#browsers

look inside

firefox fork

"GUYS I FOUND A NEW BROWSER IT'S THE GREATEST THING EVER IT'S BETTER THAN FIREFOX AND IT'S NOT BASED ON FIREFOX

look inside again

here is how to quickly and easily switch your phone browser from google to something else! (I will include screenshots of steps)

go to settings -> scroll until you see the "search" option (in the general grouping) -> click on "search engine" -> select a new browser (I suggest duckduckgo)

bam! you have a new browser as your default, just open safari, search something up and you'll see your browser of choice!

screenshots below the cut

there's a version of that "Chrome is installing a big AI file without telling you" post going around that claims Chromium also contains that big AI file, and that any browser based on Chromium (like Vivaldi) is "contaminated" as well. that's not true.

Chromium is open-source, and can't have Google's closed-source AI models in it. even if Google went ahead and open-sourced Gemini Nano so they could put it in Chromium, the whole nature of open-source means that anyone building a Chromium-based browser could just choose not to include it. and Vivaldi, specifically, has promised to never include AI browser features.

basically, by reblogging "AI bad" posts without fact checking, a lot of people are now contributing to users being scared to switch to a browser that specifically, purposefully does not include any AI!!

While reading through headlines this morning on my cyber news feed, it occurred to me: why do I see reports of vulnerabilities in some browsers over others? What makes them different? So, I figured I would take a deep dive into browsers as a function of the IoT.

Full disclosure, I’m biased. I am a Firefox or nothing kind of person, and have been since the early days of the internet. There was a brief span where I was using a refurbished Mac laptop (an old clamshell one, it was orange), and used Safari. But that was only about a year. There was also a roughly 18 month span where I used a Chromebook as a secondary device; that obviously used Chrome. Every other one I’ve owned, the first thing I do is download Firefox. That would be three laptops, two desktops and my phone over the course of 20+ years. But that’s also part of what made me think of this topic today. Socket's Threat Research Team published a report on 108 Chrome browser extensions being exploited for malicious activity and it occurred to me that, in eight months of writing my daily articles, I’ve yet to report on vulnerabilities in the browser I use.

As it turns out, there are more browsers out there than even I realized, although many of them are discontinued or unsupported these days. Who remembers Internet Explorer and Netscape? The overwhelming majority of them are free, even if their code is proprietary. Some have paid subscriptions for ‘pro’ levels, some are bundled with operating systems.

Mostly what differentiates browsers is the engine they run upon. All this means is how they translate HTML into user interface. The three big engines are Blink, Webkit and Gecko. These correspond to their associated operating systems, Windows and macOS. Gecko stands alone, as the engine upon which Firefox runs, as well as the Thunderbird email client and the various discontinued Netscapes. Of all the browsers out there, Firefox and Opera are the only ones that run support on every operating system currently available. (There’s Midori too, but that’s now a Firefox derivative.)

And speaking of support, what does that mean exactly? The Wikipedia page I’m using for this research denotes it into categories like bookmark, download and password management, autofill and spellchecking, history and previous session memory, search engine toolbar and per-site security configuration, privacy mode, and auto-updating. All of the major browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Brave are a ‘yes’ in all these categories. An exception in Chrome is a partial yes on per-site security configuration, as it’s not available on mobile.

Accessibility and security features like tabbed browsing, popup blockers, ad filtering, auto-play blocking and canvas fingerprinting protection – online tracking that uses HTML5 canvas element instead of session cookies – also help differentiate browsers. Some are supported, others are not. Chrome, for instance, has limited support for popup blocking and ad filtering, with nothing said about canvas fingerprinting protection. Firefox supports each of these categories, and warns when canvas fingerprinting is present (it’s the only one, in fact; although Avast Secure Browser has support on mobile). Opera has no auto-play blocking; Safari does but doesn’t have ad filtering outside of extensions. As far as languages available for international use goes, Chrome has 48, Firefox has 91, Opera has 47, and Safari has 15.

The only thing the Wiki does not have listed among its comparisons is AI tools, as those are more search engine related than browser related. I covered Firefox’s announcement regarding them in February, however, with the newest version of the browser having a kill switch that allows users to manage AI tools or turn them off entirely. As far as I know, they’re the only one with that feature now native to settings.

I like Firefox because it allows me to tailor my preferences and settings in a way that keeps my private information private and doesn’t remember it, lets me block ads, popups and AI tools, tells me when sites are phishy...sorry, fishy. In the end, browser selection is a matter of choice and personal preference. I doubt the average user is aware of how many there are, as Windows based machines and compatibility dominate the market and Chrome is the default. Hopefully this report sheds some light on the options. Go do with that information what you will.