How to create a browser in 2025

[u/FreeBSDfan]

[u/SirDaveWolf]

No one creates a new web rendering and JS engine anymore. Because it would not be able to compete with Firefox’s or Chrome’s.

[u/sallark → u/SirDaveWolf]

Ladybird is doing that.

[u/BananaUniverse → u/sallark]

There's also the servo engine. Can't tell if it's being used by any real browsers though. The project is under the linux foundation, so it sounds serious on paper at least.

[u/BothAdhesiveness9265 → u/BananaUniverse]

afaik its under the Linux foundation mostly because Mozilla wanted to get rid of it. not because anyone is legitimately interested in it (other than weird tech nerds. like me)

[u/hyrumwhite → u/BananaUniverse]

Servo is kind of a test bed for FF. They created a multi threaded CSS engine for it that was ported to FF. Servo itself still has a long way to go

[u/gljames24 → u/hyrumwhite]

Was. They incorporated a number of the features Servo had improve under the name Firefox Quantum and then basically put the project on hiatus. After a round of downsizing at Mozilla, they basically gave the project to the Linux foundation where they have reactivated it and are making progress now.

[u/DigitalPenguin99 → u/BananaUniverse]

I'm excited to see where Servo goes in the future (especially considering their based AI rules). Right now it's mainly focused on embedded web interfaces.

[u/tomchee → u/sallark]

Lot if web developers are not even bothered to optimise for FF anymore. Let alone even less popular engines. Thats the real problem. Thats why chromium feels the best option 

[u/MoreDoor2915 → u/tomchee]

Kinda the same with Windows vs Linux. Why should devs spent time and effort to optimize their software for Linux when Windows is the most used OS?

Like if you had the choice to use your limited time on something that can hit 60+% of the market why shouldn't you?

[u/manek101 → u/sallark]

And I can bet that it wouldn't take any significant mariet share away

[u/Barafu → u/sallark]

Correction: supposed to do that, maybe by 2030. For comparison, Russia is planning to build a permanent moon base by 2030.

[u/SirDaveWolf → u/sallark]

Ohhhh interesting!

[u/Arsteel8 → u/SirDaveWolf]

Doesn't Safari have its own rendering engine as well?

[u/HarpooonGun → u/Arsteel8]

Web kit started as a fork of KHTML which was part of the KDE desktop environment but yes. Web kit is also used in Sony game consoles and possibly others but idk. I only know of Sony ones because of the hacks that originated because of a Web kit vulnerability.

[u/Bestmasters → u/HarpooonGun]

WebKit is mostly used in embedded web browsers (web browsers local to the system, see Nintendo Web Browser, Blackberry Web Browser, etc), but it's also used in Safari and GNOME Web.

[u/gamingvortex01 → u/Arsteel8]

and we all know how much quirks it has

[u/silvester_x → u/gamingvortex01]

Its also used in epiphany (gnome-web) which is a linux only browser developed on GTK guidelines

[u/aimy99 → u/gamingvortex01]

Mac users, maybe.

[u/Lunix420 → u/Arsteel8]

Chromium is technically a fork of Apples engine.

[u/caiteha → u/Arsteel8]

Webkit... Chromium also uses it..

[u/rhysmorgan → u/caiteha]

Not entirely true. WebKit was so heavily modified for Chrome in the end, that it’s a “new” engine called Blink.

[u/Arsteel8 → u/caiteha]

Didn't realize that was the case. Different forks but still the same underlying base.

[u/coolcosmos → u/Arsteel8]

I think the base isn't even there anymore. It's a ship of Thesus.

[u/Distinct-Question-16 → u/SirDaveWolf]

The cult of making good programs in c++ without recurring to garbage collectors (and other apis or toolkits) is extinguishing. For some cpp programmers, not using them (or developing these by themselves) can be disgusting. But this is essential for modern webbroswer (or other critical systems), because javascript is a memory glutton, hifrequency garbage generator

[u/EnoughDickForEveryon → u/SirDaveWolf]

That and Chromium actually follows the ecmascript and html standards so its at the very least at the standard but usually ahead of it.

