Alternatives to Firefox

[101RRS]

Home system running Win 10 and Firefox.

I have been running Firefox for many years and it overall has worked well for me but over the past few months each update causes me grief. Basically now I have tabs that will not open, update or work. Then all is OK then they play up. I have tried no updating but the advice to update starts to become annoying after a few days.

Also Modzilla does not have a "help desk" so help is via chat rooms which rarely provide the required information.

When firefox plays up and tabs will not update I use my phone system to get the information I am after or use Chrome. Now Chrome does work well but I do not like its layouts where for example the bookmarks menu goes across the page and off it - prefer to just hit a menu and the sub menus drop down. Also I have heard Chrome is bringing in an update where Adblockers cannot be used in future - not good.

So any other suggestions for a browser where menus drop down - other that Firefox and Chrome I really do not know much about browsers.

Thanks

Garry

[disco gazza]

I run firefox but I also have "brave".
Very similar to firefox, have found it very stable and updates come pretty regular(very quick to update).
Try it out, also very good at keeping trackers etc off the browser.

cheers
DG

[101RRS]

Thanks for that - looks a lot like Chrome - has bookmarks across and then off the page rather than a single tab that opens bookmarks vertically. Is it possible to do this - I cannot see it in settings.

Cheers

Garry

[vnx205]

Someone here a few years ago recommended Vivaldi.
I have been using it since then. It works for me.

[p38arover]

I use Waterfox (and Chrome) on my Win 10 64-bit PC and FireFox on my Linux PC.

Waterfox and FireFox allow me to do a couple of things that I can’t do with Chrome.

[101RRS]

Thanks to everyone for those suggestions. I will download each of the suggested browsers and try them out and see which best suits my needs.

Cheers

Garry

[steveG]

Regardless of which one you settle on, always keep at least one other browser installed on your computer. Some websites just don’t play nicely with a particular browser, and having a second one installed makes it easy to check.

As a side note in case you’re not aware - a lot of browser issues can be fixed simply by clearing the browser cache. Always a good thing to try if you’re having grief.

Steve

[101RRS]

As a side note in case you’re not aware - a lot of browser issues can be fixed simply by clearing the browser cache. Always a good thing to try if you’re having grief.

Steve

Thanks for that - looked through Firefox Settings but I do not see anything about clearing the browser cache - can you point me in the right direction?

Cheers

[loanrangie]

Thanks for that - looked through Firefox Settings but I do not see anything about clearing the browser cache - can you point me in the right direction?

Cheers

How to clear the Firefox cache | Firefox Help (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-clear-firefox-cache)

[JDNSW]

Try History -> clear recent history

[350RRC]

I have no issues running Safari 13.1.2............ I know it's not the latest version, but it works well when simply configured to get of cross site tracking, etc.

DL

[101RRS]

Thanks for the additional links and advice - cleared Cache and History and will see what happens after the next update that I have been dismissing for a few days. After update I will clear cache etc again.

As mentioned above I will load up the suggested alternative browsers and see what best suits.

Thanks for all the contributions - greatly appreciated.

Garry

[350RRC]

Thanks for the additional links and advice - cleared Cache and History and will see what happens after the next update that I have been dismissing for a few days. After update I will clear cache etc again.

As mentioned above I will load up the suggested alternative browsers and see what best suits.

Thanks for all the contributions - greatly appreciated.

Garry

I've nearly forgotten what cache and history are with Safari.

If in doubt I just click on preferences and if any data has been loaded I just click delete and that's it.

This is with cookies enabled all the time.

[thumbsupbig]. DL

[101RRS]

Thanks for the additional links and advice - cleared Cache and History and will see what happens after the next update that I have been dismissing for a few days. After update I will clear cache etc again.



Sorry to say - clearing the cache and history had no impact - will look at the alternative browsers suggested.

[disco gazza]

I'm going to try out "Waterfox".
I think Ron(P38a) suggested it.

DG

[Jackpos]

Brave and Opera are very good browsers.

Brave cuts out a lot of unwanted online traffic, saving time, etc.



Home system running Win 10 and Firefox.

I have been running Firefox for many years and it overall has worked well for me but over the past few months each update causes me grief. Basically now I have tabs that will not open, update or work. Then all is OK then they play up. I have tried no updating but the advice to update starts to become annoying after a few days.

Also Modzilla does not have a "help desk" so help is via chat rooms which rarely provide the required information.

