It’s chromium, it does that ambient color changing shit I hate, it “anticipates my needs” instead of just waiting my my instruction. This is a browser designed to make me angry.
I tried it for a bit, even daily drove it on my laptop for a while. It has a pretty slick interface, and uses containers so you could, for example, have one container that you are logged into your google account for (say, Youtube), and the rest of your containers you can not log into Google.
The downside is that 1) It’s still not mature as of a month ago. They are making massive changes and adding new features constantly, and 2) It’s still Chromium, so all of the downsides of that are still present.
If they switch to using Firefox or another open-source foundation, I’d be all over it.
Sandboxing/containerizing stored session data like that is really nice. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension maintained by Mozzila and was really the reason I stuck with Firefox even when it really kinda sucked there for a while.
Firefox already has containers. I still have yet to see a browser that beats stock Firefox in functionality, customization and privacy
On mobile I’d suggest Fennec instead of stock Firefox since you can use add-ons without limitation, and don’t need workarounds such as the Firefox nightly.
It’s basically stock with enabled add-ons, and following the official release cycle with 2-3 days delay. Maintained by the original developers of the F-Droid store, so also a highly trustworthy source IMHO.
Thanks for the heads up. I run FF on all my mobile devices so it will be nice to have access to all the addons.
I’d venture out there and say Vivaldi in functionality and customisation.
Privacy probably not, though Vivaldi does quite well.
Sadly it’s a Chromium browser.
Edit: a simple comparison.
According to this Vivaldi protects you from tracking about the same as Chrome and Opera, and both of those provide less tracking protection than even Edge.
PrivacyTests makes it look like Brave is the only browser you should be using simply based on how good it is at blocking trackers by default. Brave is good, but it has it’s fair share of flaws from UI and terrible syncing to built in crypto and NFT stuff.
Chrome is run by a massive corporation with a reputation for for invasions of privacy. Opera is run by a nation state with a reputation for invasions of privacy.
Vivaldi is far better than either of those.
I’m talking about first and third party websites tracking you. I don’t use Chrome or Opera, but I’d rather only have to trust a browser of my choice, than having to place my trust in thousands of different websites.
The point is, if you care about tracking and privacy, you shouldn’t be using Vivaldi in the first place.
This is the key. There are a few projects that can beat it in one way or another, but not all 3. Every project that beats FF in a functional way ends up sacrificing privacy. And those that somehow beat it in privacy are underdeveloped and run into weird compatibility issues or are missing support for key plugins.
It’s not like Firefox doesn’t collect user data at all. Vivaldi is hard to seriously fault in that area.
Unfortunately, Firefox lacks some features that make it a little clumsy at times. But for general use it is great. I keep it installed and use it almost every day because I believe in the browser engine and the need for diversity in that area. It’s just not for every need. At least not for me. That’s where Vivaldi and Edge have to help.
anyone
Lol, it’s just on mac. No windows version or even plans for a Linux one. Not that I’d use another chromium fork.
Tbf, it says download, not use.
As a non-Mac user, I’m not even sure if “Mac-only” or “yet-another Chromium fork” makes it less interesting.
Is it just me, or is all they’ve done to move everything to the left sidebar and use macOS’s UI widgets?
Isn’t arc a chromium fork thus subject to Google’s shenanigans?
Yup, anti freedom, and also closed source so extremely privacy invasive as well.
No, it’s not a fork. A fork is when you take the Chromium browser and change it.
This uses the same rendering engine as Chromium - but the browser itself was built from scratch, uses a completely different architecture, and on other operating systems it doesn’t use Chromium at all.
As for “forced to create an account” Arc is temporarily free. Longer term you’ll have to pay a subscription to use it. So it makes sense that you need to sign up.
Yes
And you’re forced to create an account to use it. At least it did a few months back
Thought I’d throw my opinion into the ring here, since literally every comment is shitting on this.
Arc is a design project, that also happens to be a web browser. If you’re just calling this “another chromium fork”, I think you’re completely missing the point of who this product is for. First of all, it’s not for you.
Secondly, the design changes that arc is working on perfecting are pretty groundbreaking. The ability to customize the css and functionality of any web page without code and it saves your profiles for future use with a marketplace is super interesting to me. So much UI on modern websites is entirely unnecessary. As a designer, this is a dream.
Also, nobody is mentioning that their working on a Windows version THAT NATIVELY RUNS SWIFT ON WINDOWS. This is a big deal for future cross compatibility in general, why are so many people not looking at this?
Anyway that’s my rant. Trying to voice my opinions even if they’re the odd ones out to prevent a Lemmy based echo chamber. Feel free to disagree.
The ability to customize the css and functionality of any web page without code
Isn’t that something other browsers have been able to do for ages with add-ons like stylus, greasemonkey and others. it doesn’t seem all that groundbreaking.
