I DON'T like my web browsing options in 2024... 

Just using FF to have an impact Chromium engine not to become the monopolist...

The biggest issue for many while browsing is ads. This is something you didn't touch on, and many of these browsers share the chromium lineage - this means manifest v3 or any variant thereof in the future. Firefox, as far as I know is the only one out there not beholden to subscribing to the manifest v3 way of life. Support firefox to retain your ability to 'better' control your viewing experience and what controls google has over shoving ad's in your face.

I'm in the FF team, I've tried Vivaldi multiple times but keep getting back. One of the cool features FF has is disabling video autoplay natively, which Chromium based browsers do with the help of an extension, which itself doesn't work great all the times. Also, the mobile version of FF now supports extensions which is awesome.

I feel stuck and imprisoned whenever I fall on a browser that has about short of an 8 lines menu and context-menu, therefore, UNINSTALL. The FF branches of browsers are the only ones that gives me all the tools and ease I want: A full fledge working menu and context-menu, with sub-menu I must add. Examples are; I can select any text, click context-menu, and search the selection with a choice of any search-engines I have personally added (general search, site search, etc). I can also turn any link/url into a text, and/or any text into an url/link, which I can paste into the urlbar or into another tab or open into another tab or window, even a private-window, without any of the tracing-krap. I also NEED to view any page FULL-SCREEN without the page shifting up/down whenever I hover the toolbar/tab-bar into view. (something something "element; opacity=0" "element:hover; opacity= 0.7" does the trick ;) As far as speed, they're all the same, nomatter their claim. Don't import your settings. Learn about where these are in windows/linux, then, copy those settings and place/replace the settings that have been "customized" by the newly installed browser (you know, the "appdata-mozilla-profile" or ".mozzila" or ".firefox"), that way, you can start browsing right where you left-off with the old-browser with all bookmarks/settings/addons/history/loggins/cookies/etc. ANY browser can claim to be faster than the next, when all they have done to speed-up their process is removing fonctionalities. That is a very lame job. Period. Browsers are not slow, the web is. Because it's polluted with useless counter-productive tracking krap, the real spyware. Imagine a self driving-car stuck on a totally desert road/highway because it can't get any data or basic fuction, because of too much web-traffic (lol). That's today's reality, sadly.

I must say, that I simply like Firefox. - It is fully and truly open source. I can trust it. I do not trust Chrome or Edge, for obvious reasons. - I never had a situation, where I missed any features. - Mozilla fought long against EME (Closed Source DRM) as a W3C standard. Without Mozilla and Firefox, webstandards would be dictated by Google and Microsoft. - Some extensions for Chrome + derivatives have many limitations. Adblockers on certain commercial sites for instance. This alone would make me use Firefox. - I like the interface! Some say it's not modern. But it 'just works'. Elements have the right size, etc., again in difference to e.g. Chrome, which became a little fiddly. - etc.

I don't like the idea of browser engine monopolization that's why I try to stick to non-chromium based browsers. I do understand your reasoning to move away from firefox, though. I am currently on floorp and it is ticking a lot of boxes. For the future let's hope servo engine picks up some momentum and becomes an alternative.

I use Chrome and Firefox, depending on the day/need. I suspect Chrome will take a hit in July, when Manifest V3 takes full effect and Adblockers are severely limited in Chrome/Chromium based browsers... Unless the API call limit is raised by then.

I'm using Vivaldi now, and have been for the past few years. For me the killer feature in Vivaldi is the tab management. It goes beyond tab grouping to give you stacked tabs, which I find a lot more helpful. I haven't seen any other browser do that. Then you add to that the email, RSS, and calendar clients. And that's before you even get to the quick commands and command chains. I do think all the settings can be confusing for some users. It's a bit more browser than some people need. But the features never get in the way. You can ignore them at your leisure.

Also, I install Firefox on every computer that I touch. When other Browsers fail or have update issues. Firefox is there and available.

Hi Blaine - thanks for checking us out! 😃

Loved hearing your comments on the various browsers. I currently use: Edge for work (vertical tab implementation is the best!) Brave for personal. Vivaldi I've found in the past to be too buggy, but I love the overall vibe of the company/dev team. I've also experimented with Floorp, a Firefox fork done by a Japanese company. I think this is what Firefox really should be. A "Vivaldi" based on gecko.

