What is your favorite browser?

SajalGhosh

As a technology enthusiast, I’d like to share my perspective on this.

Firefox has been my go-to browser for a while, mainly because of:

1. Multi-Account Containers: Perfect for managing multiple profiles or accounts seamlessly.
2. RAM Efficiency: It’s lightweight and doesn’t hog system resources.
3. Privacy Focus: With its 100% open-source nature and stellar reputation as a privacy-first browser, it’s hard to beat.

Vivaldi, on the other hand, has a special place in my heart for its unique and productivity-oriented features:

1. Page Tiling: A brilliant tool for working with multiple pages side by side—ideal for multitaskers.
2. Plain Text/Markdown Notes: This feature is a gem for academic researchers and avid readers like me, making it easy to jot down notes directly from web pages.
3. Web Panels: Super handy for accessing frequently used sites without leaving your main tabs.
4. Customizable Dashboard: A lovely productivity hub and a virtual assistant.

A Few Observations

While Vivaldi excels in many areas, there are a couple of things I’d like to highlight:

High RAM Usage: Vivaldi can be quite demanding on memory.
Text-to-Speech Feature: Adding a natural and seamless "Read Aloud" feature would make it even more user-friendly.

Cheers

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@thesdev , we did give it a try, but found that it would require a lot of work to keep it up to date. We have instead focused on building capabilities into Vivaldi which are the main reasons people want extensions.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@geillescas , I have not tried them, but it looks like they have taken some inspiration from Vivaldi. Even marketing.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@dbug13 @trinsec , it is interesting how many browsers take inspiration from Vivaldi. I guess we must be doing something right.

Ralf Demuth

@jon
@Vivaldi is my favorite because it gets so much right, right out of the box and is made by good people.

Nia

@jon Firefox on Desktop, Vivaldi on mobile.

Vivaldi is close for me on Mobile because it works really well, but I'm using the Fennec version of Firefox from F-droid currently and it's a favorite, with Vivaldi close behind. Close on mobile because it's the second closest thing for me on privacy goals, and Firefox & forks on Android are a bit buggy.

Firefox (preferably forks) on desktop fully because of the UI being open source, no slight against Vivaldi for that, I fully understand the reasoning for not doing so. I just prefer open source so I bias towards as much as possible of it when not overly difficult to do so.

I do not trust Mozilla, more open source nature of the app allows me to take trust of ownership out of the equation a bit, especially so with forks.

Annelies Kamran

@jon
Vivaldi because tabs, RSS reader, dashboard. Other: Duck duck go for privacy. I also use Firefox and its forks like Librewolf, but not as much. I haven't even heard of some of the browsers mentioned in the replies; will have to check them out.

schnedan

@jon I used FF since its first release, its my workhorse, and I use a lot of privacy plugins. I like the Interface, its fast, zoom is good, And my perception is, the plugin interface is more open and there are more powerful plugins as with chome based browsers

also I liked opera in the past and such the vivaldi concept is really nice.
its fast, the redraw when zooming is distracting, zoom could have more finer steps,

zbrando

@jon For me on Windows performance is more or less the same for all the above browsers. Edge is decent and do all what the average user needs. I like Vivaldi because is tweakable (I like the idea of the mail client but something on the UI doesn't work for me, maybe I'm only used with Outlook). Firefox because I use it since it was Phoenix and I'm so sorry it is dieing.

schnedan

@jon I never tested if vivaldi could replace my thunderbird... but is mixing stuff in one programm really a good idea?
perhaps I will try in a VM one day.

and I would like to see if vivaldi would support other mastodon instances...

PS: on Android vivaldi is my favorite but please: fdroid store!

Make Fascists Afraid Again

@jon Edge.. the unpopular choice!

I dunno I find it fastest, but I'm also using windows

Double criminal

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@schnedan ,

We have found that having things integrated has significant benefits, but of course there is a bit of getting used to. Give it a try!

As a side note, it is easy to run multiple instances of Vivaldi, so you can run Mail, Calendar and Feeds in one instance and most of your Web browsing in another. There is flexibility here.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@culturalfawa

Have you tried Vivaldi?

TenDegreesNorth

@jon
I trust Vivaldi, the company, to do right by me more than the developers of the other browsers.

Colossal7374

@jon Librewolf, because it is not Google controlled then Vivaldi and Brave they all have different uses

Crystal

@jon I choose Vivaldi as my favorite because I like many things about it. I use my home computer now for recipes, cash spreadsheets, and a shopping list. I had not previously used social media and this is a nice surprise for me to enjoy it. I used Netscape before Metacrawler and then I used shelves of books until trying Firefox. I used Chrome then Edge before I retired, but used Firefox and DuckDuckGo on home computers until I noticed Vivaldi about two years ago and put it on my home computer and laptop and cellphone. I like its many options and features and forums full of answers to questions I might ever need ask! It gives me a calendar and note and task pads and all sorts of things which optionally can sync and be seen when I use the browser on my cellphone or to choose not to sync. The very best is, when I removed Windows Operating System from my old laptop and replaced it with one of the Linux distributions now this Vivaldi continues to give me my familiar user experience. Thank you, to all and everyone who is and who are responsible for allowing me this user experience which followed me between operating systems, thank you.

chalex2020

I've been using it at home for quite some time now. I wonder though why some corporate environments started outright blocking Vivaldi.

NexaLilly 🏳️‍⚧️

@jon Vivaldi because it's the most like Opera 12.18 and before, at least in spirit.

LibreWolf in second place because it's more privacy focused than FireFox and I got used to FireFox between opera's terrible switch to being chromium-based and Vivaldi being available.

Tedel

@jon Firefox because of its tweaks. I admire what Vivaldi has achieved, but Firefox can achieve almost the same with extensions. The only thing missing in Firefox are native tab groups, but they are a work in progress according to their site.

If Firefox vanished tomorrow, I would quite likely use Vivaldi. I was an Opera user in the old days. Vivaldi is the only browser that follows that spirit today.

Costya Osnos

@jon I found out that also Edge is quite nice. Very friendly, the tabs can be moved to the side position, the same panel as in Vivaldi, excellent translator. But there is not so easy to switch between search engines, also not so easy to switch to the main workspace, and there's almost no Speed Dial.
I've been living with Edge (on macOS, imagine) for some months when Vivaldi has several annoying bugs, but later I came back to Vivaldi, and now Edge is my second browser, for some different cases Good luck!