What is your favorite internet browser? (2018-2019)

So I've been a diehard Firefox user since the days of Firefox 3

I loved the interface so much that I was so hooked on it and could never switch to any other browser.

After Mozilla decided to overhaul the UI, I hated it so much that I couldn't even stand the new interface. Yes there was an extension called Classic Theme Restorer for Firefox but that kept getting bugs with every update toe Firefox so I got tired of this and the fact that the browser is ALWAYS in like Beta, they release version 60 for example, then it's 61 Beta 1, 2, 3, never ending.

I then switched to Chrome although I didn't like the interface at first but after getting used to it, I enjoyed that ti's way faster in rendering pages and love the synchronization of my bookmarks/passwords with my phone so it's much easier to login to sites on my phone without having the need to install any external app or password manager since Chrome auto fills my passwords that were saved on my laptop.

So what's your favorite browser and why?

 

I'm torn. I love Chrome on my PC's and it's all I've used since it came out. But I just started using Brave browser just a little while back on my phone and I really like it too.

 

Man I don't know. I wanted to like Edge but too many problems.

I have used chrome so long but I feel that it uses too many resources. But it is one of the most compatible browsers.

I love the Firefox layout and it has some really cool features; however, Chrome just fits better with Android and other devices.

So Chrome for me.

Sent from my BLA-L09 using Tapatalk

 

clearly firefox, Chrome is to bloated and makes way to many processes on my notebook. Firefox quantum broswer is the fastest and most efficient browser right now.

 

Should Internet Explorer be on the list? Sadly there are many customers I deal with that still have corporate policies that IE 11 be used, and it still exists in Win 10.

 

Firefox is my 'go to' browser for most things but I do use Chrome for sites when I need to translate, like Amazon France - Germany etc.

Not a fan of Edge, just don't like the feel of it and been with Mozilla for as long as I can remember. Firefox does has the occasional annoyance of reseting itself when it updates and wipes out its cookies meaning I have to sign back into everything.

 

Firefox (with NoScript etc). The good selection of addons & page scrolling is sooooo smooth and peaceful, while I see hard steps on other browsers. Vivaldi as backup for non-noscript browsing.

 

I love Vivaldi, which is what I use mostly. I use Firefox for the Zotero plugin and Microsoft Edge is okay too.

 

Firefox is my favorite. I've played with Vivaldi but haven't used it regularly.

It's too bad Firefox has such a low market share. I hope they find a way to reach more users.

 

It's not that it's bloated, it splits tabs and other add-ons that users have into separate threads rather than the way Firefox does it, for stability sake, better for an errant thread to crash than an aggregate of processes rolled into one or two threads. In a test by Business Insider where they tried to verify Firfox Quantum's less resource claim they checked 10 websites being loaded between Quantum and Chrome, Quantum actually ended up using a lot more RAM. Granted depending on sites people may get differing results. Here’s one fairly recent comparison: https://www.itpro.co.uk/web-browser...t-browser-chrome-vs-firefox-vs-microsoft-edge


Aggregation of benchmarks generally show Chrome to still be the better actually, of course they do trade off depending on certain benchmarks and versions tested. In battery life tests I saw Edge did the best and Firefox actually did the worst, with Chrome being in between. However in earlier Microsoft "tests" Firefox did better than Chrome in Video and Chrome did batter in browsing battery life. They both push eachother to improve so its not a fixed "win" for either.

Edge however just sucks, I'm not even going to be diplomatic about it, maybe it does so well in battery life tests because it can't do anything and crashes often so lots of down time lol. Rumors have it Microsoft maybe be building a Chromium based browser.

I've actually tried switching from Chrome to Firefox, Edge etc to something else but I've always beeen forced to return to Chrome, been the fastest and most stable at least for me, of co. I was a Firefox user and only switched to Chrome later than most people by the way.


I personally only have 1 extension with Chrome, that being uBlock Origin, which happens to be the most efficient ad-blocker in tests and resource wise as well.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-ad-blocking-extensions-tested-for-best-performance/view-all/

On my iPhone 8 Plus, I use only Safari due to the ability to use 1Blocker X, plus its good performer.

TLDR: I can live on Chrome, Safari or Frefox, not Edge.

 

Pretty sure that's outdated.

