Other programs I’ve tried: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave
I’ve stuck with Edge for about a year. I tried it out because they switched over to the Chromium rendering engine and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I’ll tell you my main reasons for continuing to use it but note that these can exist in other browsers but don’t work exactly like I want.
Collections. This features lets you add web pages and snippets of information into persistent collections of info. Good for when you’re researching a specific subject. I use this either for small projects or as a lightweight interim step before moving stuff into my main research gathering tools.
Vertical tab stacks. Instead of tabs along the top of the window, I have it set to put them on the side of the window. The bar containing them collapses down into just the favicons and autoexpands to a configurable width showing the page titles when I mouse over.
Web browsers are kind of weird. They’re all incredibly capable and needs-fitting and I would be very happy using any of them. Because of this I considered not posting about it at all, but in the end I decided “web browsers are all really good, but Edge has these features” is useful information.
Great rundown of Edge! Used the one’s you’ve listed as well and stuck with Edge for a while, too.
Now I’m with Vivaldi, and I’ll nominate it for a slightly different category: The Emacs of web browsing—it has everything, but it could be better at quickly loading web pages.
Software: Vivaldi
Need: customizable web browser for keyboard-centric power-users
First cons, why I would generally still recommend Edge:
Vivaldi is more resource heavy
Vivaldi is slower than browsers like Edge or Chrome
Vivaldi requires a more personalized setup
Now, what makes it best for the power-user in my opinion:
Keyboard centric via “universal search”
hit F2 and search for everything in the browser, like
Bookmarks
open Tabs
All Actions in the Browser
Navigate links on webpages with shift+arrow keys
Very customizable UI
Most UI-Elements can be repositioned, the Tab bar can reside on either edge of the screen, the address bar can be effectively turned off
Might replace some applications, especially if you spend a lot of time in a browser
included email client
included RSS reader
included notes-app
includes web panels like Opera
Powerful Tab management
includes tiling in-browser, akin to tmux or similar
tab-grouping per host
tab-grouping with “accordeon tabs”—group tabs horizontally next to each other
tab-grouping with “tab stacks”—stack tab on top of each other and gain access to a second row of tab bar just for the active stack
Misc
Can perform macro-like chains of actions within the browser
See also Nyxt. I haven’t tried it myself yet, as its macOS support seems to be immature, but it is one of those projects I have an eye on. It could one day be the emacs of web browsers.
Huh, it is quite good. My main gripes is it doesn’t have a way to favorite certain voices, so you have to scroll through a big list to find the right one, it doesn’t have automatic language recognition (like google translate), and when there’s two languages in the same text, it just skips the text that isn’t in the language of the selected voice.
It makes it difficult to use it multilingually, But I expect it would work better for someone monolingual.
In a case like this where—as I think you are suggesting—the alternatives are very similar and any would do, I think there is something to be said for supporting the ones that are doing the actual work of building the product, ie. Chrome.
It seems like MS didn’t do much more then copy Chrome, put their telemetry in place of Google’s, and add some bonus features to promote—so Google keeping Chrome open source is being used against them by their biggest rival. It’s the sort of predicament that caused a number of smaller companies to abandon proper open-source licenses when AWS did the same thing to their products. That whole saga was sad and bad for open source, and it would be sad too if Google did to Chrome what they’ve done to Android—adding some closed source components to make it harder for rivals to simply copy—but at this point I guess understand. (I would probably feel differently if MS open sourced Windows or Office.)
I have sympathy for this argument, and I do assign some weight to this factor.
That being said, it doesn’t overweigh the other factors in my choice. Part of that is down to the fact that MS is (I haven’t actually checked, just what I’ve heard) making good and substantial contributions back to Chromium...which Google then merges back to Chrome.
Google does add closed source stuff to Chrome. The open source stuff is in Chromium and then Google adds their own stuff to that and releases that as Chrome which is closed source.
My understanding is that MS’s contributions to Chromium are minimal so far and are mostly to address their own issues and priorities, but I guess such judgements are hard to actually quantify so they end up being subjective.
