
Ask HN: Kicking off 2017, what’s your favourite browser? - late
Recently there’s been several discussions on different web browsers here on HN and after reading the &quot;AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store&quot; discussion [1] I wanted to ask you, dear HN community, what’s your favourite browser and why? Would be also interesting to hear if you have a default browser but are rooting for a new up-and-coming-but-not-quite-there-yet browser.<p>I, for one, am always on a looking for new browsers to try out. Currently using Firefox (for FB, Linkedin and Gmail), Chrome for Youtube and Safari for everything else [2].<p>In addition to usual suspects such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera I’m listing here a few alternative browsers from previous HN discussions:<p>Blisk, a browser for web developers -  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blisk.io&#x2F;<p>Ōryōki Web Browser - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;oryoki.io&#x2F;<p>A smarter web browser - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;minbrowser.github.io&#x2F;min&#x2F;<p>Brave - a browser from the co-founder of Mozilla Brendan Eich  - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brave.com<p>Vivaldi by the co-founder Opera - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vivaldi.com<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13327228<p>[2] I like to box different services in separate browsers for privacy and also running VPN and Cookie 5 (slightly paranoid like that).
======
berberous
Firefox, solely for TreeStyleTabs. I really doubt I'll ever switch so long as
it's the only browser that has it. The built in PDF viewer is also very nice.

Ill occasionally use Chrome for its better support of Flash websites without
having Flash installed.

~~~
lucb1e
Firefox for tabs on the left side (see the Test Pilot project).

Firefox for being fully open source with Mozilla as a non-profit behind it.

Firefox for having the awesomebar.

Chrome has some advantages: isolated tabs (one crashes or hangs and the rest
can continue) and it feels quicker (not sure why, iirc they're similar in
benchmarks). Firefox is also working towards isolated tabs, so that leaves
speed, and Firefox is fast enough that I'm not annoyed by it. It might also be
that Chrome feels quicker because I don't open fifty tabs in it (since I don't
use it regularly) nor have a big history file or cookie jar.

------
Bahamut
Still Chrome - all the browsers have warts. As someone who uses a lot of
Google services, the login ability in Chrome is valuable, and it stores my
bookmarks too. The devtools are also king of the crop by far.

Firefox's devtools irritates me, and they have made some piss poor decisions,
such as the switchover to geckodriver without it being stable for WebDriver
support.

Safari is still lol, and has some awful UX, even on iOS. The browser is also
home to some of the worst bugs I encounter on frontend these days. To its
credit it does better on mobile for battery life & perf, but that's literally
its only saving graces.

Edge is better than IE11, but still has its share of wtf bugs.

~~~
imglorp
What do you think about Chrome's privacy?

It seems in Goog's interest to mine browsers for as much as it can get out of
the user: do we have any reason to think it's not happening?

~~~
Fnoord
Google's business model is profiling to learn more about the user, to (in the
end) earn money via advertising. Google's OK with ad blocking (tho I thought
in the past they weren't). Recently though, they've been blocking Ad Nauseam
which fights back against advertising.

The Ad Nauseam authors respond to "if Google has lost your trust, as it has
ours" in their FAQ with suggestions [1]. It boils down to: swap back to
Firefox, try Opera, or try one of the Chrome-based browsers not by Google.
Well, Opera is dead to me (Vivaldi might be alive, but I don't like it when a
company calls a proxy a VPN.)

Chrome's going beyond some standards as well. Firefox is introducing
sandboxing and a Rust-based rendering engine to replace Gecko. For me, this
means it is time to slowly move back to Firefox as main browser. At least I
know with Mozilla extensions related to advertising won't be suddenly removed.
Finally, I think it is important I give something back to Firefox. Either
development or a donation. Perhaps just a donation to an organisation related
to Mozilla, like EFF.

[1] [https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-
on...](https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-on-Chrome-
Without-Google's-Permission#using-adnauseam-on-other-browsers)

------
mafuyu
I used to use Firefox for Tree Style Tabs and Pentadactyl, but I recently
switched over to Qutebrowser[0] and I'm loving it. It has Pentadactyl-inspired
keybinds, vertical tabs (no tree-style just yet, though), and it's _way_
snappier than FF. It's refreshing to use after all the bloat that Firefox has
acquired and the slow-to-nonexistent development of Pentadactyl. (Not to
mention the existential crisis of the FF WebExtensions switch.)

There are some sore points revolving around the use of QtWebKit engine, but
they're mostly workable. I set the user-agent to either FF or Chrome to get
some sites to not redirect me to their compatibility site, and YouTube support
isn't great (no fullscreen). I just set up a keybind to send the current url
to youtube-dl/MPC-HC and it works fine.

[0] [https://qutebrowser.org/index.html](https://qutebrowser.org/index.html)

