web browser choice for FreeBSD

That's probably a wise choice, because casting aspersions on different products and their users is the epitome of fanboyism. And it is annoying.
 
90% of the time I use Dillo. It has few dependencies, demands few resources, and I actually _like_ the fact that displays sites in a barebones manner -- more readable, and less prone to the way that some sites loaded with copious amounts of javascript and othe rubbish can bring other browsers to their knees, even on powerful systems.

The only problem with Dillo is that some sites feel the need to tie functionality to crazy scripts, or malformed cookies, and so I need to resort to another browser in order to get anywhere with them. Any browser using the bloated (bloated because they have to be to support all the insane 'standards' and workarounds that have become part of the 'modern web') webkit or gecko rendering engines is immediately ruled out for me, and other minimal browsers like HV3 and Netsurf are either not available or oudated in the ports collection, so I use presently use Opera. For a full-featured browser, it's amazingly light on resource usage.

Oh, and I don't use Flash, Java, or any of that other nonsense at all, so how plugins like those are handled by the different browsers is not an issue for me.
 
The newest Chromium port seems to have fixed flash playing issues and works great on my FreeBSD 8.2-STABE box.
 
If I get to a website that links2 cannot display properly, such as a youtube video or a java game.. I just phone up mummy and ask her to give me a 5 second summary of the page / video / game.

I use FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE

;)
 
Firefox+many extensions+few userChrome.css styles/tweaks+shumway>= almost perfect web browser. (adobe flash is evil :))
Снимок экрана от 2016-04-01 06-04-18.png

or if u like, like i am, an old FF interface, then alternatively -- SeaMonkey+many userChrome.css styles & some extensions = a browser not worse than Pale Moon, or even better-faster. also you can download & install with SeaMonkey some extensions, that were developed to work with Firefox only: find ff extension that you want to use, right click on "download" extension button --> "Save Link Target as..." --> *.xpi,
Снимок экрана от 2016-04-01 05-49-04.png
extract it, open "install.rdf" and change lines from
Code: 
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id> <!-- Firefox -->
        <em:minVersion>3.0</em:minVersion>
        <em:maxVersion>25.0</em:maxVersion>
to
Code: 
<em:id>{92650c4d-4b8e-4d2a-b7eb-24ecf4f6b63a}</em:id>
        <em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>
        <em:maxVersion>3.0</em:maxVersion>
save. compress all files in folder to zip archive, rename *.zip archive to <extension-name>-fx.xpi, drag & drop *.xpi file to SeaMonkey window, press "install" in pop-up dialog. ??? PROFIT! ))) works fine with some ff extensions (old versions are more preferable), but most of them won't work.


_____________________________________________________________________
uzbl-logo.png

and one more thing, for now u can install uzbl-browser from ports or pkgs, but it won't open web sites that use https, because uzbl cannot find /etc/ssl/certs ca-certificates.crt, to fix it edit $HOME/.config/uzbl/config and change line set ssl_ca_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt (150 string by default)
to
set ssl_ca_file = /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt

if u don't have ca-root-nss.crt install it from security/ca_root_nss.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Firefox. The only thing I don't like is core bump files because of Flash Player. I also used Chromium. Also a very nice option. Just I prefer Firefox
 
chrbr said:
I am using www/qupzilla-qt4 more and more. It seems to be fast. A nice feature is the build in AdBlock function. The browser reminds me of the old Netscape.
Click to expand...

+1

I've been using www/qupzilla-qt5 for the last few months. I find that the qt5 version generally looks better and also has the benefits of a more recent webkit (538.1).

It runs nicely with emulators/pipelight which brings the latest flash (v21 as of today) for the few sites that still require it. I haven't used firefox for a long time. Before qupzilla, I used www/seamonkey which is now my backup browser.
 
I dislike bloat, and all the major browsers have it three times over. But, many sites do not work correctly without javascript, and that forces me to occasionally use a bloated browser (for now). The Netsurf people are working on an unbloated javascript capable browser version, but it's a WIP endeavor.


So, I use the unbloated Netsurf (without js) - either in its framebuffer or X versions, or a text mode browser. For bloated usage (arrrgg), I have Firefox - but I make over a hundred changes in the config before I use it.
 
I did a search in the about:config of Firefox for http://, https://, mozilla and firefox and it came up with literally hundreds of random Mozilla owned services that it communicated with for weird things, such as analytics, self-healing, bug reports, bookmarks, cache etc... the list goes on and on.

By replacing all of them with 127.0.0.1, the whole browser runs a lot faster and feels much more snappy.

That said, I am looking at using Iridium for my main browser since it lacks most telemetry by default and works nicely with stupid broken html sites that only expect WebKit.
 