 

(For me) Firefox is the best browser without any doubt, because privacy features & addons - particularly, NoScript.

* I don't like Chrome, mainly because search feature is simply terrible, but also due to privacy concerns.
* Edge is OK for the most part but lacks privacy features&addons.
* Puffin is nice (and fast AF) on mobile, but that is essentially giving up all your privacy.
* Everything else looks like a joke to me.

 

I’m the one wing it that loves edge. Ha ha. I find it faster (now), than any other browser. I use it on all my mobile devices too.

 

Chrome for me. No contest whatsoever.

It should be. There are many corporate policies that exclude all other browsers, and many people prefer to stick with what they know and like. I have tried most browsers and always come back to Chrome. But, if Chrome were to disappear or suddenly get extra stupid and ugly, more likely than not I would go back to IE simply because I find the UI to be cleaner and more aesthetically acceptable than most of the rest. I strongly dislike the UI of most browsers other than Chrome, IE and Firefox (in that order of preference). For the record, the latest update to Chrome really pissed me off. I like it less than I used to because it has aesthetic similarities to Firefox, including the rounded tabs corners (which I hate). The latest version disabled my ability to apply the "normal" UI, which irked me even more.

 

Only the adblocker link as those are the only direct benchmarks I’ve seen in that aspect. I’ve seen newer adblocker comparisons which still generally favor uBlock Origin but most don’t give concrete numbers like that one.

As for the browsers though the last benchmarks I saw (Oct) still favored Chrome, you’ve made me inclined to try Firefox again so I might try to repeat some of those tests. I’m also not as reliant on my Google account anymore either which helps.

My Benchmarks and memory usage test with 5 tabs open, Chrome 71 vs Firefox 63.03 on a Dell Inspiron 7577 (On Battery), uBlock Origin was the only active extension on both:

 

I use uBlock Origin, uBlock Origin Extra, Tampermonkey and custom hosts file. I have to temporarily disable some of these things to load some web pages, but not too often because I don't visit a wide variety of web sites. I use uBlock Origin to block anything and everything from Facepoot and Twatter, so normally any references to those two social media brothels are blocked on all web pages, along with garbage like Outbrain.

 

Continuation of my benchmark tests, Chrome in terms of pure benchmarks (of the few I’ve tested) still is faster in my testing as I have seen in other reviews recently. Memory usage as mentioned before when opening 5 tabs of the same websites on both was actually similar.

Working in a federal research program where sometimes our web based data access program can cause browser crashes at times on IE (with all tabs failing), I agree with Chrome's way of splitting tabs and also extensions into separate processes.

Overall though in general usage difference isn't night and day though Chrome was a little more responsive in general. With graphics intensive stuff/sites Chrome has a huge advantage, which may or may not be important to everyone.

From a privacy perspective Firefox seems to be more advantageous as it’s not tied to a Search engine giant , though Chromium based alternatives exist.

 

For me Chrome represents almost everything I hate:
- It uses your machine resources as if it's not yours: keeping Gigs of telemetry data stored on your C drive, unnecessarily eating resources;
- spying on you;
- leaving less and less options to customize as if their was is the only way.
Firefox represents everything else and some:
- ignorance, as if they are smarter than users: treating complaints from users as "they just like old and hate changes" instead of listening for good advises among criticizing users; pushing their vision of new as the only way of new;
- limiting customizations;
- doing same mistakes over and over again: it's the 2nd change of UI which people hated and if first Change didn't help so why not to learn and bring the best of last two iterations instead of creating 3rd one?

So for me, it's fk to both. I use Waterfox and if it will end I don't know what I will use then.

 

If that ever happens, there’s always Chromium, without the Google layering and other privacy focused Chromium based alternatives. Iridium is big one with a major focus in privacy: https://iridiumbrowser.de/

 

And, then...

Malicious sites abuse 11-year-old Firefox bug that Mozilla failed to fix

 

Fix is probably lost somewhere in a buroucracy scheme "Assign_Dumb-Not_A_Bug-Result_Of_Our_Great_Feature-Won't_Fix".
Sigh. Mozillish classic is never old. 11 years is nothing.

BTW, CTR addon is a bugfest. Hide Caption Titlebar Plus is THE WAY to fix GUI changes and to add new features you will like. Another signs of unhealthy fox' fauna are: slow or absent user's common knowledge update and also ignoring by mozilla ff devs ideas only because they are based by previously changed GUI.