~~~
lucb1e
I tried Qute in the early, early days, then happened to sit in on a CCC
lightning talk (completely coincidental) a few days later where the creator
spoke about it. I really liked the concept but it wasn't quite there yet, and
I didn't have the means (time, skill) to help.

Checking, it still doesn't seem to be in the Debian Stretch repositories
(which is a major indicator of maturity and support to me). Is the project
active or is it still a hobby project from one core developer?

There are recent releases but it's hard to tell how significant releases are
when almost every change log line is something like "New :debug-log-filter
command".

~~~
mafuyu
It's still mainly the core developer, with PRs and issues coming in from other
contributors. Development seems to be pretty active and responsive, though. I
think it's in a very usable form at this point.

------
callahad
Servo! ([https://servo.org/](https://servo.org/)) You get to watch as a
browser incrementally adds support for the web from scratch, something that
hadn't previously happened this century.

I'm also rather bullish on Firefox, hence my staying at Mozilla after
Persona's cancellation.

~~~
agnivade
How is it now ? I had tried it couple of months back and it failed to render a
lot of sites properly.

------
freehunter
I like Firefox, but on my Mac I use Safari because every other browser sucks
down battery at ridiculous levels in comparison. I don't need anything fancy,
and I don't use any extensions (I do my ad blocking at my DNS server). So
Safari is generally good enough.

The only thing I dislike about it is, when the developer tools are open,
everything on the screen flashes red when you click or mouse over it. That's
my only complaint.

~~~
koevet
Hi! Can you elaborate on the ad-blocking at DNS server thing? Thanks!

~~~
Fnoord
Pi-Hole [1], for example.

Using a proxy in your system settings together with e.g. Privoxy (which runs
locally or remotely on e.g. a RPi) also works (but that is proxy-based
filtering).

Both DNS-based and proxy-based filtering can be circumvented. I just use
uBlock everywhere, and have been playing around with AdNauseam. These work
well enough.

The only time those fail miserably is when a browser is being embedded in an
application, like on Android and iOS apps. I tend to buy the premium version
anyway if I really like an app ( _no_ subscriptions though!).

There are 2 ways to circumvent those apps with ads. 1) use web browser
(w/uBlock) instead or 2) use a DNS-based filtering (such as a Pi-Hole).
However the latter option requires network access to the DNS server of the Pi-
Hole which isn't there when you're roaming (e.g. on 3G/4G or a foreign Wi-Fi
network). A workaround to that is using a VPN to your RPi. For me, that is too
much work (had a similar setup in past), and the upload speed on my home
network isn't to write home about (YMMV). Btw, not sure if all of this can be
worked with DNSCrypt since when you're roaming there's the vulnerability of
DNS hijacking.

[1] [https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net)

~~~
freehunter
Yep, I run Pi-Hole. I ran uBlock before, but a lot of sites would stop working
when they detected it, and it didn't work on devices that didn't have browser
extensions. I'm pretty happy with this setup.

------
djsumdog
I still use and love Firefox. With the recent multi-processor additions, it's
also considerably faster now. I've found the extensions more versatile as
well.

I occasionally use Chrome just for Google Maps, since they're considerably
faster in Google's own web browser. Although really, I should try to use Open
Street Maps more.

Edit: oh and as far as historical browsers, I really liked Galeon back in the
day.

------
saycheese
Tor Browser:

[https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en)

------
adtac
I'm probably in the minority (I know Chrome is the most popular browser; I
mean a minority among HN users), but I really like Google Chrome. When you
have a powerful desktop with lots of RAM, it's quite good. Plus, I like the
Google integration a lot.

~~~
djsumdog
I think the big issues with Chrome is just the Google factor. That's really
the only reason it was able to grow the market it did in that time space.

