late to the party, but I had OperaGX do a clever evil thing recently - I have an old machine running MacOS 10.14 (for reasons), I had GX up, and I alt-tab'd and noticed there was the "don't symbol" (ghostbusters) over the OperaGX Icon. I thought, "that can't be right". I'm running GX right now. I double checked, and I was using GX with several windows open. But the symbol was right - they had Updated OperaGX that I WAS running, WHILE I was running it, to a version that WOULDN'T work on the computer I was on. I eventually restarted GX, and got a 'You can't use OperaGX with this version of MacOS". Jerks.
I dug around, and very roughly, the .app file is not the App. They use a folder off in Library to store the actual pieces of the app, and it there is a few different pieces, and the .app file points to the actual executables.
I fondly remember the old opera days, up until the latest presto version, 12.18. If you knew what you were doing, you were able to fully customize the entire browser, all of it's toolbars and context menus, it was incredible.
Once they switched over to the Blink engine, all of that was lost. It's entire USP gone, just like that.
I've tried Opera 2 or 3 years back, just to see what it is like, and it's just another pointless chromium based browser, offering nothing to keep me using it, and the more i see posts and ads from this company, the more I feel like I made the right choice.
I've also tried the "spiritual successor" to Opera 12, Vivaldi, but it too couldn't win me back over from Firefox.
If Firefox adopted some Vivaldi features it would be the perfect browser, as it stands Vivaldi is unusable for development, but the Tiling and stacking tabs are awesome, wish Firefox borrowed those.
Alternatively Vivaldi switching to Firefox's engine and giving us a better dev experience would be nice
Apparently There is beef between apple and google, and google won’t allow you to watch content in 4K on their video players (say youtube) for newer chip like the M1. There is no sound explanation apart from being a petty org. So to be able to watch stuff in the resolution you like you need to enable dev mode and add “experimental features” and some arent even on after that. Ask me why apple doesn’t battle it? I didn’t care enough to find out at that point, they’re both assholes fighting but the users pay. I simply switched to firefox on macbook pro and i can actually use a retina to its full potential. Can enable 4K there on video players with no hassle.
furthermore, they add nonstandard features to their browser(along with chrome), which makes it difficult to make websites look the same across browsers.
fortunately, I can test those websites beforehand since we have webkit-based epiphany on GNU/Linux(the engine which safari uses).
but other developers, especially those who are on windows can't, since safari is mac-only.
I have a special stylesheet to fix safari(and chrome) styling.
otherwise it's a fine lightweight browser(blessed be KHTML).
It should be held back. Although I dislike the company, I believe safari's market share and use of an alternative browser engine is important in keeping google from closing the web.
I think there are some better alternatives out there such as Firefox + uBlock Origin extension, Brave, Vivaldi (maybe Arc? Haven't tried it yet) that gives you some extra features that are missing in safari (for example Multi-account containers, vertical tabs, split tabs,... just to mention the ones I enjoy the most)
But if you just want a browser that works from a normal usage I don't see nothing wrong in using Safari.
+it uses an engine different from Blink (aka Chromium) which keeps a little bit of variety in the browser engine market. So while using Safari you're also doing something good for the internet imho
My biggest attachment to Safari is how well integrated it is with the rest of the Mac. Fingerprint integration for passwords, gesture integration with the track pad, seamless handoff between phone and computer—these things are somewhat reproducible with Firefox and extensions, but it is nowhere near as perfect as it is when you’ve got the browser and the whole OS designed to work in a coordinated dance with each other.
Hard to disagree with that... the flawless integration of every piece in Apple's "ecosystem" is hard to reproduce (even if all those features can be achieved as you were saying, it wouldn't be "as flawless")
Just maybe pair it with an Ad and Tracker blocker extension like AdGuard
Hindenburg is an investment firm that researches publicly-traded companies and shorts their stocks if they find sufficient evidence of investor fraud before releasing its report.
I've been using Firefox as my "home" browser and Opera GX as my "work" browser. On Windows, it's easy to set up launch profiles but not so much on Mac. I need to figure out a solution to this before I can transition.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. It's different enough using day to day though IMO. Although I haven't kept track of what's their status on chromium extensions getting nerfed though.
Is this a shitpost or is that idiot actually telling me not to use Opera because of alleged investor fraud in 2020?
I don't give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the "Don't be Evil" clause from their code of conduct. If you want me to stop using Opera then you'll have to give me a reason about the specifications of the program, not about the company's petty crimes due to Chinese regulatory failures.
I don’t give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the “Don’t be Evil” clause from their code of conduct.
I'm just tired as the next person about posts that provide a million half-assed reasons to not use anything but Firefox. But honestly If we don't stop these places from building dossiers on us and locking us out of websites that are unsanctioned by them, It will a erode our opportunities in years to come.
Right now, it doesn't feel like it matters. Lexis-Nexis knows every nickel you ever spend and every creditor that ever ran a check on you, Google knows what type of porn you like to watch, tik tok and opera are storing everything that you've ever been into in a place that can be retrieved by other governments.
At some point we're going to have to take our privacy more seriously. Preferably before 1984 actually becomes real.
If you could just provide some citations about Opera intrusively tracking and building profiles then I'd happily switch. The thing is, though, it's still leagues better than Chromium in that regard.
Ah wow you're right, ever since Opera 15 they dropped the presto engine. Still, my point was supposed to be they're much more privacy friendly than Google Chrome, and that still stands to be argued.
