Celebrate the web by using another browser than Google’s Chrome

I&#x27;ve happily used Firefox for over a decade now (since version 2.0). The web&#x27;s changed a little since then, but I think Firefox has adapted well and has been the source of a lot of innovation. I&#x27;ve tried Chrome and other browsers, but never really thought much of them - but I&#x27;m very glad they exist! Variety is a great thing to have.<p>It&#x27;s disheartening to see developers with the attitude that they only care about users using the same browser as them and it&#x27;s been frustrating over the years to see services neglecting non-Chrome browsers (example: Netflix + Linux up until recently). What happened to cross-browser testing, progressive enhancement and other best practices?

This article is ahistorical - it was Firefox that first shook IE&#x27;s dominance. Chrome took over the Firefox niche and finally claimed dominance because it ran so much better, while still meeting web standards.<p>I develop with Chrome not just because it&#x27;s the least pain in the ass and has a good ecosystem of tools, but because it adheres to standards. I can&#x27;t remember the last time I&#x27;ve made a page in Chrome and it didn&#x27;t work in Firefox or even Edge. It&#x27;s only weird, non-standard browsers I have to work around.

The Chrome monoculture among developers is concerning. It&#x27;s something each and every developer should consider and actively combat by changing their primary browser. The open web cannot flourish when built on a monopoly

After years of using Chrome I tried Firefox just to try something different and to my surprise it&#x27;s 90% as good as Chrome and even surpasses it in certain areas:<p>- address bar history is better, Chrome wants you to google everything, not use your history,<p>- Firefox for Android has addons, I don&#x27;t even want to remember life without uBlock... I still have nightmares of vibrating website scams on Chrome.<p>Chrome is generally better in:<p>- speed and security,<p>- interesting Web APIs (foreign-fetch in Service Workers, Barcode recognition on Android).

&gt; You don’t have to be that old to remember the dark days when Internet Explorer strangled the web by its utter domination.<p>It is not the same thing. Chromium ( upon which Chrome is based ) is open source. If Google abuses their power it is easier to correct course by forking. In fact, many browsers like Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Yandex etc are already based on Chromium<p>&gt; By balancing the browsers, choosing to use not just what’s convenient but what’s lesser used, you can make the business case for monopoly plays a bad deal.<p>Pass. People should use the best software they can get their hands on<p>&gt; good folks at Firefox deserve your usage just as much<p>So contrary to popular opinion on HN, Firefox is not as good as Chrome. However, we must still use it. Consider it an act of charity<p>I don&#x27;t think so. Mozilla must earn their user base by making a good browser and marketing it well

Uh wait though, isn&#x27;t this the entire tech business? Get people to centralize on using a technology then build a monopoly&#x2F;moat around it? Who&#x27;s going to acquire the sexy startups if we abandon our monopolistic ideas and the massive cash troves that come with them? Is there really another way?<p>I know, I know, nobody wants to believe this is truly what happens. But let&#x27;s be honest, big companies control much of what happens on the web now. And then they acquire smaller companies that challenge them. And the government doesn&#x27;t know anything about tech or not nearly enough to understand that these monopolies probably need to be broken up.<p>Can you think of an alternative to the system we&#x27;re in, or does all technology lead to centralization like this?

Why is this a big concern when chrome is mostly open source and you can download chromium? If Google takes a very wrong step, chrome can be forked.

Hard pass. I&#x27;ll just change my user-agent and call it a day.

I have a different opinion. I think this monoculture is great. There are many browsers all based on Chromium: Chrome, Opera, etc. While they offer different views, their core rendering engine and api&#x27;s are shared with chromium. It makes life much easier as a developer. While having many implementations is great, it is a pain in the ass. For example, I have an app that uses service worker and indexeddb. It has cases where it fails to work on Safari.<p>The author compares to Chromium monoculture to IE. That is a very unfair comparison. I would compare it to Linux. Both have open code bases that you can fork at any time and contribute to if you want. It works well on all platforms&#x2F;hardware respectively. Both have corporate goodwill to pay for it. Its wasteful to re-implement things multiple times over.

I do not care about the cup-monopoly, when the providers of water are strangling the pipe.

