Since I got into web development I’ve been looking for the perfect browser. This is an impossible task, as the perfect software does not exist, browsers included. That being said, some are better than others.
I’ve been using the Vivaldi browser for the past couple of years, and I’ve loved it more than any other browser I’ve seen. However, recently I’ve been experiencing issues with the browser rendering sites partially, if at all. Whenever I start having problems in a browser I know it’s time to start browsing (heh) again to see if there are any alternatives worth using. Of course, there’s always Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, and they always work, but they’re also just a bit inoffensive, never really majorly shaking up the landscape, but always being reliable, if not for performance issues that seem to crop up every few months. If all you want is a browser that goes painlessly, then sticking with the big three is not a bad choice.
However I wanted more, and Vivaldi came through with that. It has a panel window with a whole lot of power, and for how much it has, it still performs better than Chrome does most of the time. It runs on a chromium base, allowing for chrome extensions to be added, and has cloud sync for your bookmarks so you can sync your info across computers. In addition, it comes with a built-in adblocker (better than any adblocker I’ve used on Mozilla-based browsers, and probably better than most chrome adblockers too. You can add RSS feeds to the side panel, checklists, email feeds, and a ton more. Overall it’s a great choice for casual browsing, however, you run into issues if you want to be a developer (you’re honestly best sticking to chrome if you’re writing code). Clearing the cache is a bit more difficult than most browsers, and you can’t hard reload. Also to not harp too hard on Vivaldi, some of the issues I’m experiencing right now started after my upgrade to Windows 11, so it could be a compatibility issue there, and a casual user may never experience them, however for me it happened frequently enough to start considering switching.
One of the browsers I looked into in the past while somehow having never used was Brave. I do like Brave a lot, it has a comfortable interface, built-in ad blocking, and is a baseline Vivaldi alternative out of the box. It doesn’t have all the extra robust features that Vivaldi did but is a solid alternative. I didn’t use it as I enjoy finding other smaller projects to use for my daily driver, while still having the big projects as backup browsers (although in this case I am considering just switching to Brave, still undecided).
A fun alternative I found while searching is the Pale Moon Browser, a goanna-based browser that is consistently updated, however, looks like it hasn’t been touched since vista.
The pale moon browser, looking as though it belongs in 2007
That being said, it doesn’t seem like a bad browser either and gives the vibe of Internet explorer without the clunkiness. If that’s what you (or your grandparents) are looking for then it is a viable option, receiving updates once to twice a month consistently.
The browser I’ve settled on for now though is Waterfox, another Mozilla-based browser with some of the things I wanted from Vivaldi, and in a light-enough package. To be honest, I did integrate into waterfox before testing Brave, hence why I’m considering swapping over to brave now, but waterfox is doing everything I need so far so I’m not yet sure if it’s worth the swap. To make waterfox do what I needed, I imported my bookmarks and installed an adblocker and a tab grouper. Those are all I require from a browser, but there aren’t any browsers I know of outside of Vivaldi that have all those features built-in (for instance Brave has adblock but not grouping). With minimal work, however, Waterfox was able to cover all my bases, where I know Chrome probably couldn’t. I also was biased towards Mozilla slightly, as when I swap browsers I do like to go to the opposite of what I’ve been using.
Simple Tab Groups, a plugin for Firefox Browsers
Another thing I’d like to add is I didn’t try out any of the Opera browsers. I just didn’t feel the need to, and while I know that Opera GX is out there and people like it, I haven’t been very enthused with Opera as of yet. I may make another post in the future reviewing them, however.
Post-Writing addition:
While I was still considering a swap to Brave while writing, I discovered that Brave is actually a Chromium Browser, not a Firefox browser, and thus could not have my Tab Grouping Plugin installed on it. That means that unless I find an alternative that works just as well, I’ll be sticking with Waterfox for the foreseeable future.