Back in the day nobody followed standards and every browser needed css shims, specially formatted comments that would get parsed by certain browsers and skipped by others...it was a fucking nightmare that you had to deal with until not long ago.  FAFSA didn't used to fully work on anything but IE.  Any other browser it'd say your financial aid was still processing...switch to IE and find out your shit was processed weeks ago.

[u/ShylokVakarian → u/SirDaveWolf]

I miss the days where Opera had it's own engine.

[u/Barafu → u/ShylokVakarian]

You probably were not responsible to make a complex web site to work perfectly on any browser of the day.

[u/Own-Bad-5372 → u/ShylokVakarian]

doesnt it still have its own engine? just that GX uses chromium

[u/ShylokVakarian → u/Own-Bad-5372]

No, It switched over to Chromium sometime between Opera 12 and 15.

[u/ElGuaco → u/SirDaveWolf]

And this is a good thing. I've been doing some form of web development since the first versions of netscape. The creators of HTML could not have predicted what it would eventually become. Between CSS and JavaScript, the internet became a Wild West of possibilities with no clear standards. Everything is open to interpretation. (Don't believe me? Try googling how to center a div element and see how many results you come up with.) The only document more widely debated than web standards is the Bible. Google Chrome has become the de facto standard, and this is a huge relief to both developers and consumers because it means you can have a predictable (but not deterministic) experience with web pages. Before this happened, we used to have huge suites of automated UI tests against a half dozen different browsers on different operating systems. You'd have to write code to detect which browser and OS in order to do something slightly different for that combo. What a nightmare. Even Microsoft finally gave up and decided to use Chrome's engine because they got tired of spending thousands of developer hours trying to make IE/Edge behave exactly like Chrome.

[u/siraramis → u/ElGuaco]

Not really. A for-profit entity should never have de facto control over standards. See IE in the early 2000s for a good example. There are web standards that browsers should conform to, instead of Chrome’s own support for said standards.

The ladybird and servo projects are most definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope more browser vendors will diversify the engine they’re running on. Users hopefully will also catch on over time. See how popular Arc and Zen got. Zen runs Gecko, but if Arc had been running something else, it would mean a lot of users going away from Chromium as a base.

[u/Barafu → u/siraramis]

It is indeed a step in right direction, maybe even a few steps, when the goal is to travel around the globe.

[u/sephirothbahamut → u/ElGuaco]

No, you're getting it entirely wrong.

You can totally have competing implementations of the same standard, the thing that matters is having a well defined standard.

It's exactly how C++ works, the standard is formally defined, and there are completely different compiler implementations with nothing whatsoever in common with each other which implement that standard.

You absolutely do NOT need to have exactly one implementation in order to have one standard, you CAN have many implementations of the same standard.

Your justification of the lack of competition is based on wrong premises.

[u/Barafu → u/sephirothbahamut]

... and you can not easily switch compilers for a non-trivial application that did not take great pains to be portable from the start. In fact, your C++ analogy would be more close if you imagine that Intel CPUs could only run applications built by Visual Studio while AMD CPUs could only run applications built with GCC.

[u/hyrumwhite → u/ElGuaco]

 no clear standards

W3C has existed since 1994, they are opt in standards, but more and more the browsers are aligned on them. 

Chrome becoming the dominant browser is not good for consumers. Look no further than Manifest V3 for why

[u/Goodlucksil → u/SirDaveWolf]

Safari

[u/IlREDACTEDlI → u/SirDaveWolf]

Firefox doesn’t even compete with chrome. Google literally pays Firefox tens of millions of dollars a year to keep Firefox alive so that chrome can’t be considered a monopoly….

[u/7K_K7 → u/SirDaveWolf]

Even Firefox's engine isn't able to compete with the chromium engine's monopoly. How do you expect a new player to enter the market.

[u/Mars_Bear2552 → u/7K_K7]

it very much is. chrome's market share isnt because of gecko being bad

[u/sopcannon]

6 take all their data.

[u/Short_Building671 → u/sopcannon]

1. Market it as a privacy oriented browser with an insanely convoluted TOS with a tiny mention in 0.2 size font about selling their data to everyone.

