Life is dynamic

I haven’t forgotten about this blog. Life has gotten busier, and I’ve had a lot of different things clamoring for my attention.

A lot of things haven’t changed.

I’ve managed to stick with a single Linux install, without distro hopping. I’ve had a few sidelong glances at Solus and I’ve been tempted to try different desktop environments, but so far I’ve kept those to virtual machine installs. I still have Manjaro’s Xfce edition installed on two of my machines, and I’ve been incredibly happy with it.

I’m still plugging along at learning Spanish, though I’ve also added Swedish to the mix. I’ve always wanted to be poly-lingual, and it’s a better diversion than just mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Twitter. I feel like I’m learning something and not wasting time. Spanish is so common in the US that it makes sense to have some level of proficiency with it, even if I can’t yet carry on a conversation. I added Swedish because that’s one of the countries my family comes from, and I’d like to learn more about my heritage.

I’m still constantly on the search for the perfect web browsers and music players for daily use. I still use Vivaldi, Brave, and Firefox, but I’m pulling back on Opera after reading this article. Vivaldi has now released a mobile browser beta that has the same speed as the desktop browser. I keep hoping that we’ll eventually see some more advertising blocking on mobile, but it’s early yet. I certainly don’t want to keep pages from receiving advertising money, but it does take up my mobile data, so I’ll be using Vivaldi more on Wi-Fi than on the road. Audacious has made it to my music player rotation, and I do like it.

Some things have changed though.

My father has retired. My wife and I have been renting their house. They’re moving back in with us, so we’re currently working on blending two household’s worth of possessions and pets down to one house. This is taking up the bulk of my time outside of work. My cat and dog have long made peace, but the new dog isn’t quite there with the cat. It will all work out in the end, but right now, we’re still in the thick of it.

As a result, I’ve had less time for tabletop gaming. Our D&D Ravenloft game and Trinity sessions have been put on hold. I think we’ve had a grand total of two sessions over the past two or three months. This too, won’t last, and we’ll be back to our usual sessions soon, I hope.

I’m enrolling to take classes again. Since I work at a university, I’m able to take classes for free, not counting books and other materials. I’m interested in learning some new skills and getting myself into a better position down the road.

Life is happening. Some things change, some things stay the same. I’m ready either way.

My scattered thoughts on web browsers

I have a tendency to research subjects to death… then well past the point of death. I have some difficulty making a final, lasting decision at times.

This definitely includes deciding on a default web browser.

I bounce back and forth, like a ping pong ball in a championship match.

In one sense, that means I’m familiar with a wide variety of programs and can adapt to new browsers quickly. I can quickly set just about any browser up to do what I want it to do in a short amount of time.

I’d like to go through my thoughts on a variety of browsers, just to collect my thoughts and perhaps work out some issues for myself. If this happens to be helpful to anyone else, then that is awesome! I don’t expect this to reach a large audience, and that’s okay too!

Please note: this is not a be-all-end-all kind of technical review. This is about feelings. Nothing more than feelings. Musings of a browser enthusiast (snob?), if you will.

Vivaldi

Let’s start with the most obvious browser (considering where this is being posted…), Vivaldi. Vivaldi picks up where Opera left off. It packs a whole lot of features into one package and has promised more to come. I’m jonesing to try their email client and mobile browsers (both are yet to be released as of this post). It’s fast, the built-in reader mode is a huge help, it’s got access to the Google Chrome web app store, it’s customizable, and the community is great. It’s hard not to get excited as I read through community posts. The keyboard commands are helpful, and I love the speed dial (also found in Opera) and mouse gestures (ditto in Opera). It’s based on Chromium and the snapshot usually updates to new versions within a few days, tops.

However, there’s some room to grow. Syncing between browsers isn’t always 100% reliable. There are times when I can’t access the syncing server(s?). Not usually an issue though.

Font rendering leaves something to be desired, but that’s more a flaw with the Chromium base than with Vivaldi. Still, fonts are thin and aren’t as easy to read without an extension, adjusting the zoom, or tweaking the settings.

The built-in PDF reader could allow you to enter in a page number and zip right to it, like most other browsers. There are no arrows to skip to the next or previous page. It’s functional, but basic.

It’s not the most stable on my Manjaro laptop, but it works well on my  Windows 10 machines. There are visual glitches and Pocket doesn’t work properly on my Linux machine.

In short, I really like it, but there are some improvements that will doubtlessly be polished in the (near?) future. I’ll use it, but not as my primary.

Chrome

You can’t talk about browsers without bringing the big boy into the discussion. It’s stable, it’s secure, and it’s just about everywhere… accept in my regular rotation.

Don’t get me wrong, I do use it. I load it down with some security extensions (like I do with every browser I can), and I tweak the privacy settings (though they could be tighter; I’m okay with some usability options over strict security). I check the options and try and protect privacy to what I consider to be a reasonable level.

It’s solid, and I do sometimes boot it up to play with it. I do often use it when I’m on a computer to do presentations, especially since I can so quickly and easily access my synced data.

It just doesn’t excite me much.

Also, I can get a decent level of security on Windows and Linux (and the settings sync across all of those machines, score!), but privacy on the mobile browser is a bit of a joke. I’ll occasionally check the mobile site with https://panopticlick.eff.org, just to see how porous the browser’s privacy is (like a sieve without strict settings).

I understand that, as a free program that Google gets theirs by collecting my data, so I try and make it more difficult for them (though not restrictively so). But if I need something to work, I’ll use it.

I just wish the fonts were easier to read without tweaking.

Opera

I have a long history with Opera. I used it back before they dropped Presto (which I don’t blame them for) in favor of Blink then Chromium. I still like it and still use it.

