
Celebrate the web by using another browser than Google’s Chrome - AngeloAnolin
https://m.signalvnoise.com/celebrate-the-web-by-using-another-browser-than-googles-chrome-174a45991c42
======
lol768
I've happily used Firefox for over a decade now (since version 2.0). The web's
changed a little since then, but I think Firefox has adapted well and has been
the source of a lot of innovation. I've tried Chrome and other browsers, but
never really thought much of them - but I'm very glad they exist! Variety is a
great thing to have.

It's disheartening to see developers with the attitude that they only care
about users using the same browser as them and it's been frustrating over the
years to see services neglecting non-Chrome browsers (example: Netflix + Linux
up until recently). What happened to cross-browser testing, progressive
enhancement and other best practices?

~~~
amelius
> What happened to cross-browser testing, progressive enhancement and other
> best practices?

It is the responsibility of browser vendors to follow the spec, not of
developers.

Otherwise, developers would have to test in 10+ different browsers every time
they make a change in the code, which would mean madness (!)

~~~
kingnothing
Developers need to be aware of differences in browsers and implement their
projects accordingly. Anything less is simply unprofessional.

~~~
epicide
Developers work on browsers, too. It's a two-way street.

------
Semiapies
This article is ahistorical - it was Firefox that first shook IE's dominance.
Chrome took over the Firefox niche and finally claimed dominance because it
ran so much better, while still meeting web standards.

I develop with Chrome not just because it's the least pain in the ass and has
a good ecosystem of tools, but because it adheres to standards. I can't
remember the last time I've made a page in Chrome and it didn't work in
Firefox or even Edge. It's only weird, non-standard browsers I have to work
around.

~~~
bactrian
Firefox kept the fire burning but Chrome is what stirred Microsoft into
action.

Chrome is creepy privacy invading software designed to help maintain Googles
search monopoly.

Like Search, Chrome's quality is the honey and we are the flies.

~~~
Karunamon
You say "creepy privacy invading", I say hooked up to the only search engine
worth a damn and providing trivially disabled features that actually save me
time and pain.

~~~
newscracker
If you start using DuckDuckGo for your searches, you can use different
commands for different search platforms if you find the DDG results lacking
(which I do many a times, depending on the topic/context). For example, !s
would search Startpage [1] (a search engine that claims not to track but uses
Google search internally), !g would search Google, !w would search Wikipedia,
and so on. It takes maybe a few more seconds, but offers a lot of flexibility.

[1]: [https://www.startpage.com](https://www.startpage.com)

------
K0nserv
The Chrome monoculture among developers is concerning. It's something each and
every developer should consider and actively combat by changing their primary
browser. The open web cannot flourish when built on a monopoly

~~~
AngeloAnolin
One reason I use Chrome as a developer is because of the vast debugging tools
available with it (i.e. React has React Dev Tools, AngularJS has Batarang, NG-
Inspector etc..)

But I generally use all major browsers, IE included when doing actual
application testing.

~~~
K0nserv
The fact that a lof of tooling is only available for Chrome is another side
effect of the monoculture among developers. I too use Chrome for developing
every now and then, but I use Firefox as my main browser for everything else.

~~~
colept
I don't think that's the monoculture of developers.

Chrome was based in Webkit in it's rising years - which put it on par with
Safari and Android. This meant that you could develop comfortably and do less
cross-browser work up front.

Developers got comfortable. Chrome is open source, extendable, and keeps up
with web standards.

~~~
falcolas
> Chrome is open source

No, Chromium is open source. Chrome != Chromium. There's still some secret
sauce being thrown into chrome that you don't have access to.

> extendable

Only with JavaScript. It bugs me a bit to this day that this is deemed to be
sufficient by Firefox as well. We've lost quite a few good extensions with
this change.

> web standards

It helps that Google's team pushes most of those web standards, meaning that
everyone else is typically playing catch up.