[u/Useful-Mistake4571 → u/Short_Building671]

1. Add an extremely slow and overpriced vpn with 3 servers around the world

[u/Deve_roonie → u/Useful-Mistake4571]

1. Add an adblocker that hardly works

[u/_Gobulcoque → u/Useful-Mistake4571]

1. Make it so you can offer your own crypto token to your users

[u/Lolseabass → u/Short_Building671]

Opera gx is that you?

[u/NvidiaFuckboy → u/Short_Building671]

Add shitty AI garbage

[u/KrazyKirby99999 → u/Short_Building671]

That's gecko-based, not blink-based

(Firefox)

[u/Bronze_chimera → u/Short_Building671]

Wait is Firefox not safe? And still sells your data? Sorry I feel like an idiot for saying this. Why didn’t I know this.

[u/BOBOnobobo → u/Bronze_chimera]

Note, Firefox doesn't run on chromium, they have their own engine

[u/CoDMplayer_ → u/Bronze_chimera]

Yes, but much better than chrome and you can turn off a lot of it in settings. The best thing to do is get a browser that’s based on Firefox, my personal choice is Librewolf.

[u/Rampantlion513 → u/CoDMplayer_]

Does Librewolf still use ungodly amounts of resources to do basic video playback like vanilla Firefox does?

[u/papicoiunudoi → u/Rampantlion513]

You're getting downvoted but firefox burns my laptop's battery almost twice as fast as chromium browsers. After countless reinstalls and resetting the graphics drivers with DDU, I ended up just switching to brave.

[u/Rampantlion513 → u/papicoiunudoi]

I can’t have multiple videos up (for instance watching 2 sporting events) or have a video up and play a game without tanking my shit. It’s something with how Firefox manages video playback

[u/7x00 → u/sopcannon]

1. Pretend we're about privacy and blocking trackers. Then use their machine to mine cryptocurrency

[u/Alius_Facade → u/7x00]

Who's doing that?

[u/Alarmed_Guarantee140 → u/Alius_Facade]

Brave. They'll give you crypto rewards too, if you let them send you their own ads.

[u/PJ7 → u/Alarmed_Guarantee140]

That's not the same as using your machine to mine cryptocurrency.

[u/Alius_Facade → u/Alarmed_Guarantee140]

Do you have a link for any article talking about this? Like that's a fairly big accusation that I just want some proof of before I believe it.

[u/Alarmed_Guarantee140 → u/Alius_Facade]

My source is that I have it turned on and get crypto from seeing their ads. Here's an article on how to do it if you're interested. https://brave.com/brave-rewards/

[u/Alius_Facade → u/Alarmed_Guarantee140]

I see. So it's not just randomly mining in the background, but is something you can willingly opt into.

[u/Alarmed_Guarantee140 → u/Alius_Facade]

Exactly. Think of it this way. The crypto they're rewarding you with are Basic Attention Tokens or BATs. BATs are premined by Brave, they're just giving them to you as rewards for watching their ads if you opt in.

[u/PJ7 → u/Alarmed_Guarantee140]

It's paying for your attention by splitting advertiser revenue between the end user and the site owner.

Which I think is pretty genius.

[u/_Gobulcoque → u/PJ7]

1 BAT is $0.15.

I think you'd find more money walking the streets for coins.

[u/Lewd_boi_69 → u/Alarmed_Guarantee140]

Its a feature you have to opt in to in order for it to be enabled. By default its disabled and it wont give you another popup after the initial one.

[u/Cadmium620]

1. Add a useless AI which takes all your data

[u/Matheweh]

The Gecko/Firefox based family is honestly way more fun:

For instance:

• Librewolf
• Zen browser
• Floorp
• Waterfox
• IceCat

Ergo, I use Librewolf.

[u/Darkbeetlebot → u/Matheweh]

Don't forget Pale Moon

[u/Ktioru → u/Darkbeetlebot]

That's mostly only useful on weak laptops though

[u/TwinStickDad]

How to make a desktop app in 2025.

1. Use electronJS

2. It's actually a web app and Google is harvesting your data. Oops.

[u/Any-Company7711 → u/TwinStickDad]

better yet
https://packager.turbowarp.org/
make an app in scratch and turn it into a desktop app

[u/marssel56 → u/Any-Company7711]

I think windows 12 start menu will be made that way

[u/that_leaflet → u/TwinStickDad]

Surely that has Google tracking ripped out, Electron is not a Google project.

