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Browsers & Technology / Re: Software of Potential Interest
Last post by ersi -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxRsikiu_E8
I think the name is actually passable. It has the minimum requirement for a project name: Be distinct, different from other projects. The name of Vivaldi browser does not pass this minimum requirement. Neither did Opera.
At this stage I personally am done browser-hopping, certainly when it comes to graphical browsers. Apart from interface configuration, what I want from a browser is
- Control over cookies (suppress all by default)
- Control over popups/popins (suppress all by default)
- Control over fonts and colours (the imposed styles and scripts should be completely unnecessary)
The modern web is bad and getting worse. In late 90's and 00's, popups proliferated. When popup blockers became common, popups were replaced by popins, which are a far more evil feature.
In good old times, control over cookies used to be in the browser, that is in the user's hands. Ever since the EU's completely unwarranted inane incompetent idiotic counterproductive cookie directive, there is no longer any control whatsoever over cookies. Instead we have cookie popups/popins which give the false impression to people that they are managing their cookie preferences, whereas in reality of course they are not. The cookie popups do not care what settings the user has set in the browser (in the only place where the settings have an actual under-the-hood effect), the popups pop up regardless, and also regardless what settings you set in the website popup earlier. Every time you visit a website, you get the popups no matter what your settings are or were.
None of the graphical browsers over the last ten years or so is able to control popups, despite some browsers having a setting for it. There is literally no single decent graphical browser currently in existence out of the box. Maybe Brave browser or the like can be made to suppress all popups with careful extra tinkering.
Text mode or terminal browsers handle both cookies and popups properly out of the box. They also handle fonts and colours properly out of the box and usually interface configuration is fine too. Unfortunately they do not handle webscript features, such as delayed loading, properly. For delayed loading and other heavily scripted features, graphical browsers are still necessary.
The user interface feature that I expect from graphical browsers is the ability to toggle off all toolbars and menus. Vivaldi used to have it for a while, but in recent updates they ruined it and they brought back an empty bar that you cannot get rid of. No reason for the bar and no way to get rid of it. I won't ask why.
On Linux I can still achieve the toolbar-less and menu-less effect in all apps by going fullscreen and then taking control over the fullscreen window by resizing it with the window manager as if it were any other window. Funny that Windows is called Windows, but has no window manager. Anyway, it should be possible to toggle off all toolbars and menus in all web browsers. Browsers are giving their users less and less, so give at least that.