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Internet browser advice for 2018?

S

serr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 8, 2010
257
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Internet browsing apps seem to be in a sorry state of affairs as of the last year or so. Well... Firefox is anyway. The blame can't be squarely placed on bugs in OSX 10.13 I don't think because I see these issues in every earlier OSX even back to the solid and stable 10.6.8.

I'm pretty sure a big part of this is buggy poorly written Youtube scripts battling adblock and crashing (memory leaks seems to be a big one here).

Running 10.6.8, I will need to flat out quit and restart Firefox after a few Youtube videos when they suddenly stop playing. 10.13.3 probably has whatever resources that stuff needs to run so it doesn't just hang. I happen to be using a machine grossly overpowered for just internet browsing so it powers through it like nothing's wrong but I'd still like to get to the bottom of this if possible. It isn't reasonable to see 20% CPU use and almost 6GB ram used on a quad core i7. On an older but faster C2D you'll see the same almost 6GB ram use and over 50% CPU use and get actual noticeable lags here and there.

I got turned off by Google Chrome initially with all the call home stuff. I've caught a few glimpses of Safari when downloading Firefox on a clean install that didn't exactly come across as inviting.

If this is all adblock related, are there any better options?
 
I was a Chrome user for years but now I'm enjoying Firefox + Thunderbird - they're both being very reliable.
If you're concerned about privacy as I am too, you can opt to clear your cache+cookies upon quitting Firefox.
 
serr
I share your pain. I used FF for 8 years. After the last "upgrade" it became unusable from an ease of use. The font size/clarity was also a huge reason and some add ons that were ghosted by the latest release. Ram usage went through the roof, including spinning wheels of death.

I bit the bullet and started using Safari, after trying Chrome and Vivaldi neither of which did it for me. It also can be difficult to "see" but got great suggestions here. After a month I am totally comfortable with it. Yes the first week was rough, but the better utilization of ram, helped me to stick it. Try Safari for a week, you just may like it.
 
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Interesting takes on browsers. I have been very happy with Firefox especially after the last major upgrade to Quantum. Now at 58.0.2 (64 bit) and everywhere I go, everything I have seen finally works as expected. The pluses for me are alphabetizing the links and the most visited bookmarks on the toolbar.
Even most videos in Facebook work well even if I don't like how they have instituted the continuing video on the sidebar when you scroll up. But that's minor in my opinion.
 
CE3 said:
Brave is a good desktop browser option to consider:

https://brave.com/

I primarily use it and Safari on MacOS.
Click to expand...


Giving Brave a try. So far, I like it. Only quibble to this point is that I'm not sure how to get it to stop video autoplay...

Overall, like it a lot. If it truly is doing as it says with blocking ads and other such things, it might end up as my number 1 choice.
 
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Jeffois said:
Giving Brave a try. So far, I like it. Only quibble to this point is that I'm not sure how to get it to stop video autoplay...

Overall, like it a lot. If it truly is doing as it says with blocking ads and other such things, it might end up as my number 1 choice.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Brave was founded by the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla (the company behind Firefox). You might want to try their iOS app too.

I think video autoplay can be disabled in preferences. Check out the link below for instructions:

https://community.brave.com/t/disab...ideo-ads-at-some-news-sites-youtube-etc/250/5
 
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