 

I like using WaterFox

 

Use a 3rd party extension because its lot safe and Google might text mine your passwords to run its telemetry checks and identify common password patterns or phrases and in the future it can notify you that phrase has been used in XYZ website so either change it or create new random(its pseudo random) password(s).

FF on Windows 10 simply takes up too much RAM than Chrome and on Linux FF is so optimized even with 100 tabs and consumed just 3GB RAM unlike Win 10 which ate 8GB RAM doing the same thing. I have to use about:memory for win 10 to clear up unused RAM and keep the RAM usage to sane level.

 

I tend to use Chrome and Chromium more than any other browse I have installed, so I guess that’s my favorite.

 

chrome, then firefox. edge is only used to download chrome and firefox installers.

 

You can't escape telemetry nowdays, unless you wanna live under a rock you can find it everywhere so i use Chrome because it's fast and reliable for me. I've never had major issues with it.

 

One can, but it needs special interest and work.

Example, ff immediately tries to open 8 connections at launch (which I find unaceptable), now total radio silence (the phoning home, not the browsing of course), see attach.

 

What do you use to stop this please Mr ZX81? So depressing all this spying on us all.

 

It takes a few hours of optimizing on Windows, a good adblock, and a good antivirus program.

 

Coarse and basic here: ip's (ranges) in Firewall, picked up from monitoring program's activity at launch\idle using resmon.exe.

For firefox it's cat \ mouse + perseverance for a while... Am somehow enjoying the cat job :O) but blocking too many ip's \ ranges one ends up crippling normal browsing activity- not easy like blocking for example ccleaner (where one can block the whole program, something that would not be very useful for one's web browser :O)

ps, not recommending anything, these are just experiments for my particular interests and needs.

Other example, vivaldi, am seeing only 1 ip at launch + some update ip, quite a peaceful program. see attach.

 

Chrome first. IE second if Chrome can't do the task. All the complaints that Chrome uses a lot of Cpu resources must be taken out of thin air. Can't see the big hit on performance if I run benchmark in the background and with other tasks up. Maybe if you run it on today's modern thin and flimsy T*******books. Other can perhaps confirm yes or no.


What I don't like with it is such moves like this...
Chrome's stupid new rounded look - You mean it's pretty? Or you mean it's Ugly?

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/0KBceiK5iL8/-UDqwFXCCgAJ

 

A good read for New Years' Day :

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-that-should-worry-us-all/

https://hothardware.com/news/former-microsoft-edge-intern-says-google-callously-broke-rival-browsers

And for those IE lovers :

https://arstechnica.com/information...to-fix-critical-ie-flaw-under-active-exploit/

 

And for those Firefox lovers

Firefox with ads on New Tab Page

Closing Words
Mozilla needs to rethink its strategy in regards to advertisement in Firefox; the browser needs a toggle to disable advertisement entirely in the browser and better descriptions for preferences and options that may display ads.

The way advertisement is integrated in the browser right now is detrimental as it erodes trust in Mozilla.

-----------------------------

Firefox with banner at the bottom of the New Tab page
good Morning December 31, 2018 10:35

Mozilla Firefox currently seems to be testing a new kind of advertising among US users. In addition to the already normal (recommended) advertising tiles for Amazon, etc., they have now started to show more banner ads below in the new tab view. This new service is also documented in the Mozilla wiki .

 

Hmmm.... I've never seen any ads on Firefox. Perhaps my version for Linux Mint is immune? And if not, I can always turn it off if I find it gets in my way. Happy New Year!!

Firefox with ads on New Tab Page
"New Tab Page to some users of the browser."

"Firefox users may disable... in the web browser "

 

No ads here either, even if there were, ublock origin.

Kind of have to, even this site hijacks my desktop browsers and it's one of the only sites I frequent.

 

Those were already disabled. Even at stock settings I saw no ads on FF64 on windows and linux.

Even I didn't see the ads. Maybe Linux distros repackaged it by removing useless codes.