------
hdhzy
After years of using Chrome I tried Firefox just to try something different
and to my surprise it's 90% as good as Chrome and even surpasses it in certain
areas:

\- address bar history is better, Chrome wants you to google everything, not
use your history,

\- Firefox for Android has addons, I don't even want to remember life without
uBlock... I still have nightmares of vibrating website scams on Chrome.

Chrome is generally better in:

\- speed and security,

\- interesting Web APIs (foreign-fetch in Service Workers, Barcode recognition
on Android).

~~~
the_common_man
> \- speed and security,

Can you clarify about the security angle? What makes Firefox less secure?

~~~
hdhzy
Currently? Lack of multiprocess tabs [0] and native U2F (available though
third party addon, not on Android). Personally I also like how Google deals
with Symantec issues.

[0]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox)

~~~
the_common_man
Ah ok, I already have electrolysis. U2F i agree

------
supremesaboteur
> You don’t have to be that old to remember the dark days when Internet
> Explorer strangled the web by its utter domination.

It is not the same thing. Chromium ( upon which Chrome is based ) is open
source. If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by
forking. In fact, many browsers like Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Yandex etc are
already based on Chromium

> By balancing the browsers, choosing to use not just what’s convenient but
> what’s lesser used, you can make the business case for monopoly plays a bad
> deal.

Pass. People should use the best software they can get their hands on

> good folks at Firefox deserve your usage just as much

So contrary to popular opinion on HN, Firefox is not as good as Chrome.
However, we must still use it. Consider it an act of charity

I don't think so. Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser
and marketing it well

~~~
reitanqild
>> good folks at Firefox deserve your usage just as much

>So contrary to popular opinion on HN, Firefox is not as good as Chrome.
However, we must still use it. Consider it an act of charity

>I don't think so. Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser
and marketing it well

Firefox don’t need anyone to use it as an act of charity.

But you need to stop the underhanded FUD.

Talking like Chrome is somehow better than all other browsers is just as dumb
as saying that x model of y car brand is best...

Best for what? A lot of people love Chrome, Mac, Mercedes.

Sure they are good but I dont want any of them.

\- I want my tabs to be vertical and automatically nested,

\- my browser to support 100s of tabs and real extensions,

\- my computer to have different window management and different menus than
what is available on Mac OS

\- my car to have a _hand_ braķe.

Going on about how chrome is the best browser is only slightly more mature IMO
than me as a kid going on about how x was the beat car (just because my dad
had one).

In this case it is even worse as people read it everywhere and start thinking
it is true.

~~~
epicide
The car analogy starts to fall apart when you are talking about something that
continues to get updates. Sure, they release new versions of cars usually
every year, but you are buying an entirely new car, not really updating your
old one.

It also starts to fall apart when talking about price. You can talk about
browsers costing time, effort, privacy, etc, but this isn't the same as
talking about thousands of actual dollars.

> real extensions

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe Firefox is going to have those for too
much longer: [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-
dev...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-
firefox-add-ons/)

~~~
reitanqild
As far as I am aware they are still going to have more extension points than
Chrome.

E.g. it seems the vertical tabs extension I use will still work.

------
thebiglebrewski
Uh wait though, isn't this the entire tech business? Get people to centralize
on using a technology then build a monopoly/moat around it? Who's going to
acquire the sexy startups if we abandon our monopolistic ideas and the massive
cash troves that come with them? Is there really another way?

I know, I know, nobody wants to believe this is truly what happens. But let's
be honest, big companies control much of what happens on the web now. And then
they acquire smaller companies that challenge them. And the government doesn't
know anything about tech or not nearly enough to understand that these
monopolies probably need to be broken up.

Can you think of an alternative to the system we're in, or does all technology
lead to centralization like this?

