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Waterfox Browser

134 pointsby isaac21259over 3 years ago

18 comments

overeaterover 3 years ago
Several things make me skeptical about this browser.<p>1) Homepage is a bit uncared for. The Copyright shows &quot;2020&quot; at the bottom, the top screenshot looks doctored rather than being a real screenshot.<p>2) It&#x27;s owned by an ad marketing platform, System1, as noted in the FAQ.<p>On the plus side, the Github repository is active.
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solarkraftover 3 years ago
As pointed out in another comment [0], apparently it’s extremely outdated. Other comments describe it as unstable and lacking Apple Silicon builds. If you’re just looking for a version of Firefox without the user-hostile parts, this ain’t exactly it.<p>From my months-old research such a thing doesn’t really seem to exist yet, but I definitely think it should. It could perhaps initially be shipped as a set of patches to be done on top of an existing Firefox installation.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28816443" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28816443</a>
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pndyover 3 years ago
Previous discussions:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20047170" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20047170</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15800634" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15800634</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10554083" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10554083</a><p>And the one on acquisition by System1:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22338321" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22338321</a><p>It&#x27;s my choice for &quot;sandbox&quot; browser - as in doing all stuff that I wouldn&#x27;t want to do on Vivaldi.
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BiteCode_devover 3 years ago
The problem is, it&#x27;s very old, and with Firefox, the good stuff comes with the last versions.<p>Especially, modern Firefox is wicked fast, while just a few versions before, it was less so. The difference is _staggering_.<p>I think there is a space for add ons to setup Firefox to be more privacy focused. It&#x27;s easier to maintain than a fork: compiling on so many targets such a huge software is very hard.
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forgotmypw17over 3 years ago
I use Waterfox and Waterfox Classic, along five other browsers, on a 2008 iMac.<p>Waterfox is stable and workable for me. I use Vimium-FF for keyboard things.<p>My use case: I only visit a few sites, including this one, and rarely click the article links here.<p>I really like it, it is like a Firefox which has been through obedience school, and now knows how to behave itself.<p>Definitely in my top-10 favorite post-2015 browsers.
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iota8over 3 years ago
Not much information on the home page on why to use this and not Firefox. As this is derivative of Firefox, then what does it add over Firefox?
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iszomerover 3 years ago
There&#x27;s also LibreWolf.
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melenaosover 3 years ago
By reading the subtitle &#x27;a perfect ballance between privacy and usability&#x27; i think that it wont have privacy and might be less user friendly that other browsers.<p>Also, the statement that you try to collect less data doesn&#x27;t says anything about privacy.
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warentover 3 years ago
Curious to know why is it so complicated to build a web browser?<p>Yes, they&#x27;re probably the most complex piece of software humans have ever created. That being said, it seems like it would be possible to create a browser that handles all of the most common use cases, so ~90% of your browsing experience.<p>Sure, maybe you need years and dozens of engineers for the final 10% but who cares about that bit? Wouldn&#x27;t people be willing to accept this feature tradeoff for a new, user-friendly browser?
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Causality1over 3 years ago
Has Waterfox gotten its act together? Last I checked on it it had a reputation of being slow and unstable,and its users were mostly people who needed XUL support. Of course those same people said it didn&#x27;t have much life left in it but it&#x27;s obviously still here.
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jccalhounover 3 years ago
I keep it installed because the old pre-webextension version of downthemall can download some things the new version doesn&#x27;t. But I only use it like once a month or so. I don&#x27;t see any reason for me to use it on a regular basis.
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nextaccounticover 3 years ago
Is this related to Firefox? The name suggests it, but the page doesn&#x27;t say
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schipplockover 3 years ago
Will there be an AArch64 build for macOS?
Svperstarover 3 years ago
I stopped using Waterfox back in like 2010-2012(not sure the exact year) and switched to Cyberfox. Then to Chrome, back to Firefox.<p>I don&#x27;t see any point in using Waterfox in 2021.
sandGorgonover 3 years ago
this is so cool! no mobile ? any learnings here as you attempt to build browsers for the app stores.
lprovenover 3 years ago
I have been using Waterfox Classic as my default browser on half a dozen boxes since 2017, on Ubuntu, openSUSE, Windows 10 and macOS. AMA. :-)<p>I customised Firefox fairly heavily, with an assortment of over a dozen addons I&#x27;d just accumulated over the years. Firefox Quantum broke all but 2 of them and destroyed the program&#x27;s usefulness to me.<p>Waterfox imported my profile intact and allows me to keep my customisations.<p>I have a vertical tab bar on the left (flat _not_ hierarchical) which is also merged with the bookmarks toolbar, also flattened. I have two download managers, one for ordinary small downloads in a tab, and another that can resume downloads, segment and parallelise large downloads, detect and bypass redirect pages and so on. Another addon automatically detects [Next] links and preloads the content into the first page, so you a big single page instead of multiple sub-pages. Another supplies anonymous login details from a shared public database. Another sorts and dedupes my several thousand bookmarks.<p>Oh, and on Ubuntu with Unity, Waterfox&#x27;s menu bar automatically appears in my top panel. Firefox for some baffling reason hides its menu bar, but if enabled, it doesn&#x27;t go into the top panel and instead wastes a strip of my laptop&#x27;s fairly small screen.<p>And so on and so on. Firefox Quantum destroyed all this and delivers an IMHO fairly poor user experience which is as bad as Chrome&#x27;s and in no way preferable to Chrome.<p>I have found some workarounds, for instance a vertical tab bar, but I have to enable a setting that enables user customisation, <i>then</i> I have to add a subdirectory to my profile and put some CSS in it in order to hide the crappy horizontal tabs and the pointless header row in the sidebar. It&#x27;s a pain. WebExtensions are sad crippled little things compared to the power of XUL and they don&#x27;t allow you to to really change the UI of the browser.<p>My impression is that today&#x27;s Firefox developers don&#x27;t really know or understand what people did with the tools that turn-of-the-century Mozilla provided us with. Since they didn&#x27;t have a clue what was possible, they decided to rip the whole lot out and fob us off with pathetic Chrome-style extensions, Chrome-style tabs, and Chrome-style lack of customisability.<p>So I switched to a power user&#x27;s browser that still lets me do this stuff.<p>There is no cost to me and contrary to what other commenters claim I can see no performance difference whatsoever. I have kept Firefox around on my Linux boxes because Github bitches about Waterfox, and apart from being much more clunky, Firefox 93 gives me nothing at all. No better speed, no better stability, about 1% of the selection of addons and they&#x27;re crippled things.<p>TBH I thought this would be a temporary thing, but it&#x27;s been four years now and Waterfox Classic is still going strong.<p>Mozilla, OTOH, has totally lost its way and seems to be flailing.
rogualover 3 years ago
&quot;No telemetry &#x2F; We don&#x27;t need to know what you do within your browser.&quot;<p>OK, good.<p>&quot;Limited Data Collection &#x2F; We try and take the bare minimum amount of information to keep things running smoothly. &quot;<p>Wait, what? So which is it?
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mastrsushiover 3 years ago
Ambitious, but absolutely not &quot;the fastest browser in existence&quot;
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