Browsers, Add-Ons and Search Engines

[Mataresa]

Browsers, Add-Ons and Search Engines

I have been searching today for a browser alternative.

I am currently using SWare Iron, which was suggested by a friend a couple years back, since it seemed to have all the advantages, like speed as Chrome, but not the disadvantages of phoning home. I read though about a year ago the critique of it only being scare ware, that it just hardcodes the deactivation of some features, which you can also opt out on Chrome, as well as the author just wanting to get add revenue riding on the success of Chrome. It also annoyed me a bit that there was no option for an auto update or at least to subscribe to be informed, though there is a third party solution for that, although it does not work properly anymore on my machine, since it also constantly shows me the current version.

Today I read also that they haven't published their source code in recent years, although they are supposed to be under open source licence, which could be worrying. Thus I have been searching for alternatives. Ideally I would want to have a browser, which is fast, open source, privacy concerned and has a good add-on support. The latter would probably mean it has to be a Chromium or Firefox derivative to benefit from their add-on library.

My search for good alternatives came up empty since all seem to have some drawbacks. Now I am thinking of just switching to Chrome. Are there any better options?

Currently using µBlock, µMatrix and MagicActions for YouTube as add-ons. Very happy with the former two, which I recently switched to, but still a bit undecided with MagicActions. The people releasing it seem a bit dubious to me and the options are a bit unselfexplanatory or unsatisfactory. Any other YouTube add-ons you can suggest?

Lastly I switched recently to DuckDuckGo as a search engine after having used StartPage for quite a while. I think from a usability it is a big imrpovement and yields better results. (StartPage was supposed to use Google search results, but gave me filtered results, which lessened the quality, although I did nothing like that in the settings.) Also liking the dark theme, which is easier on the eyes for me and I think more websites should have dark themes. It is only missing the maps feature of google of course sadly and the translation, which I never used though.

Hope this topic is not too broad, but didn't want to open up three different threads for that.

 

[Aaden]

I think this should be right down @Gilrond 's alley.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

What's wrong with Firefox? Mozilla manifesto is something to support: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Firefox overtook Chrome in JavaScript performance a while ago already.

I also use DuckDuckGo as well as a dark theme it matches dark theme of the browser itself (though I use one from KDE - Krita Dark, with bindings for GTK+, which makes Firefox using it implicitly as well). By the way, try the !tww bang in DuckDuckGo. I added it a while ago. Should be useful for the forum users here

I don't use any Yotube add-ons and in general avoid closed source add-ons. What exactly do you want to use them with Youtube for?

 

[Mataresa]

Thanks for the answer. Don't know Iron/Chrome felt a bit better UI wise when I switched and was better in performance, but maybe I should give FF a try again. Though µBlock and µMatrix haven't been ported yet I think, so I hope they will soon.
I use YouTube add-ons to disable DASH-Playback, have automatic maximum resolution and to force Flash (cause html5 player still autoplays and has no higher resolutions for some reason...) mainly. Had a few others with another add-on, which got too slow though for me.

 

[GuyNwah]

Firefox/Iceweasel is my workhorse. There are so many good things about Firefox, especially its configuration, instrumentation, and security tools, that I am willing to put up with a few less than felicitous UI features.

I have to use Chrome for some work-required stuff, but I keep it to a minimum.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Plus UI in Firefox is highly customizable, and if you don't like some defaults you can change it quite drastically.

---------- Updated at 10:41 PM ----------

Thanks for the answer. Don't know Iron/Chrome felt a bit better UI wise when I switched and was better in performance, but maybe I should give FF a try again. Though µBlock and µMatrix haven't been ported yet I think, so I hope they will soon.
I use YouTube add-ons to disable DASH-Playback, have automatic maximum resolution and to force Flash (cause html5 player still autoplays and has no higher resolutions for some reason...) mainly. Had a few others with another add-on, which got too slow though for me.

Firefox doesn't support DASH yet (or rather MSE which is the client side API needed to talk to DASH server), but when it will you'll be able to disable Media Source Extensions which are needed for it in about:config without any add-ons. I.e. set media.mediasource.enabled to false. You can even set it to true in the current Firefox (then HTML5 player will give you higher resolution and access to DASH), but it's still somewhat buggy.

I can switch between HTML5 and Flash on Youtube for Firefox without any issues: https://www.youtube.com/html5
Though I personally prefer HTML5 player and try to avoid Flash.

By the way, why don't you want to use DASH variant in general? It serves VP9 from Youtube, giving better quality and higher resolution than non DASH version. At least when it works.

 

[Mataresa]

Hm, maybe FF is the right alternative then.
Well I tend to skip content when watching videos, so I like to preload them, so I can watch them on maximum no problem and am able to forward to the interesting parts without having to wait again. I would prefer html 5 as well, but as I haven't figured out the autoplay resolution thing on Iron yet, it wasn't usable for me.
For me it is set to html5 on that page and no options to change it.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I think preloading is going to be ditched no matter DASH or not. It's basically an economy technique. Youtube saves traffic which is likely to be wasted (i.e. imagine how many times you preload the whole thing and never watch it later, or watch just 1% of it). Yeah, it hinders full preloading method, but I bet it saves them tons of expenses on energy and traffic.

If you want to bypass it (since for example you are sure that you want to watch it and don't want Youtube to tell you how to download data), you can use tools like youtube-dl which can access high quality streams from DASH and merge them for you into a video file essentially downloading the whole thing and saving it.

