I've been using Chrome for a while now, I switched from Firefox after that one started to piss me off with its updates. Now in recent years, the same old story is happening with Chrome: Crappy updates get released and I'm forced to use extensions to preserve functionality.
With the latest update, they managed to do something so terrible, that I almost wanted to get rid off Chrome for good, but luckily there's once again an extension to fix it. If you're wondering what I'm talking about: On the newest version, backspace to go back does no longer work, they want you to use alt+left. They did it because some idiots clicked outside a text field when working on a text and pressed backspace, therefore losing their data. Yep, good job Google, removing the most basic functionality imaginable, I'm sure that's the best solution. I especially love the approach to never give the user options!
tl;dr: Are there any alternatives to Chrome? I'm sick of having to use extensions to fix bad updates! I would love to have a browser that is similar to Chrome before it started to suck.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
They did it because some idiots clicked outside a text field when working on a text and pressed backspace, therefore losing their data. Yep, good job Google, removing the most basic functionality imaginable, I'm sure that's the best solution.
andypanther wrote:
On the newest version, backspace to go back does no longer work, they want you to use alt+left.
Sounds like a good solution to me.
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
I'm still using Firefox, although quite customized.
- Adblock Plus, with non-intrusive ads disabled (on tablet: uBlock Origin)
- Add to Search Bar
- Black Youtube Theme
- Classic Theme Restorer
- Download Status Bar (set to remove download history)
- DownThemAll
- Exif Viewer
- Flashblock
- Google search link fix
- Grab and Drag (set to grab a web page with the right mouse button)
- Greasemonkey (scripts: "Fanfiction.net - Make text selectable again", 4chan X)
- Image Search Options (searches images in IQDB)
- Image Toolbar (copies/saves images with one click)
- Reddit Enhancement Suite
- Switch to Tab no more
- Tab Mix Plus
- Tree Style Tab
- Video DownloadHelper
I would consider Chrome only if there's something comparable to Tree Style Tab.
They did it because some idiots clicked outside a text field when working on a text and pressed backspace, therefore losing their data.
At least in Firefox, if you are filling form, press back and then forward, it will (at least according to my quick test) remember everything that had been inputted in all fields. I would be surprised if Chrome didn't do the same thing.
(Although this seems to be so only if you go back to the same page via the forward/back buttons. If you go back to the same page eg. by clicking on a link, then it won't remember anything. That kind of sucks, and I think there would be room for improvement there.)
Could you be more precise on what you need from the browser, and how Firefox or Chrome don't provide those features?
When I use Firefox on my laptop, it's slow to the point of being unusable. On the tower I use at work, Firefox was installed and I just went with it. The speed is ok, but it's much more unstable than Chrome.
I want a browser that allows you to customize it quite a bit and has a good library of extensions (additional features, not just stuff to fix the browser). It doesn't need to win an award for being the fastest, as long as it's stable.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I would consider Chrome only if there's something comparable to Tree Style Tab.
Yeah, that's a really useful addon. With 500 tabs open, it becomes hard to navigate and find the tabs you're looking for, so that's when I had to google for a solution, and I found Tree Style Tab. But another problem with Chrome is that it uses insane amounts of RAM, which is why I wouldn't use it even if it had a Tree Style Tab. I need at least 200 tabs open. Too bad that even Firefox start to slow down at 400 tabs.
Also the "stop youtube" addon or whatever it is, which always starts youtube videos stopped is one of the most useful addons. I also have "Deduplicate tabs closer", to close duplicate tabs.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Seamonkey
Google Chrome
Google Chromium (Chrome without the Google proprietary bits)
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Opera
lynx
elinks
Dillo
NCSA Mosaic
Konqueror
Those are the ones that I know of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Vivaldi (from the devs that made Opera)
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Thanks for all the suggestions, it will be interesting to try them all out.