Yes, I probably should have said ‘Chromium’ instead of Chrome, but I had understood that the closed portions of Chrome & Chrome OS were just the telemetry and the media decryption module (and I like what they did to reduce that to a minimum and make it optional). Nothing like what has happened on Android where Play Services and the Play Store are substantial elements.
So, I still think of Chrome as effectively, truly open source and Android not so much.
I agree there’s a large gap between Chrome and Android on this...though I do think they’re on the same spectrum.
Agreed that MS has made their Chromium contributions in areas that are important to them, but then that’s always the case with all contributors to OSS, no? As of a year ago they’d made 1800 PRs from 160 devs. Of course, as you say, what counts as “substantial” is hard to quantify. A PR can be a small typo fix or a complete reworking of a core technology, so it’d take a lot of work to pin down substantial-ness, and then a person would still be arguing about if it was important or not.
I doubt Google can “add closed source components” to Chrome with any success. MS will simply recreate the extensions in open-source, getting a lot of mindshare and PR in the process. Android became what it is because Google was ahead of the curve and other companies did not know how useful mobile OSes were going to be.
I don’t think Google added much closed source to Android until after Amazon—probably Google’s 2nd biggest competitor—forked Android for their own tablets. In that case, it kinda’ worked and the threat diminished, but never-the-less I think I agree with you—it wouldn’t work this time—and I don’t think Google will do it.
It does suggest though that they would have been better off making Chrome closed source from the beginning (WebKit is BSD), and while I hate to say such a thing, I think the whole market would be better off. Then, instead of all these copies of Chrome being the primary alternatives to Chrome, Firefox would be doing much better. Mozilla would then be in a dramatically better financial position and could continue to make great contributions to open source in spite of Apple blocking them on iOS. Maybe their increased user base and significance would even force Apple to relent!
Software: Microsoft Edge
Need: Web browser
Other programs I’ve tried: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave
I’ve stuck with Edge for about a year. I tried it out because they switched over to the Chromium rendering engine and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I’ll tell you my main reasons for continuing to use it but note that these can exist in other browsers but don’t work exactly like I want.
Collections. This features lets you add web pages and snippets of information into persistent collections of info. Good for when you’re researching a specific subject. I use this either for small projects or as a lightweight interim step before moving stuff into my main research gathering tools.
Vertical tab stacks. Instead of tabs along the top of the window, I have it set to put them on the side of the window. The bar containing them collapses down into just the favicons and autoexpands to a configurable width showing the page titles when I mouse over.
Web browsers are kind of weird. They’re all incredibly capable and needs-fitting and I would be very happy using any of them. Because of this I considered not posting about it at all, but in the end I decided “web browsers are all really good, but Edge has these features” is useful information.
Great rundown of Edge! Used the one’s you’ve listed as well and stuck with Edge for a while, too.
Now I’m with Vivaldi, and I’ll nominate it for a slightly different category:
The Emacs of web browsing—it has everything, but it could be better at quickly loading web pages.
Software: Vivaldi
Need: customizable web browser for keyboard-centric power-users
First cons, why I would generally still recommend Edge:
Vivaldi is more resource heavy
Vivaldi is slower than browsers like Edge or Chrome
Vivaldi requires a more personalized setup
Now, what makes it best for the power-user in my opinion:
Keyboard centric via “universal search”
hit F2 and search for everything in the browser, like
Bookmarks
open Tabs
All Actions in the Browser
Navigate links on webpages with shift+arrow keys
Very customizable UI
Most UI-Elements can be repositioned, the Tab bar can reside on either edge of the screen, the address bar can be effectively turned off
Might replace some applications, especially if you spend a lot of time in a browser
included email client
included RSS reader
included notes-app
includes web panels like Opera
Powerful Tab management
includes tiling in-browser, akin to tmux or similar
tab-grouping per host
tab-grouping with “accordeon tabs”—group tabs horizontally next to each other
tab-grouping with “tab stacks”—stack tab on top of each other and gain access to a second row of tab bar just for the active stack
Misc
Can perform macro-like chains of actions within the browser
See also
Nyxt. I haven’t tried it myself yet, as its macOS support seems to be immature, but it is one of those projects I have an eye on. It could one day be the emacs of web browsers.There is also https://github.com/emacs-eaf/emacs-application-framework, but the security might be sketchy. I am not holding my breath for performance either.