------
ldiracdelta
Why is this a big concern when chrome is mostly open source and you can
download chromium? If Google takes a very wrong step, chrome can be forked.

~~~
falcolas
Chromium (not Chrome) can indeed be forked. Yet that won't help with things
like DirectTV going Chrome only. Or Google's marketing of Chrome to users of
other browsers. Or finding developers capable of maintaining a fork with the
current flood of web standards.

------
293984j29384
Hard pass. I'll just change my user-agent and call it a day.

------
anilshanbhag
I have a different opinion. I think this monoculture is great. There are many
browsers all based on Chromium: Chrome, Opera, etc. While they offer different
views, their core rendering engine and api's are shared with chromium. It
makes life much easier as a developer. While having many implementations is
great, it is a pain in the ass. For example, I have an app that uses service
worker and indexeddb. It has cases where it fails to work on Safari.

The author compares to Chromium monoculture to IE. That is a very unfair
comparison. I would compare it to Linux. Both have open code bases that you
can fork at any time and contribute to if you want. It works well on all
platforms/hardware respectively. Both have corporate goodwill to pay for it.
Its wasteful to re-implement things multiple times over.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The biggest problem is, they're all still based on Chromium, who's development
priorities are determined by a single profit-driven corporation. (Bear in
mind, Chrome was simply the natural evolution of Sundar Pichai's work on the
Google Toolbar, a way to ensure everyone is using Google Search all the time.
Google was increasingly concerned Microsoft would disable or block their
toolbar, hence they created their own browser.)

This monoculture not only means all browsers would be vulnerable to the same
flaws, but that you are okay with Google controlling the entire Internet
platform. (Which is already an increasing problem in many other aspects.)

------
Pica_soO
I do not care about the cup-monopoly, when the providers of water are
strangling the pipe.

~~~
falcolas
It's possible to be concerned about more than one thing at a time. Otherwise,
could anyone ever be concerned about anything but the fact that they're going
to die?

------
luord
I make sure to test my applications in all major browsers and iron out bugs in
all of them, when possible.

So, that aside, I'm too used to Chromium for me to bother switching to
something else as my personal browser. Not to mention that it's handy if one
uses mostly Google applications (gmail, maps, keep, etc) as it allows
synchronization between devices.

Besides, and this might seem a bit incendiary, I see no problem with something
that's _mostly_ open source holding the largest market share. It'd be very
difficult for Google to attempt any abuse or create a captive audience, or to
force developers to not use standards.

------
mnm1
Is there a tool that can sync bookmarks and addons across browsers? Especially
now that Mozilla is going to support the same addons? Something that syncs
things on an ongoing basis, not just once. I think FF is great but asking
people to use more than one browser, yet manually sync the bookmarks and
addons is asking for way too much. Even just for bookmarks this would be
great. The functionality is 99% of the way there (one time sync works).
Personally, I just think Mozilla no longer cares if people use its products.
If it did, it would make using them a lot easier and more convenient.

------
801699
the more reliant you become on popular corporate/"non-profit" controlled
browsers the more disappointed you will be when the drm comes. but i will bet
they will ease you into it to minimize the complaints. long ago someone
predicted very early that the web would evolve into tv, driven by "pinheads".
i believe he was correct.

anyone remember a browser from nocrew called zen? had framebuffer support. i
think it also allows users to add new interfaces. _still compiles cleanly_
today even on non-linux. code is in archive.org, see nocrew.org

have not tried to use it but am impressed that it is from 2004-ish and still
compiles cleanly. framebuffer has had some significant improvements since
2004. could be time to revisit.

------
scrollbar
Do HN users have much to say about Brave? I've been hearing quite a bit about
it lately but haven't tried it out yet. I'm figuring that if I switch
browsers, it would be to something with some interesting edge like this,
rather than going back to Firefox.

~~~
spcelzrd
I use Brave sometimes. It's nice. But I switch browsers a lot.

I don't use Chrome except for development because Google is invasive.

------
guelo
To me Firefox is superior because of things like Tree Style Tabs. But Mozilla
is killing Tree Style Tabs in an incomprehensible rush to become
indistinguishable from Chrome. But if Firefox is indistinguishable from Chrome
what reason is there to use it?

~~~
M2Ys4U
That's not why Mozilla are changing how extensions work.

They're breaking compatibility now so they can do it _once_ and then refactor
Firefox's internals to make the browser better/faster/more secure without
constantly breaking extensions or - even worse - being prevented from making
those internal changes in the first place.