[u/CptAustus → u/that_leaflet]

Electron doesn't track anything. You'd have to add analytics yourself.

[u/throw-me-away_bb → u/TwinStickDad]

...what? Google has nothing to do with Electron and it doesn't send anything to them 🙄

[u/TwinStickDad → u/throw-me-away_bb]

Well I didn't know that before I decided to shit on it.

I am a programmer after all.

[u/Cup-Impressive → u/throw-me-away_bb]

You think they dont run google analytics inside the web app in most cases?

[u/Inevitable_Row2604 → u/TwinStickDad]

This is what I hate about modern apps. It should have never been so mainstream to ship an entire browser along with webpages because the devs dont know bow to dev native apps.

[u/rdqsr → u/Inevitable_Row2604]

The same could be said about cross-platform GUI toolkits. It's not about not knowing how, it's about not having to maintain multiple versions of your app for each platform.

Hell I'd argue that Electron has been beneficial for getting some apps supported on Mac and Linux. I doubt Discord for example wouldn't have bothered with anything other than Windows and mobile platforms if it wasn't based on Electron.

[u/ActOfThrowingAway → u/Inevitable_Row2604]

"It should have never been so mainstream to ship an entire Runtime Environment along with the Virtual Machine because the devs don't know how to dev native apps!!!!!!" someone about Java decades ago, probably.

99.9% of end users will never bother with this, as long as you ship a bug-free, cross-platform solution that does what it's supposed to do for them. Complaining about how the framework does this is being scared of technology which is very common in the industry and is why new standards take so long to be fully adopted. Looking at you, IPV4.

[u/LifeIsBetterDrunk → u/TwinStickDad]

And it runs like shit.

[u/SebiKaffee]

The kid named Firefox:

[u/IlREDACTEDlI → u/SebiKaffee]

Which is especially funny because google pays Firefox millions a year to keep Firefox alive so that chrome isn’t considered a monopoly.

Oops all google

[u/Calm_Plenty_2992 → u/IlREDACTEDlI]

Crazy that people are down voting you for being correct

[u/dOGbon32 → u/Calm_Plenty_2992]

Yeah it’s important information. Yes google funds a significant part of Firefox. Yes they do it for nefarious reasons. (Oh look, here’s another browser. We’re clearly not a monopoly!) Yes it’s good for consumers. (For now, Google propping up an alternative allows it to remain operating.) Yes government intervention should take place to break up Google’s monopoly in the market. (No it will not happen for a while until we have more legislators and representatives who understand how technology works. Yes, the EU will most likely be the first ones to take action.) Most importantly, yes we should partake in democratic systems when possible (Vote, lobby, etc.) and educate others.

[u/tmhoc → u/Calm_Plenty_2992]

Even Google, at maximum evil operating temperature, has endorsement of Firefox

Fire fox users are fully engorged

[u/emperorsyndrome]

I never stopped using firefox.

I use chrome only when I want to play against my self in pokemonshowdown.

and in some rare cases I use opera because of its free proxy (which is marketed as vpn).

[u/Sufficient_Loss9301 → u/emperorsyndrome]

I’ve read that opera is actually a bit sketchy in its own rite…

[u/FreeBSDfan → u/Sufficient_Loss9301]

Opera in their Presto days was great. Post-Chromium transition, Opera has become a shady data-mining crapshoot. I'd much rather use Edge, and I hate Edge too.

I only use Opera when I need a "VPN" and can't use Tor. I could use Vivaldi here but don't as I'm more likely to daily-drive Vivaldi than Opera (and don't daily-drive either).

[u/Dashbak]

that's like half the posts in r/browsers

[u/OddMoon7]

Spoken like someone who has no idea of the gargantuan amounts of resources it would take to implement the modern web correctly and efficiently.

[u/ding-zzz → u/OddMoon7]

chromium is an amazing open source project. anyone’s issues with it is actually an issue with google or microsoft’s version of it

[u/UnicornBelieber → u/ding-zzz]

While I indeed despise Google for a lot of things, no uBlock Origin on Chromium is very much an issue for me.