One thing that could make me stay with Chrome is the ScriptSafe extension, the most amazing tool I've ever found for browsing. I hope there's something comparable to that on another browser.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Joined: 2/12/2015
Posts: 152
Location: Everett, WA
I'd recommend Firefox, because I've always had beliefs that Google always made things worse when they updated them, especially their browser Chrome. I used to use it often until an update arrived that forced you to click on a Flash video player twice before you could use it, which was quite annoying in and of itself. There's also the time when they removed Java and Unity Web Player support, which I still can't find a solution to that doesn't involve installing another browser. Because of those, I switched to Firefox near the end of 2015.
And the addons I use for Firefox?:
- Adblock Plus (with Element Hiding Helper so I don't have to bother with text ads and other things I don't like seeing which vanilla ABP can't block)
- Emoji Cheatsheet
- FoxReplace (I mainly use this in a vain attempt to fix grammatical errors in text as well as replace former names of tropes with their current names)
- Global Twitch Emotes (I use this sparingly)
- I used to have an addon that'd unblock YouTube videos automatically, but it got removed due to "security and performance issues" probably coming from someone who either didn't like the addon or wanted it off Firefox so no fun can be allowed on YouTube. I tried many other alternatives to this addon, but they either didn't work or required me to make an account for some of them. Needless to say, I was quite angry at this.
:shrug:
I'm more active on Twitter nowadays: @HunterCoates5
- Adblock Plus (with Element Hiding Helper so I don't have to bother with text ads and other things I don't like seeing which vanilla ABP can't block)
I actually use the regular Adblock (not Plus) on my main PC because it gives me more options. Would it actually be better to use Plus with Element Hiding Helper?
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I would consider Chrome only if there's something comparable to Tree Style Tab.
Yeah, that's a really useful addon. With 500 tabs open, it becomes hard to navigate and find the tabs you're looking for, so that's when I had to google for a solution, and I found Tree Style Tab. But another problem with Chrome is that it uses insane amounts of RAM, which is why I wouldn't use it even if it had a Tree Style Tab. I need at least 200 tabs open. Too bad that even Firefox start to slow down at 400 tabs.
Also the "stop youtube" addon or whatever it is, which always starts youtube videos stopped is one of the most useful addons. I also have "Deduplicate tabs closer", to close duplicate tabs.
I am curious, how can you open so much tabs? The most I opened was or 3 unless it was for school research where I could have at most 15.
You guys are on both ends of the tabs spectrum. I can't imagine using only 3 tabs but I also can't imagine regularly (ever?) using over 500 tabs. I think 5 - 25 is a much more reasonable range.
- Adblock Plus (with Element Hiding Helper so I don't have to bother with text ads and other things I don't like seeing which vanilla ABP can't block)
I actually use the regular Adblock (not Plus) on my main PC because it gives me more options. Would it actually be better to use Plus with Element Hiding Helper?
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Seamonkey
Google Chrome
Google Chromium (Chrome without the Google proprietary bits)
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Opera
lynx
elinks
Dillo
NCSA Mosaic
Konqueror
Those are the ones that I know of off the top of my head.
EDIT:
Vivaldi (from the devs that made Opera)
There's also Waterfox (64-bit Firefox).
d-feather wrote:
I used to have an addon that'd unblock YouTube videos automatically, but it got removed due to "security and performance issues" probably coming from someone who either didn't like the addon or wanted it off Firefox so no fun can be allowed on YouTube. I tried many other alternatives to this addon, but they either didn't work or required me to make an account for some of them.
savefrom.net can download most videos. I always use the website though, not the addon.
Niamek wrote:
I am curious, how can you open so much tabs? The most I opened was or 3 unless it was for school research where I could have at most 15.
You just open links in new tabs and keep them open to read them later. It's like having bookmarks, except
- you don't have to save the links as bookmarks
- the pages don't interfere with your actual (long-term) bookmarks
- you don't have to remove the pages from your bookmarks when you're done with them
- the browser saves your location on the page, even if it crashes or if you close the browser (I have set Firefox to "show windows and tabs from the last time" upon start)
Tree Style Tab creates "tab trees" which you can collapse to save space. The vertical tree area is also a more helpful use of screen space on widescreen displays than the actual website - either they use the full width (can be hard to read because the lines are so long) or they use a fixed width or percentage width (which wastes some space on the text background).