------
ferdbold
I wish I could switch to Firefox, but I'm really dependent on sync features
and I just love Chrome OS on my chromebook...

Are there any solid solutions for Firefox <-> Chrome syncing?

------
johnsmith21006
Love Chrome. Tried other options from time to time but always go back. I do
run on a higher end machine. It is fast and just rock solid.

------
anilgulecha
Dear firefox,

Just take Chrome's devtools and put it in.

I'll switch my browser, all of my extended family (that I provide tech-support
to), to firefox.

Thanks, A Developer

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Your extended family needs Chrome dev tools?

~~~
anilgulecha
No -- but supporting them means installing extensions, compatibility with apps
when supporting over phone, etc.

All of this is easy when they're on the same browser as you.

------
Fej
Since everyone is talking about Chrome's flaws, why does the font rendering in
Chrome still suck?

------
ferongr
I would of setting up a browser for my preferences didn't take 1 hour of my
time.

------
paule89
Nice try internet explorer

------
roesel
IE was a majority browser while being bad. Chrome is the best browser
available (for average joe at least). No plea to use another browser will be
heard, until there is an as-good or better alternative.

~~~
Vinnl
What makes it better than the other browsers for the average Joe other than
being preinstalled on Android?

~~~
roesel
I was talking about the desktop version. If you want the features chrome
provides, the experience is by far the smoothest, fastest and most integrated
compared to other browsers.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the RAM usage and the anti-privacy defaults, but if
I put idealism aside, Chrome _works_ best :-/.

(And I don't really understand the downvotes. Perhaps I explained my point
better here?)

------
colept
> But you can stop it. By balancing the browsers, choosing to use not just
> what’s convenient, but what’s lesser used, you can make the business case
> for monopoly plays a bad deal. Consider it your civic duty as a fan of the
> open web.

Internet Explorer was a monopoly because it was the default web browser
installed on the most prevalent operating system. It's the same reason Safari
has a majority on Macs even while it lagged behind a couple years.

Chrome is convenient, but I'm not about to start using Opera or Safari because
Google is making a better browser. I tried using Safari on my phone and
navigating was just so rigid compared to the gestures in Chrome. Safari is
behind the times and slowly catching up on web technologies, but also has
taken some weird side-steps by ignoring standards like "filter: blur()" and
implementing their own "backdrop-filter" that no other browser uses. Chrome
and Firefox are the leaders in feature advancement and cross-browser
standards.

edit: Would like to clarify that when I mean ignoring the "filter: blur()"
standard - Safari will remove a background image instead of blurring it.

Use what's convenient so other browsers step it up.

~~~
chuckhendo
I have no idea what you are talking about regarding Safari ignoring "filter:
blur()" \- it's supported it since 2012, just a few months after Chrome added
it. In fact - I think at the time Chrome was still using Webkit.

"backdrop-filter" is a completely different thing. Rather than filtering the
element itself, it filters all elements behind it. This is especially useful
with blur. While you are correct that Safari is the only browser currently
supporting it, it is part of the standard, although it's not yet finalized.
Chrome also supports it if you enabled "Experimental Web Features"

~~~
colept
Safari "filter:blur()" is not compatible with background images. Background
images on a filtered element will disappear. While "backdrop-filter" is not
compatible with any other browser.

You either have to choose Safari (which only has a leading-yet-declining share
on Macs) or every other browser to support.

~~~
chuckhendo
I literally just tried this in Safari 10.1.1:
[https://codepen.io/chuckhendo/pen/NgGZqg](https://codepen.io/chuckhendo/pen/NgGZqg)

Maybe it affects older versions of Safari, but I don't recall having run into
it.

"backdrop-filter" is irrelevant - it's an entirely different feature.

~~~
colept
It works now I guess, but Safari has quirks I've seen time and time again
where things don't work as they should.

I'm also hesitant to call it "fixed" considering it happened just last month
and YMMV with a one-element pen.