Vivaldi is protecting their work, I don't mind if it Is closed source as long as they don't join the dark side

Firefox is the definition of "wasted potential" nowadays. Vivaldi is what I'm using right now and I think I like it the most, but if I had to point out some gripes I've had with it is that it's buggier and a bit heavier than other browsers.

I'll continue to use Firefox and whenever I come across a site that doesn't work with Firefox I just don't bother with that website. We really need to make sure that Chrome (and it's derivatives) don't become the only choice we have. That would suck and be like only having IE. Look how that worked out for Microsoft. I should put in an edit. The first thing I do when I refresh my OS and start up Firefox for the first time again is switch the default search engine away from Google. Why do people still just use Google for search? Crazy

I use Vivaldi because Vivaldi has tab grouping, which for me is really important because I tend to open alot of tabs so I like to group them all together by website and then hibernate the stack so I can save memory.. I really wish Firefox would just bring that feature into the browser now that basically every other browser now has that feature.

You said you cared about founding, but you didn't talked about Vivaldi's funding. You may complain about Firefox's funding, but Vivaldi's is not that different. They also make money out of partnerships with search engines and business promoted in their bookmarks.

I'm still a loyal Vivaldi user since the very first snapshot and stable builds (even back in the old Opera days where they made awesome features to the browser that actually mattered for the user). It checks every box for me. It also has all the management, productivity, and automating features built-in (that's actually useful for the browsing experience) so I don't need to install separate apps. And FWIW everything doesn't need to be open-source IMO. If it works for you then all's good.

I switch to FF 2 or 3 years ago and i will never go back to Chrome except when i need to watch clip on Google Drive

Firefox lost me when it dropped the useful PWA SSB support. Now I use Edge which is great. Fast and feature rich. Sites easily installed as apps.

That was a cogent analysis. I primarily use Brave but without the Crypto and Rewards options. It's important to always have at least two browsers installed, just in case something breaks. Brave and Vivaldi might be very good choices. Most Linux distros come with Firefox and keeping it is probably a good idea, also.

I once tried Vivaldi and it was nice, but seemed to eat my battery pretty fast.

If I refuse to use anything with Chromium in it, what am I left with (that has decent extensions)? Only FF.

I use Brave on desktop and mobile synced and with cripto crap turn off, is fast and and i think is the best so far. Firefox needs to improve allot to make me switch. And Vivaldi is ok but as too many settings and i get confused what does what, is a nightmare.

I have tried loads, i keep going back to firefox, as ublock doesnt work on chromium browsers on youtube 100% of the time, randomly doesnt work or gets detected and then a youtube popup says disable it or you can only watch 3 videos

I'm also using Vivaldi, mostly because it actually has the least amount of drawbacks for me compared to the other web browsers.

Didn't Firefox try to create a phone OS one time? Does Firefox have something like the V8 engine?

Vivaldi has been my go to as of late. I want to love Firefox but it's features just seem to lag so far behind where the web is going.

if only brave removes the crypto mining, or atleast make it removable. i would switch easily.

I switched to Vivaldi about a year ago. I love it!! I don't use all the features, but the tiling of tabs is really useful at times. Good to hear that I am on the right track!

I have to use Chrome at work, for personal use I tend to flip-flop between FireFox and other browsers (Edge, Brave, etc) but always seem to migrate back to Firefox in the end.

Vivaldi is pretty great. For me, I either use Firefox or Vivaldi, I tend to switch between the two. Vivaldi's closed source is fully auditable, so anyone can download and read through it. It's not open source though, so you can't reuse or repackage any of it. It's also just the source code, so there's no documentation for it, although it is human - readable (it's not minified). Vivaldi reminds me of more old school software for the early 2000's where everything you could think of exists as an options, it's really customizable and pleasantly stable considering the amount of customization it give yous.

i just spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to enable a cookie 4 a single web site 2 no avail in firefox where went user friendliness ?