As an example, every morning I go to reddit and go through the frontpage (which shows new links and discussions from the subreddits I'm subscribed to), opening all the discussion threads that interest me. Then I go through the discussions, opening the linked website and then reading the corresponding reddit thread.
Another example: let's say you're researching how to write a NES emulator. You would head over to the nesdev wiki and go through a few pages about the CPU, opening some links to PDFs, tutorials, data sheets etc. You read quickly over each page to get an overview, but leave it open for using the details (much later) during programming. Then you follow some links to the PPUs, lots of technical internet sites that write about the NTSC/PAL TV standards (because each one is a bit different with regards to detail and accuracy). One week later (you're doing this in your free time after all) you start a new major tab subtree about audio processing and output, maybe some links to github to the exact source code files of other emulators - it looks interesting, but you can't use it right now because your own emulator doesn't have a working CPU yet. Etc.
I also keep other stuff in tab trees, for example a tab to fanfiction.net with sub tabs to the current chapters of the fanfics I'm reading at the same time, depending on the mood. Or a link to cgsociety.org with sub tabs to all the artists whose works I want to check out when I'm home. And so on.
Interesting. I will try this!
I'm still on firefox btw. I hate change so I rather stick with what I'm used to, even though firefox' memory leaks make me kill it 10 times a day.
If you don't like moving your mouse around or you prefer to keep to your hand on the keyboard, then I guess I have no choice but to suggest Vimperator for Firefox(or one of his lightweight/optimized fork).
Quick tips:
-Press "t"+url to open a tab
-Press "f" then a chain of keyword+number and you can go to pretty much anywhere on the page with much less effort than the regular way. Of course, you I believe can customize every hotkey as well.
-Press shift+escape if you need to temporarily disable vimperator to move around
-Press f1 to read more vimperator docs(learn how to customize your hotkey, etc)
Joined: 2/12/2015
Posts: 152
Location: Everett, WA
andypanther wrote:
I actually use the regular Adblock (not Plus) on my main PC because it gives me more options. Would it actually be better to use Plus with Element Hiding Helper?
I haven't seen the regular Adblock yet, but I can assure you ABP with the Element Hiding Helper will be fairly useful.
:shrug:
I'm more active on Twitter nowadays: @HunterCoates5
You just open links in new tabs and keep them open to read them later. It's like having bookmarks, except
- you don't have to save the links as bookmarks
- the pages don't interfere with your actual (long-term) bookmarks
- you don't have to remove the pages from your bookmarks when you're done with them
My tabs seem to be at least 90% from youtube. I'm subscribed to several channels, and since I only watch 1-2 hours per day, new interesting videos come out faster than I can watch them. Eventually I end up with 500 tabs, which starts slowing down Firefox, so I end up having to bookmark all those tabs (lol), and I never have time to watch all those videos or websites, but I save them anyway. Maybe if Ray Kurzweil is right, in a few decades we can extend our lifespan to a 1000 years and speed up our brains, so that we can absorb information faster, lol.
You just open links in new tabs and keep them open to read them later. It's like having bookmarks, except
- you don't have to save the links as bookmarks
- the pages don't interfere with your actual (long-term) bookmarks
- you don't have to remove the pages from your bookmarks when you're done with them
My tabs seem to be at least 90% from youtube. I'm subscribed to several channels, and since I only watch 1-2 hours per day, new interesting videos come out faster than I can watch them. Eventually I end up with 500 tabs, which starts slowing down Firefox, so I end up having to bookmark all those tabs (lol), and I never have time to watch all those videos or websites, but I save them anyway. Maybe if Ray Kurzweil is right, in a few decades we can extend our lifespan to a 1000 years and speed up our brains, so that we can absorb information faster, lol.
I have this problem as well. I am a habitual tab hoarder (have hit 200+, and it's usually chrome crashing that forces me to trim back a bit).
The problem is that there will never be enough hours in the day to do everything that is possibly interesting. Even if you never slept or did anything else, going through all interesting youtube videos is impossible.
So figure out how you want to prioritize your time, and (sadly) throw away everything else, or save it to some long term storage (like a text or word document). It's easier said than done of course.