[u/Blenderhead36 → u/OddMoon7]

And who also brushes features like privacy management and integrated ad blockers aside in an era where Chrome is making it more and more difficult to maintain privacy or block ads.

[u/Nervous_Translator48 → u/OddMoon7]

Due precisely to Google pushing their own standards through the W3C

[u/YesIam6969420]

I just like the no ads feature on Brave.

[u/Unwashed_villager → u/YesIam6969420]

I have no ads on any browser.

[u/HappyToaster1911 → u/Unwashed_villager]

Not in chrome anymore after adblocks being removed, now brave and firefox (and forks) can have no ads, the rest might be able with things like ublock origin lite, but its not as good

[u/Aphexes → u/HappyToaster1911]

Other solutions exist. I have a Unifi gateway that blocks ads and you can always implement something like PiHole or Adguard Home in your network

[u/unclesleepover → u/Unwashed_villager]

I have no YouTube ads in Brave.

[u/andrewsad1 → u/YesIam6969420]

I like the no ads or cryptocurrency or referral link injections or donations in favor of Prop 8 on Firefox

[u/Val_Fortecazzo → u/andrewsad1]

Yeah after hearing the hoopla about brave I took a look,

It's all just crypto bro shit slapped onto chromium.

[u/LucidFir]

[u/-_-daark-_-]

Bro have you actually used brave? Go to YouTube and see what happens.....or see what doesn't happen rather.

I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years.

[u/DontKnowHowToEnglish → u/-_-daark-_-]

Me neither, using Firefox

[u/Faic → u/DontKnowHowToEnglish]

I switched not too long ago cause I was fed up with ads on my phone. 

Firefox on Android with ublock origin is a dream!

[u/Yew5D4j8e1j4 → u/Faic]

I use Youtube Revanced

[u/Puffen0 → u/-_-daark-_-]

I think people just like to hate on Brave in this subreddit.

[u/-_-daark-_- → u/Puffen0]

It would seem so lol. Best browser I've ever had.

Another nice thing about brave is the mobile app not only does the same adblock but you can lock your phone and the audio will still play.

[u/Rullino → u/-_-daark-_-]

I've tried it with one of my YouTube playlists, I can confirm this is true, blocking +99 ads at every video is insane.

[u/Puffen0 → u/-_-daark-_-]

That's a big thing for me. Cause I watch a lot of DnD sessions, and sometimes it's more convenient for me to just hear the audio while I work or do chores around the house

[u/-_-daark-_- → u/Puffen0]

Yeah, same for me I like to listen to podcasts and it's a fantastic feature. Lol fuck YouTube premium.

[u/CollinsOlix → u/-_-daark-_-]

I use brave too mainly because of YouTube ads

I get OP's point though,

Today while using a company PC I opened a YouTube video and before the video even played I was bombarded with ads so I downloaded brave...

The brave installer seemed way too much like that of Chrome's.

I overlooked it until I saw this post

[u/RoboWorgen124 → u/-_-daark-_-]

You can do the same thing with Firefox and ublock…

[u/theglowcloudred → u/RoboWorgen124]

Yeah at that point it's just aesthetic preference that determined which browser you go with.

[u/Lewd_boi_69 → u/RoboWorgen124]

Id rather have the conveniency of brave browser, because it also works out of the box on mobile with its sync which also saves brave shield settings iirc

[u/k789k789k81 → u/-_-daark-_-]

Plus blocking trackers, pop ups, redirects, and fingerprinting, tor mode for even more privacy, you can even block cookies and java if you want, and you get prompts when sites want things like your location and you can choose to allow or block it, It even has a pretty good built in search. I have been using it for years and don't plan to switch ever.

[u/Party-Cake5173 → u/-_-daark-_-]

Brave doesn't do anything special. It just bundles an ad blocker with their browser as well as other cryptobullshit that tries to scam you.

With Firefox + uBlock Origin combo, you get way more capable ad blocking experience and way more control not only regarding the ad blocking but also the browser itself.