I have 3-4 different browsers for my machines for various use-cases, but Vivaldi has been my main browser since late 2015/early 2016. It's absolutely not perfect, especially considering video playback of certain formats will randomly crash, but it's king of media streaming and customization for me. Plus the tiling/tab-multi-plexing is clutch on my HTPC.

Using Firefox, to support the usage of Gecko is vital for the health of the internet. Otherwise we might hand over the defining of web standards over to Google, who develops the blink engine (that powers pretty much everything but Firefox). Yours sincerely Firefox user since Firebird 0.8 (previous name for Firefox)

For the presenter and commentators saying they use or are switching to Vivaldi: _you're just using Chromium_ ! Same as Edge, Brave, Opera and the rest. If you're happy in a browser engine monoculture, then fine. But don't claim you're choosing a browser engine diversity that doesn't actually exist. I'll continue to use Firefox and its derivatives or cousins, such as Librewolf or Pale Moon solely because letting the Chromium engine rule the roost with zero alternatives is a terrible thing to do -as anyone who remembers the stagnating dominance of IE6 can attest. Anyone claiming to ask fundamental questions but _failing_ to ask, "does my choice of browser enhance or diminish engine diversity and does that tend to enhance or diminish non-proprietary web standards?" has missed a crucial point, I think.

I'm using Vivaldi, with the management of my several email accounts, agenda, tab grouping and workspaces. I even have a secondary profile, to test stuff.

I have been playing around with Thorium browser. Chromium-based, it feels more responsive than Chrome or Firefox. When I do use Firefox, I use the developer edition, as I find the extra feature set useful.

the BIGGEST problem is, there's literally only 3 browser engines, and the engine is 90% of the browser... EVEN MICROSOFT GAVE UP DEVELOPING A NEW ONE (very very sadly) your options are "fork of chrome", "fork of firefox", or some webkit browser

I've been using Brave for over a year, on Win, Mac, and Mint. I can't see me changing at present.

I will give V a try but floorp has me with its features right now. I use Brave/Wolf/Ungoogled/Floorp and can not choose one. The standout is floorp. I do not see speed differences either not even on youtube. If i am signed into google obviously i care less about privacy so i try and have one just for google use.

Chrome will definitely add manifest v3-only (and disable v2 as I remember), which will be the moment I will ditch it and switch to Firefox completely. Opera is owned by china, 0 trust. (yeah, I don't use tik-tok also) It uses chromium, so not sure what will be with manifest v3 in future. Brave is still based on chromium. Vivaldi is still based on chromium. Edge is Microsoft (yeah, I remember IE times and their awful policy) and still based on chromium. I have seen how bad can a monopoly be (IE), something similar is going on with Google and their manifest v3 ideas. Because of this, I wil be switching only to Firefox. It is unique, independent, with own engine, so I will better support the minority to kick out possible monopoly actions right now.

I started with Opera on Windows 3.11 in the late 90s. Only recently switched from Opera to Edge as it runs the best on Windows.

I stick with Firefox because it's FOSS. If it's a closed source browser, you don't actually know that any of the privacy options are taking effect. They may have coded the graphics that make it look like you've turned them on or off, but that's as far as you'll know.

Firefox user since version 1. For me it's fast enough, has all the extensions I need and at least uBlock will keep working on Fx. With Chrome and all who use Webkit engine with Manifest V3 around the corner I'm not so sure.

I use Vivaldi as my daily! Most customizable and making it my own.

No mention of Mullvad?

Google also writes a big fat check to firefox because EU could curbstop them for having a chromium monopoly if firefox stopped existing and google shit's bricks when EU starts noticing.

I use Brave. Mobile client has tab grouping. I just ignore the gimmicky features. I don't need everything about the browser to tailor to my exact needs. I'll give Vivaldi a try in the future.

I am pragmatic, if something is useful to me, I use it, that and it shows that they want to improve; firefox does not meet any of them, I prefer to use vivaldi or edge which are better, or else I use waterfox or florp which do the work of firefox a thousand times better

I really don't see the point in all this extra features. Tab grouping, vertical tabs, containers, those are actually useful, but mail? vpn? just why? Firefox still is the best option if you care about privacy and open source, The only problem I see with it is that they need better branding to stop loosing users

So question....would U pay to use a browser that meets your criteria?

i really enjoyed this holistic discussion vibe, much more thought provoking than your typical tier lists or feature comparison.