 

I started using Firefox when it was Mozilla. I have always hated IE. That extended to Edge. There was a time when Firefox started to bloat to a point where I was looking for alternatives. I've used most of them in your list, Opera, Maxthon, WaterFox, Brave, Pale Moon, etc. Once Chrome officially started making waves I switched over that that and been using it ever since, however it's been getting bloaty lately and so I've always kept an eye on Firefox and had them both installed on all my devices. Lately it looks like Firefox is once again pulling way out ahead so I will start using that again - it's like coming home.

 

Mozilla Says It Didn’t Make Any Money From Booking.com

Mozilla has been taking heat for promoting Booking.com via a snippet on Firefox’s New Tab page . Contrary to speculation, Mozilla told us that “zero money changed hands.” Also, Firefox didn’t share any data with Booking.com, and the snippet wasn’t targeted.

This is all very interesting because Mozilla’s previous statements didn’t do much to clear this up. Despite Mozilla claiming this “experiment” wasn’t an advertisement or paid placement

Mozilla says its goal was just “to provide more value to Firefox users.” But no matter what Mozilla calls it. It is and remains advertising.

 

Don't really care, I use water fox.

 

I havent noticed any ads with Firefox but then again i always use Adblocker Ultimate or other similar ad blockers add-ons over the years and same with chrome.

Its surprising that people are still browsing the internet without any ad-blocker add-ons installed. Sure it might be annoying for some sites to force you to disable it for their site but you can easily re-enable it and/or put that site on your filter list.

OT: Firefox but i also use chrome, IE, and Brave at times

 

What? Only 1 vote for Edge before I voted?

I use 100% laptops, so I need good battery life. That basically leaves only Edge. It has never crashed on me, though sometimes I have issues resizing windows. Plus Windows loads Edge into the RAM on startup so opening it up for the first time after boot is almost instant with no system resources. When you close Edge, Windows suspends half its processes in the RAM in 1809, so it is faster (Not the placebo effect, I guarantee you.)

Firefox's UI is disgusting.

Back when I was 10-12 years old, I used Internet Explorer 8. I miss that UI sometimes, even though it is probably the ugliest piece of broken software I have ever laid my eyes on lol. Then IE11 was my daily driver.

Indeed Chrome is fast and fluid on high end CPUs. But it does so at the expense(requirement) of system resources. The startup is horribly slow and taxing, but I agree that when its loaded its admittedly fluid. Until I open up multiple tabs on my m3 processor.

I will have to do some timing for browser vs browser speed.


Then again, I guess after Microsoft switches to chromium for its edge browser, all the above will be outdated.

 

Is that so strange? Edge is a huge piece of junk (Created due Micro$haft's wet dream being the new CrApple and offer phones). You say Firefox's UI is disgusting... Edge ain't much better. I would use Firefox or whatever browser any day over Edge.

 

It's just the most consistent UI with the rest of my day-to day apps + Windows. Material design is nice but it completely clashes with Acrylic. Edge does everything I need it to do whilst not being a battery hog. Unfortunately Poogle slows down their products on purpose in Edge

I guess most people in the world just don't care as much about battery life as I do - I see so many classmates just lugging power adapters to class so often. They use Chrome

 

If it works for you then there isnt room to complain.

It just doesnt work for a lot of people, and for a AAA offering you really cant have that.

 

Edge is fine, though there’s nothing compelling in it for me to use as a main browser. Right now it just serves as a webdev test tool, just like Firefox, et al that isn’t Chrome/Chromium.

 

I use FF and Auto discard Tabs along with 8-10 addons to get best or equivalent battery life of Edge.
If you used Chrome FF should be right at home for you with minimal resource usage unlike Chrome.

 

FF latest BS, had me looking at alternatives. Ive used Chrome in the past, but dont particularly care for the non existent menu on top of the window. (Old School) I guess.
I installed Avant, and the new Opera, and the new Opera is slowly taking over as my go to browser now. It will import my FF bookmarks, and I kind of like the side panel with quick acess, as an alternative for the top menu.

 

You mean snippet BS? All you need is to turn off Case studies and snippets or else use Waterfox.
In browser market, Chrome reigns supreme followed by Firefox and forked versions of chrome(ium) and firefox.

 

Damn. That is about as crappy as when Ubuntu put ads in its UI dashboard.

 

You can't fix one issue though

>Gnome




I still find it idiotic that you have to manually change some settings in about:config to truly turn of firefox's telelmetry