I make sure to test my applications in all major browsers and iron out bugs in all of them, when possible.<p>So, that aside, I&#x27;m too used to Chromium for me to bother switching to something else as my personal browser. Not to mention that it&#x27;s handy if one uses mostly Google applications (gmail, maps, keep, etc) as it allows synchronization between devices.<p>Besides, and this might seem a bit incendiary, I see no problem with something that&#x27;s <i>mostly</i> open source holding the largest market share. It&#x27;d be very difficult for Google to attempt any abuse or create a captive audience, or to force developers to not use standards.

Is there a tool that can sync bookmarks and addons across browsers? Especially now that Mozilla is going to support the same addons? Something that syncs things on an ongoing basis, not just once. I think FF is great but asking people to use more than one browser, yet manually sync the bookmarks and addons is asking for way too much. Even just for bookmarks this would be great. The functionality is 99% of the way there (one time sync works). Personally, I just think Mozilla no longer cares if people use its products. If it did, it would make using them a lot easier and more convenient.

the more reliant you become on popular corporate&#x2F;&quot;non-profit&quot; controlled browsers the more disappointed you will be when the drm comes. but i will bet they will ease you into it to minimize the complaints. long ago someone predicted very early that the web would evolve into tv, driven by &quot;pinheads&quot;. i believe he was correct.<p>anyone remember a browser from nocrew called zen? had framebuffer support. i think it also allows users to add new interfaces. <i>still compiles cleanly</i> today even on non-linux. code is in archive.org, see nocrew.org<p>have not tried to use it but am impressed that it is from 2004-ish and still compiles cleanly. framebuffer has had some significant improvements since 2004. could be time to revisit.

Do HN users have much to say about Brave? I&#x27;ve been hearing quite a bit about it lately but haven&#x27;t tried it out yet. I&#x27;m figuring that if I switch browsers, it would be to something with some interesting edge like this, rather than going back to Firefox.

To me Firefox is superior because of things like Tree Style Tabs. But Mozilla is killing Tree Style Tabs in an incomprehensible rush to become indistinguishable from Chrome. But if Firefox is indistinguishable from Chrome what reason is there to use it?

I wish I could switch to Firefox, but I&#x27;m really dependent on sync features and I just love Chrome OS on my chromebook...<p>Are there any solid solutions for Firefox &lt;-&gt; Chrome syncing?

Love Chrome. Tried other options from time to time but always go back. I do run on a higher end machine. It is fast and just rock solid.

Dear firefox,<p>Just take Chrome&#x27;s devtools and put it in.<p>I&#x27;ll switch my browser, all of my extended family (that I provide tech-support to), to firefox.<p>Thanks, A Developer

Since everyone is talking about Chrome&#x27;s flaws, why does the font rendering in Chrome still suck?

I would of setting up a browser for my preferences didn&#x27;t take 1 hour of my time.

Nice try internet explorer

IE was a majority browser while being bad. Chrome is the best browser available (for average joe at least). No plea to use another browser will be heard, until there is an as-good or better alternative.

&gt; But you can stop it. By balancing the browsers, choosing to use not just what’s convenient, but what’s lesser used, you can make the business case for monopoly plays a bad deal. Consider it your civic duty as a fan of the open web.<p>Internet Explorer was a monopoly because it was the default web browser installed on the most prevalent operating system. It&#x27;s the same reason Safari has a majority on Macs even while it lagged behind a couple years.<p>Chrome is convenient, but I&#x27;m not about to start using Opera or Safari because Google is making a better browser. I tried using Safari on my phone and navigating was just so rigid compared to the gestures in Chrome. Safari is behind the times and slowly catching up on web technologies, but also has taken some weird side-steps by ignoring standards like &quot;filter: blur()&quot; and implementing their own &quot;backdrop-filter&quot; that no other browser uses. Chrome and Firefox are the leaders in feature advancement and cross-browser standards.<p>edit: Would like to clarify that when I mean ignoring the &quot;filter: blur()&quot; standard - Safari will remove a background image instead of blurring it.<p>Use what&#x27;s convenient so other browsers step it up.