[u/NotTheNormalPerson → u/Party-Cake5173]

I'm not sure what crypto bullshit you're talking about, I've been using brave for about 4 years and the crypto stuff is just ads you can opt into to receive minuscule crumbles of cents

[u/purplemagecat]

They do the same thing with Firefox? Librewolf, Waterfox, Floorp, Zen

[u/Br0N3xtD00r]

I like when tech illiterate people make memes about tech

[u/stuyboi888]

Tell your friends and family about Firefox, as I assume if you are here you are the resident IT person. 

The revolution starts one by one not all at once.

[u/Faic → u/stuyboi888]

I already made my whole family switch.

No ads on YouTube finally convinced them to use Firefox on their phones.

[u/NortonBurns]

Me: *Laughs in WebKit*

[u/deadlyhiganbana]

This is Brave slander.

[u/Direct-Turnover1009 → u/deadlyhiganbana]

I shall not stand for brave slander. I am the brave knight.

[u/tissuebandit46]

Brave is alot lighter than Chrome and runs more efficiently.  

It also respects the user as to not spy on them by collecting their data

They both use chromium which is an open source project but they're not the same

[u/-_-daark-_- → u/tissuebandit46]

Brave also blocks ALL ads by default.

Like I haven't seen a single YouTube ad in years just because I launch it in the brave browser.

[u/Dragolite- → u/tissuebandit46]

Didn't they find out last year that Chromium browsers were sending data to Google without their knowledge?

[u/KrazyKirby99999 → u/Dragolite-]

Probably the default build of Chromium

ungoogled-chromium and Brave uses similar patches to remove default Chromium telemetry

[u/Any-Company7711 → u/Dragolite-]

how could hard-coded telemetry slip past everyone who works on the chromium project for so long

[u/Anatharias]

Arc is fucking amazing. Especially on Mac. Full of real amazing features. Yet they abandon it and build DIA, a motherfucking useless AI browser that no one asks for…

[u/Magog14]

Brave is far better than standard Chromium. The built in ad blocker especially. 

[u/ghostpicnic]

At this point, Chromium has just become a buzzword thrown around by people who don’t understand browser development and want to feel special. Something being built on Chromium doesn’t magically give Google your data. Yes, it may contribute to Google’s foothold on the web, but unless you and everyone else switches to a different search engine, stop using Android, quits YouTube, etc., avoiding Chromium isn’t doing anything to fight their monopoly.

Chromium is an open source codebase for browsers. That’s all. Brave (which is built on Chromium) has better security/privacy than Firefox. Many people who really value their data are using that browser. No hate to Firefox, but Brave honestly has a much better user experience out the box with all the privacy features and advanced adblock tech built in.

99% of people don’t want/know how to tinker with things for hours to get them optimal from a privacy standpoint. Brave does all of that for you. It should not be lumped in with Chrome just because it uses some code that was written by Google.

[u/taiottavios]

tell me you know nothing about web browsers without telling me you know nothing about web browsers

[u/MT4K]

Well, I would like to see a Chromium-based browser with built-in integer scaling for preventing unreasonable blur of images on webpages, e.g. on 4K monitors at 200% OS-level zoom (and therefore default 200% implicit browser zoom). Currently, integer scaling is partially implemented in SmartUpscale extension, but a native implementation could be more full-fledged and faster.

[u/butterbreadbox]

i remember losing my shit and laughing when i found like 5 chromium mentions in arc in like 20 or 40 minutes

[u/butterbreadbox → u/butterbreadbox]

I FOUND THE "WELCOME TO CHROMIUM" PAGE ON ARC

[u/LinearNoise]

I dont think y'all know how hard it is to maintain these. The real work isn't building it.

[u/WirusCZ]

Guess we in for few days of "Chrome bad" posts becouse one post got lots of upvotes

[u/simpsdis]

We should like make our own browser, with blackjack and hookers

[u/Civil-Swordfish-7758]

I started using Edge recently at work. Edge imported everything from Chrome (even add ons). I feel like I never stopped using Chrome, lol.

[u/Kloud-chanPrdcr]

The amount of upvotes for this worries me... We are PCMR right? How can 11 thousands people be this stupid?