When Chrome was released, they took parts of WebKit, parts of Gecko and
released a closed browser. -_- It has been opened up since and there are fully
OSS versions like Chromium, but since Google had been a big funder of Firefox
for so long, a lot of FF people saw this as sort of a betrayal.

Personally, Chrome doesn't have a lot of the tools I need. When it came out,
you couldn't make a plugin that created a sidebar without doing a lot of hacky
stuff (is this still true?). Chrome also had limits on their API so you
couldn't create as efficient adblockers (not sure if this is true anymore
either).

Despite issues people have had with the Firefox UI and the Mozilla foundation
itself, I still think Firefox is the better choice. I've been using the new
multi-process feature of FF and it's considerably faster now as well.

------
Yetanfou
Firefox and Seamonkey, sometimes the one, sometimes the other. In other words,
the Gecko rendering engine due to the (IMnsHO) better font rendering (on
Linux) compared to Webkit/Blink (and other, although it is getting harder and
harder to find any other significant rendering engines out there...). A large
part of the value of FF and SM comes from the add-ons that have been developed
over the years as well as the flexible user interface which can be made to
look and act like I want. I use Chromium when I need it, mostly for testing
and Webkit/Blink-only sites.

One essential component of any browser I use is the ad blocker. No blocker
means no browser for me.

------
corv
Firefox because Mozilla cares about the web and its users like no other
organization.

------
ergot
I use them all, because I have a 1TB Samsung SSD with the Xen hypervisor
running on it, which means I can dedicate whole operating systems to specific
browsers. Each browser has its own 'unique selling point' and I use each
browser according to my needs.

-Firefox for privacy

-Tor Browser Bundle for enhanced privacy

-Brave for micropayments

-Vivaldi for customization/tweaks and reading the news

-Chrome because it's ultra fast

-Microsoft Edge just because I can

------
koevet
Firefox (with a bunch of privacy plugins), mainly because of privacy concerns
about Chrome.

------
matthewmacleod
I'm using, and plan to continue using, Firefox for web development and Safari
for general browsing.

I sometimes fire up Chrome so I can use its perf tools in some places they are
better than Firefox, but the browser generally irritates me. Safari's
performance is so much better than the others that I'm comfortable using it
day to say, even though I do have to stick to Chrome for WebRTC until that
makes it I to Safari.

I'm a bit worried about Google's domination of the web (especially and not
entirely related the rapidly escalating danger of AMP) and anything I can do
to ensure the web remains an open and diverse platform is worth it.

------
afita
Mozilla Firefox, the only browser that doesn't crash the computer with my 200
active tabs.

------
FreeFull
The browser I use and will be sticking with is Firefox, but as far as
nostalgia and coolness factor goes, I really like Arachne
[http://www.glennmcc.org/](http://www.glennmcc.org/)

Unfortunately, since Arachne doesn't support any of the newer web standards,
browsing the web with it has been getting increasingly broken. Another
alternative that also runs under DOS is Dillo, which FreeDOS has a package
for.

------
pythonick
Chrome. A web browser built for speed, simplicity, and security. According to
w3schools' browser trend analysis its user base is only rising, even as
Microsoft Edge's install numbers are presumably growing.
[http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp)

------
yellowapple
I really want Netsurf to succeed, and it thus remains my favorite out of
principle. Hopefully it'll get better at rendering real-world web pages as it
incorporates the ability to run Javascript (via Duktape), but even now it's
pretty decent at handling non-JS websites.

Unfortunately, I find myself going back to Firefox time and time again. It's
definitely my second-favorite, and probably my first-favorite in practice. The
ability to stick all my browser tabs on the side of the browser window instead
of the top (even if it requires an extension to do so) is a killer feature
that absolutely none of the mainstream browsers (and very few of the non-
mainstream ones) seem to offer in any way, shape, or form.

I used to really like Conkeror, and I still love the idea of a minimalist
browser with Emacs keybindings, but it doesn't seem to be all that active
anymore.

------
StavrosK
Right now, Vivaldi. I'm very excited about it. I'm using Firefox the most,
though.

------
yoodenvranx
I am looking for a browser which offers separate windows for separate
"projects". I'd like to have one window for "general browsing", one window for
"research for fitness related stuff", one window for all my open tabs for "web
development research" and a few other things.