Mobile browsing with Opera Mobile on Android is fantastic. It’s fast, it’s got a built-in ad blocker, I can still access Facebook’s Messenger features without using the dumbed down mbasic.facebook.com site (the only browser to still let me do so), and gets pretty good results on Panopticlick. It syncs between devices, it’s got some cool features that are starting to be picked up by other companies, and I really like the newsfeed that collects headlines.

It’s a Norwegian company owned by a Chinese firm, so there was some soul searching to decide if I’d still use it. I’ve decided to trust it, though, like a strange dog, I still keep my eyes on it, just in case.

I wish I had more options for customizing the appearance, like I have with Vivaldi. Otherwise though, I don’t have any major complaints. I do use a font adjusting extension, to make it easier to read, and I wish that there was a built-in reader mode, but there are extensions that work well enough. I just wish it was a native feature.

There aren’t any major complaints, just little, niggling things. Checking whether or not there is a more recent upgrade within Opera is… unreliable. Sometimes I’ll have to reload the window several times in order for it to sync with their servers. It looks fine, but it doesn’t excite, like it used to with Presto. They dropped mail and RSS readers (which I totally get). I can’t get the Linux version to stream services like Netflix due to an issue with Widevine, but I can still load Vivaldi, Firefox, or Chrome (though on Manjaro it’s Vivaldi OR Chrome). It’s mostly closed source.

It’s just… fine. It’s safe, it’s a good, solid alternative, it’s fine.

I’m just not as excited by it as I used to be.

Brave

This takes me to another (relatively) new kid on the block, Brave. It’s still in beta, and has quite a bit of room to grow. They tout a built-in ad blocker and security suite and they’re working on a system that bypasses the traditional advertising system online with a new system that will send a curated selection of ads to your system (only if enabled!) that will pay you to view. You can then spend some of that money on sites that you feel deserve to be paid for their content. Their adverts are not supposed to be based on information mined from your online profiles, but may someday (I hope anyway, after testing them in beta) be adjusted based on interest of the reader. I’d like to say that yes, I’m interested in local grocery stores and I’m not interested in, say, sports betting. But you’ll be able to turn the feature on and off.

Right now, Brave is going through a transition, from a Muon-based theme to pure Chromium. As of this date, it looks much closer to basic Chrome/Chromium (the opensource version of Chrome, with most of the bells, some of the whistles). However, it also opened it up to the Chromium web app store (which may end up a curated Brave app store in the near future).

It’s fast, it’s secure (on desktop/laptop…), it’s opensource, and it’s got some growing to do. Only in this last update did we get a PDF reader that seems to work on every (the ones I care about at least) sites than before.

It’s also got the Chromium font problem I’ve brought up a few times.

There are mobile versions, but right now, based on the Panopticlick results, it’s pretty porous. Nearly as bad as Chrome. I’m going to look further at tightening up security and privacy settings by default, since the mobile browser can’t (as of now) install web extensions that might fix some of the issues.

It’s promising, and I’m excited about it as well, but it’s not there quite yet.

Firefox

This leaves me with the one non-Chromium browser on my list. I’d also talk about Seamonkey, but so little progress has been made on that browser that I don’t use it regularly any more (such a pity as I love the suite of software).

Firefox has the best font rendering out of the lot of regular browsers I use. It’s faster than it used to be, has finally caught up to multiple processes instead of one, making it more secure. Has a good focus on privacy, including segregating Facebook into containers, if you download the right extension. Reader mode is excellent. Memory use is pretty good, on par with the other browsers I use.

I also like that it isn’t yet another Chromium browser. There needs to be other options online. We didn’t have decent competition at various points in the past. Internet Explorer (may it rest in peace) was THE dominant browser for a long time. Web progress stagnated a bit. Netscape came along and took over. Web progress slowed again. Now, with so many browsers being run on Chromium, the risk is that things will creep along again instead of innovate. Or if there is a problem with Chromium itself, that there may not be a viable alternative for users.

And here’s the problem… I do like Firefox. A lot. It works well. It reads well. It looks… bland, but it reads and works well.

Mobile browsing works… well enough. It’s not the most responsive browser, but it lets me install extensions that tighten privacy, block advertising, and make life a little easier online. But it’s so… slow… sometimes… But I can work around it, and it’s perfectly fine on my phone and tablet.

There’s also Firefox Focus on mobile platforms that runs quite well. It’s faster, focused on privacy, and is secure and private. It also deletes everything you do when you close it. Burn after reading. Cool, if I don’t want to have to log back into sites every time.

The thing is, Firefox doesn’t excite me. I use it out of a feeling of obligation, the fact it runs the best on my Linux machine (synced data for the win! I love sending pages to other devices for reading later!). I like Mozilla’s message of privacy and information security.

However, Firefox seems to be a better privacy platform and a worse security platform than Chrome. Chrome routinely does well against attacks at Pwn2Own. Rarely do attacks make it through. That’s awesome! Firefox usually gets hacked at least once (and pulled out for a year or two to get their stuff together).

I also use it because I’m getting old and my poor eyes need more help than they used to.

That’s not a ringing endorsement; it works and reads well, but… meh?

TLDR

I read a lot about browsers. I can’t tell if I really enjoy it or I just feel compelled to be as knowledgeable as I can about security, privacy, and functionality.

Opera is great. I love it like a comfortable pair of jeans or shoes. It’s comfortable and familar… but it’s too familiar?

Vivaldi is fantastic and I’m excited about the future. I’m just working through the present to get there. I want to use it and test it, but I’d like it to work at peak everywhere I use it.

Firefox is good. Very good. But I use it because I feel like someone should use it.

Chrome is good, but it’s not for me on mobile.

Ditto for Brave.

If you have any constructive thoughts or questions, please leave a comment! I’d love to know that I’m not the only one this obsessed with the subject matter.