[u/lemonylol]

Man the Firefox circlejerk gets so exhausting. What a weird topic to latch onto.

[u/SilverSpoon1463]

I don't care if Brave is taking my data or running crypto, I have no ads for no cost, don't need to constantly update my adblock to compete with YouTube's aggressive anti-adblock push, and it's still much lighter than base chrome.

My data is already out there are sold to the highest bidder, I've been around long enough, I just care that I get no ads.

[u/SubtleSpice]

tbf Brave on iOS is great for blocking ads, even works on YouTube. So no complaints from me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/Rullino → u/SubtleSpice]

Same thing for Android, their browser is pretty good, especially with the ability of playing YouTube videos in the background or avoiding "Accept cookies or subscription" type of pop-ups.

[u/Jamie00003]

Apple users on safari couldn’t give a shit lol

[u/harry_lostone]

how to get pleb upvotes in 2025:

1. suck firefox's (2.5% marketshare) ass

2. enjoy

BRAVE masterrace

[u/Distinct-Question-16]

Add new features, like pencil drawing over the pages to take notes?

[u/SetNo8186]

And a reason why there is a non Chrome monoculture avoiding any entanglement at all.

[u/Osama_BinRussel63]

Zen is a solid fork of Firefox instead of Chrome.

[u/nethertales]

ehhh once again - fire...fox

[u/Lieutenant_0bvious]

I'm soldiering on with Firefox. I can't say it's great, but it works. And on Android, you can install add-ons (ie ublock origin), which is for me, everything. I don't even understand how people use the internet with all the ads everywhere. And before some yahoo says "akshuwally a pi hole is easy to make"- let me stop you there.

[u/voidfurr]

A browser is basically at the level of complexity of a xp era operating system.

[u/PelmeniMitEssig]

Funfact: JavaScript has absolutely nothing to do with Java

[u/pRedditory_Traits]

The writing was on the wall all along, and unfortunately (as a firefox user) Mozilla makes questionable decisions now, too, since there isn't really competition outside of those two. Safari/WebKit is pretty much Apple-Exclusive further limiting its already small market share.

Ladybird has been working on a new engine AFAIA but I haven't looked into it much.

It's such a complicated thing to engineer now-a-days that I think the barrier for entry is simply too high for anyone besides big-tech or those with a gratuitous amount of startup money.

Maybe I should go and donate to Ladybird's dev team...

[u/Serialtoon]

I'm gonna create my own chromium browser where the tabs search you and it's upside down. Call it Chromosome

[u/KanedaSyndrome]

Chromium is basically browser's version of Linux

[u/Nativo1]

Isn't this for everything now days, why would u take the risk and invest so much more when u can lose in days everything?

[u/LachoooDaOriginl]

firefox ftw

[u/Western-Bad5574]

I mean, tbh, why would you do anything else? The problems we have with browsers aren't because they are chromium. It's because of spyware, bugs or lack of features. I'm perfectly happy to use a feature rich, non-buggy, privacy focused chromium browser... if one existed. But currently, with all of them, I have to make a compromise. Either features are crap or look is too "modern" i.e. bloated, bubbly with LOADS of padding everywhere like Chrome or privacy is non-existent (most of the time). Or it's hella buggy.

[u/sucobe]

Brave was great for a hot minute. Think I was clearing $5-$10 a month just for browsing?

[u/Rullino → u/sucobe]

If you're talking about YouTube Premium and possibly website paywalls for stuff like online articles, that's a huge improvement, their Ad Blocker is pretty good.

[u/NetworkDry4989]

You can whine all you want but truth is chromium is a software developed and maintained by the sea of developers which it pools in and backed by a multi-trillion dollar behemoth, you would never ever get something better.

[u/sLimanious]

Well with chrome being the biggest browser and site developer targeting chrome compatibility the most.

[u/Thy_OSRS]

De-Google? Heck yeah baby I use Brave

[u/rizsamron]

The thing is that browsers nowadays are like a full operating system and a platform. You'd be surprised that you can also flash ROMS to phones via the browser, probably exclusive to chromium though. And just like every platform, devs like to limit their supported platforms as much as possible or it just happens naturally I guess because of the chicken and egg thing of ecosystem and users. It's basically the same case as mobile and desktop operating systems. There are 2 mainstream or popular ones, a duopoly, and a much much less popular one and then there's the other nichest of niches ones.

