Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-in-its-pocketses dept.

Over at ghacks, Martin Brinkmann writes:

Mozilla has added Pocket, a third-party "save for later" service, to Firefox Beta (and other development channels of the browser).

This is based on the proprietary former addon pocket, which is now no longer supported since it is being integrated.

It's only the beta channel, but this has all the hallmarks of a half-baked revenue stream for Mozilla that ultimately sells out user privacy - and what's worse, is opt-out, rather than opt-in.

Sponsored tiles on the new tab page, changing default search settings during updates, surrendering on DRM, and now this... Mozilla keeps finding ways to make it hard to stay a supporter. Here's hoping they hear some feedback on this decision before it gets out of beta!

What are the best available browser options for users wanting to protect their privacy as much as possible, as well as run a bloat-free browser? Pale Moon? Midori?

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:16PM (#185656)

    Debian will strip this garbage out of its own builds. This much stuff is worse than a logo with a non-free license which was why Debian forked firefox in the first place.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:48PM

    by bart9h (767) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:48PM (#185677)

    Does Vimperator works in iceweasel?

    If so, I'm sold.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @08:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @08:44PM (#185701)

      I don' t use Vimperator, but I use a good number of extensions in Iceweasel and they all work fine.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:08PM (#185754)

      Iceweasel IS Firefox, just with a different icon (and perhaps in the future without a propietary pocket?). Anything that works in Firefox will work in Iceweasel.

  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:13PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:13PM (#185726)

    So question for the community:
    What would you suggest for each platform to replace Firefox?

    On linux? Iceweasel Or Konqueror?
    On Windows? Palemoon maybe?
    Android?
    OSX?

    support for adblock and ghostery and other addons is highly desirable; as is free/libre/open source.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:07PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:07PM (#185752)

      I'm just going to keep saying "they have a Linux build of Pale Moon" until people start noticing.

      -posted from Linux Pale Moon

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:50PM

        by vux984 (5045) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:50PM (#185772)

        Yeah it exists; i'd discounted it as it looks to a 3rd party build/fork of a project that is already pretty niche. I was skeptical how well it ran as a primary browser as opposed to it being something pretty experimental.

        PaleMoon has android and OSX builds as well... the android page has a note about them not having the resources to maintain it; and invites people to get involved.
        http://www.palemoon.org/palemoon-android.shtml [palemoon.org]

        And the OSX build has a note that its still "very much in development".

        I'm cool with playing around with these sort of things in my spare time; but I want a solid browser I can rely on too; one that isn't wildly experimental or unstable; one that I can install on my mother's PC and walk away with confidence that it'll just work, be easy to keep up to date, etc.

        As much as I am very cheesed about Firefox going freemium; I'm not really sure palemoon is the best possible answer. Plus palemoon seems to me to be a relatively small scale one man show (moonchild); not that that's a bad thing in and of itself; but if the project goes on vacation when he does; or falls off the web when he does... Ideally I'd like something with a bit more backing.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:42PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:42PM (#185795)

          I've been using Pale Moon for around the last year now and if anything it seems *more* stable than Firefox.

          Plus at least your grandmother won't keep getting confused when Mozilla decides to completely rearrange the interface every 6 months or whatever.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by acharax on Thursday May 21 2015, @12:00AM

          by acharax (4264) on Thursday May 21 2015, @12:00AM (#185806)

          I've been using it in both Windows and Linux for a long time now and never noticed any problems or differences between the two versions. However you might have some trouble with their makeshift Linux installer (they should really set up a repo for it, if there is one by now excuse my ignorance) if you're using a stripped/locked down distro (the information about the issue I was able to find online was misleading at the time but it was nothing that was all too difficult to figure out with some digging).

        • (Score: 2) by kadal on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:46PM

          by kadal (4731) on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:46PM (#186213)

          I've been using PaleMoon for close to two years now. It's great!

          Some addons have trouble because PaleMoon isn't going down the Australis part. BUT NoScript, Tree Style Tabs, BluHell Firewall, Request Policy Enhanced, CleanLinks, RefControl all work.

          There's a fork of HTTPS-Everywhere called Encrypted Web [github.com] that you should use instead. Unfortunately, I don't think Firemacs still works.

      • (Score: 1) by mmh on Thursday May 21 2015, @04:18AM

        by mmh (721) on Thursday May 21 2015, @04:18AM (#185884)

        Seconded! I use Pale Moon for both Linux and Windows as my primary browser, in fact with the same user profile. Everything works the same as Firefox. Only exception I've found is: The addon "TabMixPlus" works perfectly in Windows/Palemoon, doesn't do anything in Linux/Palemoon.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:47AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:47AM (#185919)

          Sounds like it might contain a binary, up until recently Mozilla allowed that.

      • (Score: 1) by termigator on Thursday May 21 2015, @04:30PM

        by termigator (4271) on Thursday May 21 2015, @04:30PM (#186075)

        Does Palemoon still exclude the accessibility features that Firefox has? This is the primary reason I never switched to it.

        • (Score: 2) by kadal on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:53PM

          by kadal (4731) on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:53PM (#186218)

          I don't use those features but here's some info from the main dude [palemoon.org]

          Pale Moon supports full accessibility features as one can expect from a browser, like caret browsing, adaptation to high-contrast themes, etc. -- but what it does not support is specialized hardware for the severely disabled. This has been a choice since day 1 of its publication, and falls in line with another key statement about the Pale Moon browser: that it does not attempt to cater to all possible usage scenarios, but instead tries to find a sane balance between features and performance/stability.

    • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:44PM

      by Marand (1081) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:44PM (#185770) Journal

      Linux: I use multiple browsers. For standard "stuff I visit often" sites, I use Debian's firefox builds (iceweasel) with a pile of addons. (If you want newer versions than the ESR ones, install from the experimental repository.) For other things, I mix konqueror (set to use webkit instead of khtml) and chromium (set to start in incognito by default). Konqueror's probably good enough for most purposes; has a lot of things built in but lacking in addons.

      Windows: ick. You've got bigger problems than what the browser's packaging in, solve those first.

      Android: Firefox is only decent mobile browser I've found with useful addons, so there isn't much competition. Even if this integrated feature is a privacy risk, you still have more control over your data and privacy in Firefox than the other browsers, just due to addons.

      • (Score: 1) by Delwin on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:34PM

        by Delwin (4554) on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:34PM (#186139)

        Android: What about Dolphin?

        • (Score: 2) by Marand on Friday May 22 2015, @01:04AM

          by Marand (1081) on Friday May 22 2015, @01:04AM (#186268) Journal

          Android: What about Dolphin?

          Problems with Dolphin:
          * Closed source: could be doing any damn thing and you have no way of knowing. Even though Pocket's a proprietary service, it still has the source easily available, so you can verify that it's not doing anything wrong. Same with the rest of Firefox.

          * Lack of useful privacy and security options (and addons). Privacy options are limited to "remember passwords" and "check for certificate revocation", and the only addons are LastPass and a web-of-trust addon.

          By comparison, Firefox has far more control. Just the android app's settings -- not counting tweaking about:config -- offer coarse cookie controls, data clear on exit and manually (dolphin only does manual clearing), has options to control autoplay of elements, and do-not-track. Then you can also add on addons like self-destructing cookies, various adblockers, tracker blockers like ghostery, and the ever-useful HTTPS Everywhere.

          * Also does the same sort of promoted startpage default thing that Firefox started doing, except it doesn't remove them as you start to visit other sites like a vanilla Firefox install does. If someone seriously finds Firefox's default onerous, there's no way in hell they're going to tolerate Dolphin.

          Hell, just looking at the start page links makes me feel dirty. The default links to both eBay and Amazon contain dolphin affiliate referral tag, and then they also link to some site called "whatsbestbuying.com" (what the fuck is this?) and their own self-hosted list of sponsored android apps or some shit. It's hosted on dolphin-browser.com and all the apps link to some marketing company (glispa.com) that redirects through to play.google.com.

          Knowing that, I reiterate my first point: the app itself is closed-source and you clearly can't trust what they're doing with any data you sent through considering the scummy shit they've got on their launchpage. Not really something that I trust to "read sensitive log data" and "read Home settings and shortcuts", a couple permissions that seem odd for a browser and that neither Firefox nor Chrome require.

          I kind of regret even installing it to check built-in options before replying, now.

          • (Score: 1) by Delwin on Friday June 05 2015, @01:49PM

            by Delwin (4554) on Friday June 05 2015, @01:49PM (#192525)

            ... OK, now I'm going to go uninstall it.

            What about Dolphin Zero? That's what I usually use.

            • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:48PM

              by Marand (1081) on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:48PM (#193001) Journal

              Well, it's the same developer, so I'm not willing to install it to check what it does, but...

              It's still closed source, so you don't know if it's doing what it says it does. Based on the Play store description and screenshots, though, it just sounds like it starts in incognito mode and enables the DNT http header.

              You can get the same results from something open-source more or less and not have to trust the benevolence of someone doing scummy crap with their other browser. Android Firefox, for example, has the DNT option, has a privacy mode, can be configured to clear data on exit if desired, and has the addons I mentioned before (plus uBlock as an alternative to Ghostery, forgot that one)

              Also worth noting: the f-droid repo has both Firefox and a version (Fennec FDroid) that tries to remove anything that might not be FOSS-friendly

              The browser situation on Android* is kind of crap, unfortunately. If I could find an alternative that seemed trustworthy enough, I'd consider switching; I've had to wipe my Firefox data (basically clear profile) a couple times over the years and sometimes its updates are crash-prone. However, I haven't. Browsers are complicated, unwieldy beasts, so most of them are just closed-source frontends for webkit or blink -- Opera included -- that tend to be sorely lacking in privacy features or flexibility, because those things aren't cool enough to attract downloads like other additions will.

              * I don't use iOS to verify, but from what I've heard, it's even worse off because of Apple's control-freak nature.

    • (Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:55AM

      by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:55AM (#185869)

      What would you suggest for each platform to replace Firefox?

      On linux? Iceweasel Or Konqueror?

      I'm happy with SeaMonkey - not small, but works well enough.

      --
      It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:08AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:08AM (#185911) Homepage

        Another SeaMonkey user here, or rarely, PaleMoon (when some site insists).

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:47AM (#185968)

      I'm testing Qupzilla.

      It does have a adblock and cookie manager, but no noscript type of deal yet. It does have a button ( statusbar icons extension) to enable/disable javascript, but it's all or nothing (for that current tab).

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:27AM (#185857)
    Stripping garbage out of their own builds? Then why is systemd force-installed in Debian Jessie?
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @06:35AM (#185914)

    Will it? it's stuffing the systemd garbage botnet down out throats.