When firefox plays up and tabs will not update I use my phone system to get the information I am after or use Chrome. Now Chrome does work well but I do not like its layouts where for example the bookmarks menu goes across the page and off it - prefer to just hit a menu and the sub menus drop down. Also I have heard Chrome is bringing in an update where Adblockers cannot be used in future - not good.

So any other suggestions for a browser where menus drop down - other that Firefox and Chrome I really do not know much about browsers.

Thanks

Garry

[workingonit]

Brave and Opera are very good browsers.

Brave cuts out a lot of unwanted online traffic, saving time, etc.

Opera purchased by Chinese consortium Opera (web browser) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser))

Opera probably works well, but.."Unfortunately, Opera is not considered a secure browser. Its built-in VPN is logging your data, and there are also other privacy issues." Opera Browser Review: How Secure is it in 2022? | VPNpro (https://vpnpro.com/web/opera-review/)

I use Waterfox on Puppy Linux.

Brave seems to get good reviews.

[incisor]

Still prefer Firefox myself and rarely have an issue with it

Also use vivaldi and brave regularly but some things in these don't work as I would like

[Mercguy]

Browsers are like cars - everyone likes to choose what they like and then usually tweak it to make it a more personal experience.

The tweaking is usually where the issues occur - updates no longer supporting extensions, or settings are cleared with new installations and updates.

As a suggestion, try and keep your firefox installation as vanilla as possible, install the necessary browser extensions for security ad blocking, no-script etc and on top of all that - get away from the mainstream firefox and choose to install Firefox ESR instead.

ESR - Extended Service Release - it is to ensure stability and compatibility in large institutions where browsers need to be kept on a strict update schedule.

What does it mean? typically not all the bells and whistles supported immediately - and some outright simply not supported.

Overall, the ESR releases of firefox are far more stable and less prone to all the continual update cycle BS that is thrust upon the public when someone decide the world needs to have a new feature when the actual consumption of said feature would result in uptake of 0.0000000000001% of the population.

Like I said at the outset - everyone likes their browser "their" way. The less you customize and the more you leave as-is, the less issues you will generally encounter.

Get your security up to scratch, be vigilant about ad blocking and script blocking and stay on top of all the sites blindly adopting 3rd party scripts and trackers.

[workingonit]

Still prefer Firefox myself and rarely have an issue with it

Also use vivaldi and brave regularly but some things in these don't work as I would like

By way of general info I store my copy of Puppy on a USB; it comes with a range of programs already preinstalled, although you can add other programs to the USB (SFS and Pet files) from limited repositories - you can trial programs and if you don't like them then don't save them to the USB when you shut down. To use Puppy I run a copy from the USB into the laptop ram only (simple process, no longer than loading windows). Anything I want to save, like a pdf or document, goes to an external hard drive and not the USB containing the Puppy program. The laptop internal drive (preinstalled with Windows) is never used.

Couldn't find a native brave.pet or brave.sfs file for Puppy but I did find something called a 'flatpack' file which can be loaded onto a drive of your choice.

So I fire up Puppy, go to the 'Brave' folder on the hard drive, click on Brave-Portable64 and up pops the Brave browser. Using it now. Not sure of the safety aspect doing this. Will have to poke around, make sure that Puppy has complete control over this program and that there are no auto save type actions going to the drive without my permission.

[Tins]

In a couple of months Google is going to shift from the Manifest V2 extension to V3. So what? Well, if you use ad blockers then they won't work in Chrome or most of its forks, excepting probably Brave. 's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox should still be fine. ( Chrome is actually a fork of Safari [WebKit], so why not try that instead? Way more secure and 's business is not in ads so it doesn't track you for ad purposes. Unlike Google.)
Firefox is a great browser if you have the RAM. Brave is brilliant if you hate ads on YT. It also lets you play with TOR. If you don't like being tracked across the Net then Firefox or Safari are good everyday browsers. Chrome WILL track you. If you don't care about that or ads Chrome is fine.

[350RRC]

Safari 15.6.1 is now on my Mac, and it's great when you enable private browsing. Has better cross site tracking blocking than before.

I can't stand the thought of my paid data allowance enriching others from what I do.

Running the net through a gen 3 SE iPhone that usually gets more than 20mb/s on 5G and I'm a bit remote.

Closer to town it's common to see well over 100 mb/s.

cheers, DL