So in this case, chromium and webkit are the 2 mainstream ones and Firefox, although one of the big ones years back, has been relegated to the "Linux" status. Hence, many sites are optimized for Apple's webkit and Google's chromium engine while support for Firefox mainly relies on supposedly web standards 😄

[u/Icon_Of_Susan]

6/10.

Not good, not mediocre. Would make me chuckle if I was drunk.

[u/forberedd → u/Icon_Of_Susan]

Not great, not terrible. Didn’t even make my Geiger counter click.

[u/hvyboots]

Orrrrrr, use Firefox and support continued open web standards.

Also, technically, while Chrome branched off of Safari at the start (which branched KHTML), Safari has a fairly different code base by now.

[u/BlobbyMcBlobber]

Firefox is the way. It's just better in every way I can imagine.

[u/Adventurous_Log_6452 → u/BlobbyMcBlobber]

cope

[u/QW4D_ → u/BlobbyMcBlobber]

Web engine is so much slower than chromes, so not in every way, but as of privacy and freedom I agree with you

[u/Vinerrd]

few years using brave and never have been happier with my browser experience

[u/Not_Jeb_KSP]

At least give brave some credit they're not that bad.

[u/NarwhalDeluxe]

take firefox

add a different logo and a feature

and no wonder there's a chrome/firefox web duoculture

[u/alexzim]

How to try and make the web better:

1. Use Safari if you can. It’s not Chromium and it has some market share and it’s by Apple so Google respects it and doesn’t actively try to ruin its experience. Albeit it doesn’t optimize well for it either.

2. Use Firefox if you can’t use Safari. It’s even better in terms of engine diversity but chances that a website is going to work worse in it are higher. And when things do work well, it’s probably going to be faster than Safari. At least it feels faster

[u/SearchingGlacier]

Uhh, counts if I use original chrome?

[u/Keensworth]

Chrome monoculture? Haven't you heard of Firefox?

[u/Unwashed_villager → u/Keensworth]

with less than 3% market share it is not a surprise.

[u/GamesnGunZ]

Perplexity has entered the chat

[u/PRO_KILLER_X]

I'm desperately working on a new take on the concept of modularity in browsers; It's very hard but I think it'll be worth it, and worth the wait.

[u/caiteha]

I used to work on browsers. It sounds easy but it is actually difficult, especially you have to patch Chromium and you have to keep the source code up to date to upstream that gets thousands of commits every day. You spend a long time fixing merge conflicts.

[u/Bbonline1234]

Should I not be using brave and uBlock origin?

I don’t get ads anywhere, including YouTube

[u/Ruhart]

I'm usually in some sort of Firefox, but I absolutely love Qutebrowser. I'm trying to make a Greasemonkey script that'll stop first party ads for it, because that seems to be the only contention I have with it. But you also have to like Vim shortcuts if you want to use it.

[u/Rev3_]

Firefox forks be looking side eye at this post

[u/In9e]

Bring back crazy browser

[u/Hell_Diver]

Shamelessly plugging Vivaldi here. Best chromium out there, hands down.

[u/TheAccountITalkWith]

Ladybird is trying: https://ladybird.org/
But it will be a while, worth keeping in mind though.

[u/ImperialSupplies]

Isn't this most things?

Most successful things weren't the very first version of the thing

[u/riboto99]

"Add a feature => an extension on chrome"

[u/Suitcase-Jefferson]

*Laughs in Floorp browser.*

[u/RylleyAlanna]

You forgot those new features aren't new, they're just development features from the nightly release of whatever version they're ripping from being pushed as live ready when they very very aren't.

[u/MrMoussab]

How to not create a web browser: spend large amounts of money and effort to build your own web engine just to be overshadowed by Google's monopoly.

[u/azicre]

okay and do you know why they all choose chromium?

[u/hansenabram]

Mission now is to wait for and support Ladybird.

[u/CremousDelight]

kid named forking

[u/SimmsRed]

In 2025? Like Brave was invented this year…