My objection to Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera is that they're all too cluttered. I want a web browser. I don't want to join a religion, open a play-money account, link all my life, or be absorbed into the singularity.

I hate how even webkit is bullied out, there used to be a lot of nice and small webkit browsers, now there's almost only chrome-based stuff...

I recently used FF for a couple of months but ended up switching back to Brave, which I'll keep as my default until I find something that I like better!

Firefox was my only browser to go for years and it was great, but lately, it started acting up to the point that I couldn't enjoy it at all. 4K UHD RU-vid videos are buffering, freezing, skipping and its a big issue among many users, so no hardware related. I have switched to EDGE and tbh. really like it. Its integrated in windows, you can use most addons/extension you were able to use in Firefox and playback is as smoot is could be. Firefox might be history.

3 months on, I’m curious where you landed.

A key problem for power users is that we need a single browser to sync our history, bookmarks, tabs, sessions etc on all platforms. Unfortunately no browser is equally good on both desktop and mobile. Vivaldi and browser are good on desktop, vivaldi is great on Android tablets but no good on phones, safari and Samsung Internet are fantastic on mobiles, but not desktops. Vivaldi comes close but its phone version is just rotten compared to safari and Samsung. Hopefully they will adopt some of their UI paradigms and become the one browser to rule them all!

Switched over from Vivaldi (still keep it as my secondary browser) to Brave as I like the way it handles ads on youtube natively (don't want ads shoved down my throat while viewing videos).

I sandbox them, chrome for google services, edge for microsoft services, opera for social media, most secure browser with no extensions for banking, brave for day to day surfing

Works good until I go to FB Market place and try to go through the sale items. Shortly after going through them it bogs down to the point I can hardly move to the next ad. Also takes a longtime to exit the FB program. I have 3 computers and it happens on all them. No problem with other browsers I have installed. Any ideas?

I think brave is fully opensource

At the moment Safari is my go to with second unfortunately be Edge. I could user FF or Vivaldi, which I actually want, but the miss a very critical feature Synced workspaces (or just Tab Groups). Safari has this for more than a year and Edge implemented it for a couple of months now, and continuing where I left of to another device is god send. If FF or Vivaldi had this, I would probably switch. One unique feature that Safari has is also PrivateRelay which is very nice, but the synced TabGroups(Or workspaces) is a must for me

How is the Mozilla's revenue from Google affected by Firefox having the default search engine Google? You can change the search engine.

I like FireFox, and recently I switch to Floorp because of the extra customization options.

Vivaldi, due to the incredible customization options (I can't live without mouse gestures anymore).

I still waiting for the first Servo-based web browser.

I've now used Vivaldi daily for about a year. Love it...

on my Mac I use safari, really no complaints - it has come a long way and is quite resource friendly, whereas Brave/Firefox/Chrome will chew battery + memory.

Brave .....to me is the way to go....been running it for a long time....and very satisfied

But isn't Vivaldi Chrome based browser? What's the real difference then?

Has anyone noticed Brave is running RU-vid slower than it used to. I run Brave as system app (not flatpak) in POP. But recently I noticed that RU-vid buffers a lot in Brave. My internet is fiber 1 GBPS. So just for once I switched to Chrome and RU-vid was running 4k videos fine again. No buffering whatsover.

The problem is that Firefox keeps falling behind on features, retains a look which isn't the most modern, lacks a fair number of good QoL extensions that may be needed, and most importantly is just not fast enough. Chromium fwiw is still the better engine, although I wish WebKit existed on windows just because it could make things more competitive

Used to use Firefox for as long as I could remember. Since the move the new mobile browser, which now has extensions I hear etc., I have moved over to edge. Personally, it has been a great move as work, business, school just complement each other. I only hope containers will be available soon! That said, I do hope Firefox continues to survive.

If Vivaldi has the Multi-Container and autoplay blocking like FF natively, I bet many people will jump out the ship for Vivaldi.

I was a longtime firefox user but I kept running into issues when watching live streams and it became to frustrating to deal with.