 

[Mataresa]

Well, it is understandable, but of course I would prefer if there was just the option to enable it and it was disabled by default. Would save them a lot of traffic, but I would still be happy.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Well, it is understandable, but of course I would prefer if there was just the option to enable it and it was disabled by default. Would save them a lot of traffic, but I would still be happy.

Yeah, that would be useful. But it's Google for you So youtube-dl to the rescue: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

---------- Updated at 12:16 AM ----------

Their Github page: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/

---------- Updated at 12:47 AM ----------

Run it as:

youtube-dl -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwYp0vfTuE'

to get all formats. I get these:

[youtube] DJwYp0vfTuE: Downloading webpage
[youtube] DJwYp0vfTuE: Extracting video information
[youtube] DJwYp0vfTuE: Downloading DASH manifest
[info] Available formats for DJwYp0vfTuE:
format code extension resolution  note 
249         webm      audio only  DASH audio , opus @ 50k (worst)
250         webm      audio only  DASH audio , opus @ 70k
251         webm      audio only  DASH audio , opus @ 160k
139         m4a       audio only  DASH audio   49k , aac  @ 48k (22050Hz), 818.07KiB
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  129k , aac  @128k (44100Hz), 2.12MiB
171         webm      audio only  DASH audio  134k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 1.87MiB
172         webm      audio only  DASH audio  183k , audio@256k (44100Hz), 2.61MiB
141         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  255k , aac  @256k (44100Hz), 4.22MiB
278         webm      256x144     DASH video  161k , webm container, VP9, 1fps, video only, 1.57MiB
160         mp4       256x144     DASH video  111k , 15fps, video only, 1.77MiB
242         webm      426x240     DASH video  230k , 1fps, video only, 2.55MiB
133         mp4       426x240     DASH video  248k , 30fps, video only, 3.97MiB
243         webm      640x360     DASH video  416k , 1fps, video only, 4.73MiB
134         mp4       640x360     DASH video  604k , 30fps, video only, 6.30MiB
244         webm      854x480     DASH video  915k , 1fps, video only, 9.53MiB
135         mp4       854x480     DASH video 1115k , 30fps, video only, 12.51MiB
247         webm      1280x720    DASH video 1766k , 1fps, video only, 19.17MiB
136         mp4       1280x720    DASH video 2264k , 30fps, video only, 27.09MiB
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     
22          mp4       1280x720    (best)

And then for example:

youtube-dl -f 247+251 --merge-output-format webm 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwYp0vfTuE' -o test.webm

---------- Updated at 12:54 AM ----------

Just noticed that they are using 160 Kbps Opus. That's an overkill.

 

[Mataresa]

Well seems a bit overkill, if I just want to watch a video once and not be bothered by loading times. ^^ Better to just wait a couple of seconds then.
By the way, reading up on the customize feature of the layout. Seems really good and impressive. Way too late now, but will try the current version tommorrow. Seems like I missed quite some development. That happens when you are content with one software for too long. ^^

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I have some personal sanity restorers for Firefox in about:config (basically restoring UI features which were dummified or became worse to my taste). Plus some add-ons for that purpose as well. I can post those here a bit later.

---------- Updated at 04:15 AM ----------

Useful Firefox UI tweaks in about:config

browser.urlbar.trimURLs             = false   shows http:// in the URL bar (by default only https:// is shown which is an incosistent mess).
browser.search.showOneOffButtons    = false   restores classic style search bar without annoying huge icons and etc. Works better for DDG with bangs.
browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab = false   keeps the window open even if you close the last tab.
browser.ctrlTab.previews            = true    makes switching tabs with Ctrl+Tab similar to KDE's Alt+Tab behavior when pressed once (i.e. switches to the previously used tab)

---------- Updated at 04:24 AM ----------

Very useful UI add-ons

Toggle Find Bar - makes find bar toggleable with Ctrl+F like it always used to be until it got broken.
Classic Theme Restorer - there are tons of settings in it, play around to find what you prefer. Some important stuff in it which restores features which were hidden:

General UI:
* movable back and forward buttons - enabled
Location Bar:
* RSS feed button - enabled
* Star button (bookmark) - enabled

---------- Updated at 04:30 AM ----------

And that's an example of userChrome.css to make close button on the tabs smarter in order not to clutter the UI:

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);

/* Makes tab close button visible only on hover */
.tabbrowser-tab:not(:hover) .tab-close-button { display: none !important; }
.tabbrowser-tab[pinned="true"]:hover .tab-close-button,
.tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned]):hover .tab-close-button { display: -moz-box !important; }

One of the reasons I like Firefox for is it's incredible UI flexibility.

 

[Mataresa]

Tried out Vivaldi beta today. Seems pretty good. Anyone tried it out and has any thoughts on it?

 

[The_Gaming_Skulls]

I use Brave Bowser, I like it so much I use brave dev, beta and nightly builds.

thanks

 

[fr33kSh0w2012]

Deleted

 

[marsstorm2020]

Short :
Check iridium from browsers also get with it sandboxie, and run Iridium on sandbox browser.
Regarding the addons µBlock, µMatrix are all you need. [ If you cannot bothered with micro managing get nano defender and nano blocker but customizing µBlock, µMatrix is a different thing] (Avoid privacy badger, No script and the rest since they not so effective and give a fake sense of security) For youtube iridium addon by Particle is all you need.
For extra layers of security get Pi -hole for effective ad blocking, data mining blocking and learn how to make your own custom VPN

For search engine//www.startpage.com avoid duckduck.go [ the marketing behind is not for nothing]

Good luck.

 

[josie34]

I also have been using StartPage. But they were seold to advertising company recently. GoodBye privacy? I am considering moving out from StartPage