cause I know how happy that makes Cynwulf.

Last edited by greenjeans (2017-11-03 23:47:43)

catprints · 2017-11-04 15:55:03

uzbl browser? uses webkit according to wikipedia. I installed it and was pretty confused but you might find it interesting.

After a little bit more effort...
This is interesting to play with. I can't get youtube videos to play on this or other webkit browser.Palemoon works for videos. Uzbl uses mostly keyboard but is configurable . If there is a fairly simple fix for video on webkit based browser on ascii-let me know. However I am a simple user not a coder so...

Last edited by catprints (2017-11-05 18:45:24)

catprints · 2017-11-17 21:54:18

It was fun to try other browsers but Palemoon works very well for my use case. On Jessie or Ascii.
I believe I'll stick with Palemoon.

greenjeans · 2017-11-17 22:25:20

Testing Firefox Quantum now, Miyo is giving it high marks and I see some other folks singing it's praises online, so thought i'd give it a whirl, just downed the tar.bz and am running it unpacked but not installed for now.

First impression: Looks nicer than previous editions, and is honoring my gtk2 theme right out of the box, so that's a good deal.

fungus · 2017-11-18 01:51:35

AUR repositories show 58 and 59 varieties of ff
I think I am going to store the last 52esr sourcecode for the dreaded future.

I have yet to visit a site that did not work with palemoon and no youtube problems.
But the world's most popular website is blocked before my pc.

fungus · 2017-11-18 04:22:03

[quote]27.6.0 (2017-11-07)
This is a major development update.

Added extra proxy settings in Options, covering DNS lookups through SOCKS v5 and automatic proxy authentication with known credentials.[/quote]

Haahaaa. So someone else is thinking along those lines, I am not alone.

DentArthur · 2017-11-18 20:03:19

I'm planning on checking out qutebrowser real soon and will making more comments on it.
I'd checked inox some time ago and it was really great. I had absolutely no issue with it. The only bothersome feature is that one has to manual update all plugins. But other than that, all is working great!

golinux · 2017-12-06 06:41:45

@chillfan . . . Didn't we start saving some XUL extensions quite a while ago? Do you still have those somewhere? I'm still hoping they will come in handy at some point.

Ron · 2018-05-07 21:12:44

greenjeans wrote:

Palemoon is still winning, barely. But it can't do mhtml or view pdfs like Chromium can.

You could add the extension Moon PDF Viewer for PDF viewing.

Last edited by Ron (2018-05-07 21:13:15)

GNUser · 2018-05-08 03:03:12

I've been using Firefox 59 and am very impressed. It is objectively 2x faster than the Firefox-ESR (version 52) in the ASCII repos. Subjectively it feels even faster due to some changes in the user interface.

The easiest way to get it running in ASCII (or Jessie) is to download its AppImage, put the AppImage file anywhere, make it executable, then make /usr/bin/firefox a link to the AppImage. Wife and I are quite conservative in our computing, but we are both very impressed with what Mozilla has accomplished and it would be painful to go back to pre-Quantum (<57) Firefox or any other browser.

The Firefox 59 AppImage (64-bit only) is available here: https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages/d … 4.AppImage

Last edited by GNUser (2018-05-08 20:40:59)

MiyoLinux · 2018-05-08 03:04:33

I'm a rebel...I'm using the Firefox Beta...

siva · 2018-05-08 12:20:13

Just an FYI, Firefox versions 56+ leak the browser's buildId: you can test it here. This value is one way the NSA is able to identify browsers, including Tor, so as to implement exploits like FOXACID/QUANTUMINSERT. The about:config value general.buildId.override is "supposed" to override it, but doesn't. This kinda sucks because so many legitimate addons are built as WebExtensions now, so falling back to esr/palemooon is really a longer temporary solution.

I'm surprised surf isn't gaining more recognition.