I've been using Vivaldi for years. I love this thing.

Excellent, well-reasoned video - thanks.

porque no los dos? Firefox on the daily, chrome for compatibility (oftentimes needed for academics and professional)

I've tried the other browsers, but keeping Firefox here.

Tried vivaldi on Arch Linux, it crashes.

I prefer brave browser over the rest

ABSOLUTELY GUTTED to see your excellent vid now. As after some 10 years of sole use of the Iron ( portable ) browser for everyday use and up to a couple of last updates got a few niggles but stuck with it. Then, literally 2 days ago spotted the Opera One ( portable ), I don't install anything if can be avoided, browser with the features I always sort after in Iron such as, workspace, Tab Islands, and the AI flyout / pinable panels, clean cut config/settings etc etc without the need for too many extensions. So in 2 days converted after n years to another browser and just go settled and while casually testing today spotted this vid. I am now in a state of flux after your findings on Opera One. Can you inform of the watch out points of this browser a I have to be honest and say I have taken to it like a duck to water and am now stuck in nowhere land. Great presentation, Kind Rgds. Lost in space.....

I’ve been pretty happy with Vivaldi for a couple of years now. Since you’re considering funding and things like the company making the browser, it’s probably worth considering some of the people involved as well. I don’t use Brave and never will because of the issues with the CEO past behaviour around the lgbtq+ community

I just dont get it why web browser (i guess almost all apps) becomes more ram hungry from time to time....i thought when the technology became more advance, everything become more efficient but sadly no

I think that you forgot to mention that Opera is China owned nowdays, so it is not that surprising that it is "sketchy" :)

I like Brave, especially after I turned off all the crypto stuff, it's good to use, but I love Vivaldi. I've been daily driving it for about 5 years after trying almost every popular browser and I will probably never switch, mostly because of the customisability, my Vivaldi looks almost nothing like the fresh install, but I guess not everyone cares about that, so outside of that it's pretty neat browser, that works great and has some cool functions (e.g. various tab management tools). I'd say, that Vivaldi, Brave and Firefox are probably my top 3 picks, would be 4 if Opera stayed in Norway and with Presto.

Don't forget the tab thumbnails in vivaldi is awesome

While FF is financially dependent on Google money, heck Microsoft's hold on the Linux foundation is nothing to be sniffed at... The *browser engine* is not dependent on big tech. I would love them to have done some of what vivaldi have done, but it's simply not the case and I don't want to be using anther chromium browser. So it's a bit depressing to see it deflating in usage statistics but Firefox is more necessary than ever for me now, because it is going to be SO bad to see this trend continue.

I don't mind ads, I mind spying

what about floorp?

Long time Firefox user, mainly because it isn't Chrome. Then went to Opera for several years due to features like workspaces and start page management. Then it got bloated and perhaps too much foreign backing. So back to Firefox the last couple years. I routinely used Edge in my former job as it had needed Enterprise features and is very memory conscience. I've also used Vivaldi a bit at home and really enjoy its Split windows and macro features.

Vivaldi. Hands down. Tried them all but keep going back to it. The features...esp if you open a gazillion tabs like I do.😅 Also love that I can choose where my tabs are. Customization in other words.

"Let's jump into it"? I thought we already had

at this point, I don't know what "new features" you'd expect... these things are already way too complicated for their own good...

Using firefox aftar some time, it take huge, very huge amount of RAM in windows. This is terrible!

If you're on Gnome, Chromium and closely Chromium-based ones respect your user themes, dark mode and look more native. Edge and Brave are both decent options that integrate well in this regard. Brave require some tweaking first to use disable their standard theme and use GTK theming. Last time I checked Firefox didn't. For example it doesn't detect and use your system font size, refresh rate etc so you have to set those up for Firefox specifically. And while Vivaldi and Opera are Chromium-based, they want to brand themselves too hard and don't seem to care to respect user themes.

Excellent video Thank you

On my system, idle, Brave open on a blank page: 85W average power consumption. On my system, idle, Vivaldi open on a blank page: 112W average power consumption. That's why i use Brave and not Vivaldi.

I love Vivaldi so much. I can't imagine using any other browser.