Edge’s ‘read aloud’ is also excellent; I haven’t found an alternative browser or extension that sounds as natural.
The fact that it works with PDFs is helpful for proof-reading, too (especially when it highlights each word it reads).
Huh, it is quite good. My main gripes is it doesn’t have a way to favorite certain voices, so you have to scroll through a big list to find the right one, it doesn’t have automatic language recognition (like google translate), and when there’s two languages in the same text, it just skips the text that isn’t in the language of the selected voice.
It makes it difficult to use it multilingually, But I expect it would work better for someone monolingual.
In a case like this where—as I think you are suggesting—the alternatives are very similar and any would do, I think there is something to be said for supporting the ones that are doing the actual work of building the product, ie. Chrome.
It seems like MS didn’t do much more then copy Chrome, put their telemetry in place of Google’s, and add some bonus features to promote—so Google keeping Chrome open source is being used against them by their biggest rival. It’s the sort of predicament that caused a number of smaller companies to abandon proper open-source licenses when AWS did the same thing to their products. That whole saga was sad and bad for open source, and it would be sad too if Google did to Chrome what they’ve done to Android—adding some closed source components to make it harder for rivals to simply copy—but at this point I guess understand. (I would probably feel differently if MS open sourced Windows or Office.)
I have sympathy for this argument, and I do assign some weight to this factor.
That being said, it doesn’t overweigh the other factors in my choice. Part of that is down to the fact that MS is (I haven’t actually checked, just what I’ve heard) making good and substantial contributions back to Chromium...which Google then merges back to Chrome.
Google does add closed source stuff to Chrome. The open source stuff is in Chromium and then Google adds their own stuff to that and releases that as Chrome which is closed source.
Yes, it is just one factor.
My understanding is that MS’s contributions to Chromium are minimal so far and are mostly to address their own issues and priorities, but I guess such judgements are hard to actually quantify so they end up being subjective.
Yes, I probably should have said ‘Chromium’ instead of Chrome, but I had understood that the closed portions of Chrome & Chrome OS were just the telemetry and the media decryption module (and I like what they did to reduce that to a minimum and make it optional). Nothing like what has happened on Android where Play Services and the Play Store are substantial elements.
So, I still think of Chrome as effectively, truly open source and Android not so much.
I agree there’s a large gap between Chrome and Android on this...though I do think they’re on the same spectrum.
Agreed that MS has made their Chromium contributions in areas that are important to them, but then that’s always the case with all contributors to OSS, no? As of a year ago they’d made 1800 PRs from 160 devs. Of course, as you say, what counts as “substantial” is hard to quantify. A PR can be a small typo fix or a complete reworking of a core technology, so it’d take a lot of work to pin down substantial-ness, and then a person would still be arguing about if it was important or not.
I doubt Google can “add closed source components” to Chrome with any success. MS will simply recreate the extensions in open-source, getting a lot of mindshare and PR in the process. Android became what it is because Google was ahead of the curve and other companies did not know how useful mobile OSes were going to be.
I don’t think Google added much closed source to Android until after Amazon—probably Google’s 2nd biggest competitor—forked Android for their own tablets. In that case, it kinda’ worked and the threat diminished, but never-the-less I think I agree with you—it wouldn’t work this time—and I don’t think Google will do it.
It does suggest though that they would have been better off making Chrome closed source from the beginning (WebKit is BSD), and while I hate to say such a thing, I think the whole market would be better off. Then, instead of all these copies of Chrome being the primary alternatives to Chrome, Firefox would be doing much better. Mozilla would then be in a dramatically better financial position and could continue to make great contributions to open source in spite of Apple blocking them on iOS. Maybe their increased user base and significance would even force Apple to relent!