People might be hesitant to download a different browser what they can accomplish with a simple addon.
what’s the big deal about swift?? the language has been cross-platform for quite some time now, it’s just there wasn’t much point for it on neither windows nor linux outside of “oh look i can write a hello world in swift”
good on them for utilizing it but I don’t think it’s revolutionary or anything
Well why didn’t you say we get cool trinkets and shiny doodads?! That’s totally worth handing control over the entire internet to a single corporation.
The whole problem is that the free internet is dying because google is starting to get a monopoly over it.
So, yes, “just another Chromium browser” is a very valid criticism, because it quite literally aids in jeopardizing the future of the internet.
I know a little about browsers, but not tons. Do all Chromium-based browsers use the same rendering engines? If so, isn’t it an issue as these Chromium browsers proliferate? If the engine deviates from the standards and they have the market share, feel like we just end up in the IE situation back then.
Chromium and excellent do not belong in the same sentence.
Chromium - and thus Google - dominates the Internet way too much. This causes trouble and has the potential to cause a lot more trouble in the future.
This has been discussed many times before, of course.
I’ve attempted to understand what makes this browser good, time after time, and I still just don’t get it. They claim that they’ve ripped out the UI and created it from scratch, to improve workflow and how we approach browsers, but it’s done nothing but infuriate me, because they just built a gesture based interface with layers upon layers of hidden stuff, none of which is intuitive, and it’s for the desktop. Not to mention the other blunders with their extensions
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That’s why they target Apple users. They don’t understand what closed source means, nor care. They just want flashy new thing.
Safari is open source. Also: opensource.apple.com
I have zero interest in a chrom* fork.
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Safari is a very thin set of changes to WebKit, you can just run & build WebKit nightlies, which I do for web dev, so I don’t screw up my main browser. You have zero idea what you’re talking about, you just read a wiki page.
Macs let you run anything you want, obviously. iOS does, too, as long as you’re a developer sideloading. People who can’t hit compile shouldn’t be allowed to run random shit on their phones which are 2FA etc. keys.
Safari is a very thin set of changes to WebKit, you can just run & build WebKit nightlies,
you don’t seem to understand software licenses, so please stop overselling yourself. Just because a software uses open source code, it doesn’t automatically become open-source. You’re first claim was Safari is open-source. It’s not
and compiling a browser for webdev. lol
You clearly didn’t spend any effort trying it, learning how it works, or reading the license. It is literally a browser, just not named Safari and using your saved preferences, which is a good thing when you’re developing. Not that you can.
I award you zero points.
You don’t need a 100 per year dev account to sideload? It’s what I remember hearing.
you need pay a subscription every year to publish your app on the app store. You can sign your app and install it but it’s temporary and you need to repeat it every time it expires afaik.
But you need a mac for it. Don’tyou just love Apple’s fancy walled gardens?
No, you can just download Xcode free from the Mac App Store, or off developer.apple.com. Only the App Store needs the fee.
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That’s not safari
From the article:
“The company is also thinking about how to integrate AI into the browser.”
LOL - how absurd. I can’t even tell if this is a real product or just a meme?
I’m not surprised. Edge has it integrated already and it’s annoying.
AI AI AI Generative AI
Have you heard about AI yet??
I hate it already! ~Strawberry
It seems like every app is trying to force integration of a version of ChatGPT. It would make way more sense if the OS just had their “assistant” use AI, and just let it recognize the app your using and help out if needed. No need for an AI integration with every app.
While you’re not wrong, the implementation there is very complicated. My solution, which works quite excellently, is if I want to use GPT, I go use GPT
I agree with you. I personally don’t want ChatGPT on my OS either. I just also don’t want it on all of my apps too.
Why are we excited about closed source Chromium garbage?
Available for anyone to download… only available for Mac/iOS… Windows waitlist… No linux mention…
Okidoki.
Closed source, which automatically makes a web browser dogshit and completely useless.
Oh my god this comment section is annoying…
Yes, we get it! It’s a Chromium fork!
Chrome bad, Firefox good, we know.
And there are plenty of reasons as to why it’s a bad thing but come on, probably more than half of the comments is just this. There’s a lot more to it.
I don’t use Arc, because the whole company gives me “bullshit vibes”. The whole startup thing with big ideas and bright colors… and no concrete monetisation plan… I don’t know. I’ve seen too much of that and I can’t trust it. That and the whole “wanting to integrate AI@ just raises the “startup bullshit” meter even more for me.
However. I’m keeping an eye on it, and I did got to try it during its invite phase and, it sure is something else. This is not just another Chromium fork. It does indeed have big ideas about UI and UX design and challenges the way we do things when browsing the web. It’s trying to be something new and innovative. I respect that.
Web browsers have been feeling the same for years and years. To the average user, there’s no fundamental difference between Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, or Safari, other than: “They look slightly different ” and “This one looks like a crypto bullshit scam”. They will instantly notice the difference with Arc. It looks actually different and it feels different, because it is.