For what it's worth their privacy policy does say they gather telemetry and they did pay how many billions for the company?
Almost everybody else is gathering telemetry as well obviously. The actual root of the concern is that the companies are based in China, you know the great firewall of China, China. The Chinese government holds a stranglehold on the companies that operate within them. For example if you have a US company and you want to do some business in China you have to find a Chinese partner company to sponsor you. Everything you store there everything you touch runs through the Chinese government. If they want any of the data, that required to be given access.
If you remember when Google went to open a data center in China there was a pretty big kerfuffle. It was because the Chinese government was going to be handed keys to the kingdom for anything that was stored in China. For better or for worse it's just how they operate.
You may not feel the same way but I'm sure you at least get the concern there.
Personally I try not to use Google integrated Chrome or Microsoft integrated chromium. I still use brave when I need a Chrome browser and that's not the best either. They'd sell me up the river if they decided they needed a buck.
I honestly wish we had more Firefox competition. And unified plug-in languages. The stuff that Opera and brave are providing aren't difficult to mimic. And I really like there being developers fighting YouTube ad blocking and website pop-ups and pay wall bypasses.
I'm not saying oh my God they're going to rape you over the coals right now but do consider that the people that are making these crazy ass posts aren't delusional or entirely wrong, and do use who's getting your data on your consideration.
20 years later you're denied a house loan because your internet records show you went to a fascist website. Or an anti-fascist website, whatever floats your boat.
Things that were acceptable or slightly garish 20 years ago are now grounds for dismissal at a job, you know.
Not that it matters either way but they didn't remove the clause, they just moved it from the introduction to the closing statement. Which clickbait articles all reported as "removed".
Vertical tabs are honestly one of the single most important features of a web browser for me these days. I honestly can't believe how much of a difference it makes.
Every time I have tried a different browser than Firefox I could never get it set up quite right. I never strayed from Firefox only because of the openness of the add-ons and customization, even when Firefox was miles behind when it came to browsing speed in the early 2010s as Chrome was popping off.
Anyone who tells me Chrome is better hasn't seen my multitude of tab add-ons which are the only thing that hold my online life together.
Plus, I recall google limiting adblockers and such on Chrome at a certain point. Firefox would never
I want to see your multitude of tab add-ons. I'm always looking for ways to improve my experience but I never even considered messing with tabs and now I wonder what I'm missing out on!
Session buddy was a big one for me in college when I had an overwhelming number of tabs open but didn't want to forget about what was on them. Basically just archives all your open tabs to a single page you can refine and look back at, so you can quickly just close everything and start fresh without actually losing anything meaningful or cluttering up your bookmarks.
The marvellous suspender helped prevent those tabs from using so much memory. Chrome hogs enough memory as it is lol.
I have one called tab manager plus which looks handy but I honestly forgot it was there before I ever actually used it lol
Sorry for the extremely late reply. But anyways, I use
Auto Tab Discard - Frees up ram with unused tabs
Sideberry - a vertical option to organize and search tabs with a overwhelming plethora of options
Tab Session Manager - To make sure I don't lose my tabs if my browser crashes
Tab Stash - to hide away bundles of tabs so I can sort through them later
Window Titler - To name my different windows I have open in order to keep things organized on my windows toolbar. I use the old school windows toolbar layout which has text beside the icon. I like it this way instead of going through little popup windows to sort through my shit.
I wouldn't say preferable but it's definitely very useful. When you have about 45+ tabs open(Yeah I do that) and the vertical tabs are too squished to show their titles, you have to then manually swap between tabs by either clicking or ctrl+tab etc to search for a specific tab.
Vertical tabs are like sidebar links in explorer except better, you can search tabs by address or title, drag and drop them for organizing, pin them to the top etc.
I started using Opera at version 9 point something and was a happy camper for a long time. It was a great browser, but its biggest problem was compatibility - more and more sites were behaving strangely and more and more the Opera folks had to patch things on the browser side. I stopped using it around the time the first alpha version of Vivaldi came out. Yes, Vivaldi had a lot of catching up to do at the beginning, but it was functional enough for a daily driver. Opera's first Blink-based version was some kind of a joke - it didn't even have a proper bookmarking system - it was as if everyone was assumed to have 15-20 bookmarks on their start page and that's it. Anyway, they lost all my trust when they sold out later on.
I'm willing to give Firefox a chance regarding the whole manifest v3 drama, although I see the Vivaldi folks opposing it (not sure how much they'll be able to do once they have to merge the MV3 stuff). My biggest hurdle with Firefox right now is the lack of native mouse gestures. Yes, it's somewhat possible to do it with extensions, but the 1% of the pages it doesn't work on (I know, I know, intentional limitation for all extensions) is enough to break my flow; gestures are so ingrained into my muscle memory at this point that I don't see myself using a browser without them supported the way they are in Vivaldi.
I want the latest version of my browser tho, I don't want the "stable" version from 6 months ago. Never had a stability problem with Firefox to warrant the wait.
I've been trying out Floorp for a few days now. It's a great browser but honestly I don't see that much of a difference compared to regular Firefox. If I had to pick, my favorite feature from Floorp would be the fact that it packages changes that would normally reuuire fiddling with userChrome.css into simple toggles in about:preferences. I especially like how it makes hiding the horizontal tab bar so easy when I use Tree Style Tabs. That being said, I have fully switched over anyways.
