Another "Which PC browser should I go with?" post

Self

[CatOwner]

from day one. EVERY version of FF leaks memory like a sieve and the developers could care less ...

I can believe that. It's just at some point in the past couple of years moderately heavy browsing with Firefox would cause the browser to crash or lock up the PC. This is on a Windows 7 Pro PC with at least 8GB RAM, No other application used on that PC causes it to lock up.

[jonrick46]

Bookmark.

[Noumenon]

Check out SR Ware Iron.

[Bob434]

does adblock plus work with waterfox? that’s the only adon i care about- can’t beleive i gotta switch browsers because firefox won’t run adblock plus- thanks mozilla

[snarkpup]

The biggest problem I’ve had with NoScript is that some pages need so many scripts that it takes a long time to check out enough of them individually to get the essential parts of the page running, so sometimes I just leave.

I deal with this problem by running both NoScript and uBlock Origin. If some site (typically a news site) tries to run scripts from 15 sources (literally!) and I don't want to figure out which two or three really need to be whitelisted, I'll temporarily disable NoScript and let uBlock Origin knock out the dozen that are just trackers and crap.

The Firefox add-ons I use are mostly for security, with a couple of utilities thrown in. I am maintaining a table on my FR homepage (here) showing what add-ons work for these purposes on Firefox and the three alternatives I am testing.

I will not surf the internet without NoScript or some equivalent. As shown in my table, the closest equivalent I have found on Chrome is something called Quick Javascript Switcher. I've been using it for only a day; but it seems like it might be usable for the purpose. I'm open to other suggestions from people who have more Chrome experience. I've just recently started with Chrome and will probably only stick with it if Firefox and both of its cousins die.

[CatOwner]

The biggest problem I’ve had with NoScript is that some pages need so many scripts that it takes a long time to check out enough of them individually to get the essential parts of the page running, so sometimes I just leave.

--> I deal with this problem by running both NoScript and uBlock Origin. If some site (typically a news site) tries to run scripts from 15 sources (literally!) and I don't want to figure out which two or three really need to be whitelisted, I'll temporarily disable NoScript and let uBlock Origin knock out the dozen that are just trackers and crap.

That's what I like about Opera/ScriptSafe. Once you figure out which sites to blacklist (either specific pages or the whole domain), you never have to deal with them again.

It's a pain at first, deciding what to let through and what to block. Unless I am certain, I will just block the specific page I believe to be a problem. If more pages show up under the same domain that I want blacklisted, I'll block the whole domain. Pretty much the same process for me in whitelisting pages and/or domains.

I am willing to live with the sterile look and feel of Opera, but learning they were sold to a Chinese company last year is concerning.

[snarkpup]

does adblock plus work with waterfox?

I and many others have switched from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin. The latter seems to run just about everywhere (including Waterfox). I use uBlock Origin "out of the box" without so much as an option tweak and it does the job. With a mouse click, it will pop up a list of the domains it's allowing and blocking in the web page being viewed.

[Bob434]

thnaKs I’ll give that a look- but that would still be a ‘legacy app’ that firefox will be doing away with right?

[CatOwner]

My description of "pages" is misleading and is a result of my limited understanding of Opera and the ScriptSafe extension. My apologies.

The actual whitelist (or blacklist) can be the current page's domain, i.e. www.youtube.com or its entire domain, meaning all subdomains are also whitelisted. The same scheme is applied for blacklisting domains.

[snarkpup]

That's what I like about Opera/ScriptSafe. Once you figure out which sites to blacklist (either specific pages or the whole domain), you never have to deal with them again.

NoScript is "mostly" a whitelist-based blocker and, by default, blocks all active content from everywhere. NoScript also allows a form of blacklisting that sounds the same as what you are talking about. NoScript calls it marking them explicitly as "untrusted." There is no operational difference between NoScript blocking a site because you have marked it untrusted vs. blocking it because it has not been whitelisted. However, when you pop up the list of stuff that NoScript is blocking on some page, it leaves out the stuff that you have already marked as untrusted. As you say, you never have to deal with them again. (If you need to see the untrusted stuff on some page, you can click on the "Untrusted" submenu on the popup listing of what it is blocking.)

Is ScriptSafe strictly an Opera goodie, or is it something I can experiment with in the browsers I am considering (Pale Moon, Waterfox, Chrome)?

[familyop]

From reading the Brave site, it appears that some interesting features are on the way for that browser. Just tried it, and it works pretty well. Will look at what they’re doing with code. I might try staying with it a little, if the code is clean enough. That’s important. Hastily adopted code often presents the worst security holes.

[Salamander]

How do I import my passwords and logins from Chrome?

[snarkpup]

thanks I’ll give that a look- but that would still be a ‘legacy app’ that firefox will be doing away with right?

Currently, uBlock Origin is the only thing that is not marked as "legacy" when I pop up my list of add-ons in Firefox. I assume this means it has already been adapted to work in the new world.

[CatOwner]

Is ScriptSafe strictly an Opera goodie, or is it something I can experiment with in the browsers I am considering (Pale Moon, Waterfox, Chrome)?

According to the developer, there is a version for Opera, and there is a version for Chrome/Chromium/Vivaldi and other derivatives.

https://www.andryou.com/scriptsafe/

[snarkpup]

OK. I see ScriptSafe in the Chrome catalog. I'll check it out.

[familyop]

"The SJW nonsense associated with Mozilla ownership doesn’t bother you?"

Funding is the make or break influence for many of the worst of socio-political efforts, and some browsers do help to funnel big money into particular kinds of NGOs. If a particular kind of NGO gets enough funding, it can be very influential in politics with a monopoly over availability of information for people who use the Web and in other ways.

Many sites publishing traditional, conservative information or clean, reasonable, free discussion may be relegated to the so-called Dark Web before long because of pressure from left-leaning NGOs. It's already bad enough with what some of the most popular search engines do.

Here's a site with great resources for people who want to learn about browser security. The material is easy to read, easy to understand and concise.

https://eff.org/

Another thing... Lazy, intrusive or malicious Web developers tend to favor Javascript too much. Web developers should explore and practice with CSS to the fullest for great, attractive, fast-loading web pages before doing much of anything else.

[lysie]

later.

[snarkpup]

I haven't seen much talk about Vivaldi in these browser discussions. It's been on my back burner to look at some time. If it is "Chrome without the Google spyware" or "Opera without the Chinese government," it would be worth checking out.

[Architect of Avalon]

Looks good.

[CatOwner]

After trying Brave and being disappointed, I just installed Vivaldi a little bit ago. I have both uBlock Origin and ScriptSafe extensions installed. This has definite promise. I need to research Vivaldi a bit more.