Ideally it should be possible to open such windows via command line so that
"browser -w fitness" opens the window with all my fitness-related tabs.

I used to use the Tab Groups in Firefox but there were too slow if you use a
large number of tabs.

~~~
larrykokoszka
yoodenvranx Ghost Browser (disc: I'm the founder) has a Projects feature that
lets you do that. And within each Project you can have multiple isolated
browsing sessions which makes web dev and QA go a lot faster.

------
chairmanK
I prefer vimb [1] as my $BROWSER. I recommend it to people who like minimal,
keyboard-driven, text-configured browsers. vimb has excellent documentation
and a responsive maintainer.

I often switch to Chrome with vimium [2] for tasks when

vimb does not correctly render a site

I need developer tools

logins or other sensitive information are involved

[1] [https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/)

[2] [http://vimium.github.io](http://vimium.github.io)

------
Steeeve
> The new Brave browser automatically blocks ads and trackers

Well I suppose I'll have to check that one out. EDIT: Installed it, went to
facebook, saw ads. Tried a google search, saw ads. Went to reddit, saw ads.
Not sure what it's actually blocking.

Blisk looks interesting as well. (EDIT: Chromium re-wrap with device previews,
bug reporting, and screen recording)

I tried and liked Vivaldi, but it's just repackaged chromium with a few extra
features isn't it?

~~~
BrendanEich
We don't block first party ads by default. We may if they become as hazardous
and just plain bad as third party. We may add options for first party
blocking. Most ad blockers do not block tracking-free 1st party ads, last I
checked.

------
hellofunk
There is really only one good browser, and that's Lynx.

------
angelomichel_nl
I still think Chrome looks and feels smoother than any other browser. I don't
know how that holds up for Windows, my experience is mostly OS X.

------
Kiro
Chrome because I actually like being integrated into Google services. The more
information I can supply, the better all the other stuff becomes.

------
ianamartin
Work gives macs and iphones. I use macs and iphones. I have some PCs and some
linux boxes, but those are for gaming stuff and personal dev stuff.

Syncing across all devices is goddam amazing. I can pull tabs from my work
machine to my work phone or my personal phone, or my ipad or whatever.

Safari is really the best total experience.

Other people will have different opinions, of course.

------
wila
Pale Moon, because it does not break all the plugins that have been developed
over time and is not trying to copy chrome.

------
smcl
I'm finding Chrome and Firefox to be annoying, so I've been using surf[0]
quite a lot recently (however I'm writing this from my work computer on
Chrome)

[0] = [http://surf.suckless.org/](http://surf.suckless.org/)

------
NikolaeVarius
Firefox for the sole reason that I think that the addons on it are far
superior than Chrome addons.

------
jachin
Brave. I don't use it for everything but I've been using it more and more
oftem

------
nunez
I like Safari on Macs and iOS and Chrome on everything else. I would like to
use Edge on my Surface for lower power drain, but it's still a bit too buggy
and doesn't offer me anything compelling over Chrome.

------
derpenxyne
Chrome - still speedy, still simple (with lots of advanced features) and still
secure. The channel release system, dev tools and syncing all my
files/settings between devices is a god send.

------
mistaken
[https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser](https://github.com/The-
Compiler/qutebrowser)

------
Synaesthesia
Safari, it's just got the best performance on my Mac and syncs with iDevices,
on Windows I use Chrome but have Firefox and Tor for other purposes.

------
gkya
I used Xombrero for long time and I love it, but it crashes often so I'm using
Firefox nowadays. I sort-a kind-a like Firefox.

------
Mad_Mac
Chrome mostly, but Firefox at work. I would like to change to Vivaldi, but I
miss the sync from Chrome too much.

------
jenhsun
Google chrome. Sad but true.

------
test-accout-0
Firefox, because I can open a website in a sidebar. I read news that way.

------
chvid
Safari

------
zhensun
I use Firefox on PC and Safari on Mac, for everything.

------
kevindeasis
chrome, their developer tools is unmatched

brave, trying it out cause i heard them in a podcast somewhere

------
sidcool
Chrome.

------
alphabettsy
Safari, Chrome and Brave