Last edited by siva (2018-05-08 12:21:11)

catprints · 2018-05-08 12:35:54

@siva, I'm enjoying surf2 and suckless-tools for dmenu and tabbed from ASCII repo. I can get quite close to what I had from compiling surf or surf2.
I still use palemoon but not nearly as much.

Last edited by catprints (2018-05-08 15:25:25)

siva · 2018-05-08 13:02:21

It's an excellent browser. I suppose one's biggest gripe might be against WebKit's periodic exploitation.
https://www.blackhat.com/docs/eu-14/mat … Not-WP.pdf
https://github.com/Cryptogenic/Exploit- … rite-up.md

All things considered, though, I prefer it over pretty much every other browser. It's sensible, lightweight, and portable. Why is that so difficult to find in a browser these days?

MiyoLinux · 2018-05-08 21:54:22

Okay...after reading siva's and catprints' remarks about Surf, I decided to give it a try.

I like it. It is light, isn't it!?!?!

Since I'm new to it, I cheated and made a desktop entry for it so that it shows in my menu, and I have it open to Startpage so that when I click on a search result, it opens it in a new window...which I need until I get the hang of everything.

Got Youtube videos working. Now I guess I need to look over the man page to see if there's anything about improving font size/rendering.

Thanks guys. This has been fun.

siva · 2018-05-09 14:39:56

MiyoLinux wrote:

It is light, isn't it!

Quite light. It compiles in less than a minute on my systems. The patches are excellent too
https://surf.suckless.org/patches/

siva · 2018-05-18 12:38:05

I've uploaded a hardened prefs.js (aka "about:config") which has some tweaks that I use. I splice it into a fresh *.default before adding any add-ons. It should work with 56+ (including waterfox). Anyone is free to try or use it; just make sure to back-up your original prefs.js first.

Please note that this configuration is best when coupled with other security and privacy addons (eg noscript), and no addon beats disabling javascript altogether (although this may be unreasonable for all users).

A note about privacy.resistFingerprinting in Quantum -- when this "privacy" feature is enabled, it also leaks default information (check yourself at browserleaks.com/javascript). I disable this feature and use the canvasblocker plugin instead. (Mozilla in general seems to be implementing "privacy" and "security" features at the cost of, ironically, privacy and security; tracking protection is another example, as it offloads requests to Google. This is an unsettling trend, although understandable since, if I recall, Google is a huge donator to Mozilla.)

https://github.com/souperdoupe/crunkbon … gs/firefox

Last edited by siva (2018-05-18 12:59:23)

Panopticon · 2018-05-18 14:33:12

Another reason i like net install. I get to choose my browser, currently palemoon with customised userjs and hosts file.

ivanovnegro · 2018-05-18 18:13:39

Apart from the typical Firefox bloat, Quantum is really great. I now use Firefox again. Let's see for how long?
I took the executable like always because Debian/Devuan has only ESR.
It is fast enough now and uses less RAM than Chrome/ium and I decide how much processes it can use.

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#1 2017-11-02 22:53:19

The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#2 2017-11-03 00:26:35

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#3 2017-11-03 08:30:33

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#4 2017-11-03 20:48:12

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#5 2017-11-03 21:55:24

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#6 2017-11-03 22:05:57

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#7 2017-11-03 23:46:53

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#8 2017-11-04 15:55:03

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#9 2017-11-17 21:54:18

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#10 2017-11-17 22:25:20

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#11 2017-11-18 01:51:35

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#12 2017-11-18 04:22:03

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#13 2017-11-18 20:03:19

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#14 2017-12-06 06:41:45

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#15 2018-05-07 21:12:44

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#16 2018-05-08 03:03:12

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#17 2018-05-08 03:04:33

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#18 2018-05-08 12:20:13

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#19 2018-05-08 12:35:54

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#20 2018-05-08 13:02:21

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#21 2018-05-08 21:54:22

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#22 2018-05-09 14:39:56

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#23 2018-05-18 12:38:05

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#24 2018-05-18 14:33:12

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

#25 2018-05-18 18:13:39

Re: The hunt for a good browser 2017 edition

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