A lot of that stuff is there because the browser has become the operating system for most users so, in a lot of ways, the OS doesn't matter when you live online. A lot of non-Mozilla services you see are data transfers to the web site; something that has had a large upswing and will be even bigger in the coming year as sites attempt to load faster by only doing partial downloads of content on first visit.

I've said it elsewhere before. Attempting to avoid javascript is now like trying to avoid HTML and it's only to get more difficult very quickly. It's sometimes unavoidable for my company's clients, where we have always made sure their sites work without javascript and CSS, because they use services that rely on javascript usage, like credit card transactions through a third-party. Even then, if you want to compete on search engine results, you have to be fast to load, so loading initial content, then loading more, is becoming the norm.

Most developers nowadays don't even consider not using javascript. The general knowledge is that less than one or two percent have js turned off, and those are only people who are tech enough to know what they've done, so why bother.
 
kpedersen said:
I did a search in the about:config of Firefox for http://, https://, mozilla and firefox and it came up with literally hundreds of random Mozilla owned services that it communicated with for weird things, such as analytics, self-healing, bug reports, bookmarks, cache etc... the list goes on and on.

By replacing all of them with 127.0.0.1, the whole browser runs a lot faster and feels much more snappy.

That said, I am looking at using Iridium for my main browser since it lacks most telemetry by default and works nicely with stupid broken html sites that only expect WebKit.
Click to expand...

It will be nice that we have Iridium in the ports...
I am using more and more Netsurf now but also Midori or Firefox.
 
Just my 2 Cents.
I generally use Firefox and Midori in tandem.
When I need something complex Open - firefox, when its simple - midori. I would use Midori far more than I do, but unfortunately it tends to sigsegv a hell of a lot.

This is a helpful thread, I am still somewhat undecided on the browser question.
 
daemontrainer said:
I would use Midori far more than I do, but unfortunately it tends to sigsegv a hell of a lot.
Click to expand...
It never happens to me. Try to build it from source:
# cd /usr/ports/www/midori
# make config
XAjddfr.png

# make install clean

BTW, in my opinion GTK2 version is much better.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hmmm well, maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend. So you build it with GIR and it uses GTK2 by default than? Can I skip the GIR or will it become unstable without it?
 
No, it is just a manual it seems, and it doesn't add any extra dependencies (midori needs gobject-introspection-1.46.0 even if it was built with deactivated "GIR" build option). You can try. Don't remeber why it was built with it, the point was that don't use GTK3 version, it's crashing for me too. Also zeitgeist is pretty useless, and require sysutils/zeitgeist to be installed.

BTW you can try to build midori right now, no need to wait a weekend. It's building very fast — 3 minutes for me. Just install build dependencies from packages before building midori.

Check for build dependencies
Code: 
# cd /usr/ports/www/midori && make build-depends-list
Install them ( pkg install -A — install as automatic,
so you can remove them (build dependencies) later with pkg autoremove)
Code: 
# pkg ins -A accessibility/atk databases/sqlite3 \
devel/cmake devel/desktop-file-utils devel/gettext-runtime \
devel/gettext-tools devel/glib20 devel/libnotify devel/libsoup-gnome \
devel/pkgconf graphics/gdk-pixbuf2 graphics/gtk-update-icon-cache graphics/librsvg2 \
lang/vala security/gcr textproc/intltool textproc/libxml2 www/webkit-gtk2 \
x11-toolkits/gtk20 x11-toolkits/pango x11/libXScrnSaver
(Or alternatively pkg ins <packages> and then pkg set -A 1 -y <packages>)

Install midori
Code: 
# cd /usr/ports/www/midori && make deinstall install clean
and remove build dependencies.
Code: 
# pkg aut -y


It seems, that this functionality (install build dependencies with pkg) will be available with ports-mgmt/portmaster soon, with this line in
/usr/local/etc/portmaster.rc:
Code: 
# Install packages for build-only dependencies (--packages-build)
[b]PM_PACKAGES_BUILD=pmp_build[/b]
#
# Delete build-only dependencies when finished (--delete-build-only)
# PM_DEL_BUILD_ONLY=pm_dbo
But for now it says
portmaster said:
===>>> Package installation support cannot be used with pkgng yet,
it will be disabled
Click to expand...
 
I also like www/w3m, it's a nice console browser,
I like it much more than www/lynx or www/elinks.
It is even possible to view images with w3m in your xterm console :D,
just enable "Inline image support" with make config
AwDDuZS.png

or just install w3m-img — # pkg install w3m-img

Some screenshots:
TnFhjcE.png

ZmMNiJo.png
 
I use Firefox but I'm quickly dealing with having to constantly play around to dodge dbus - something I refuse to use on my desktop. Unfortunately I don't want any GPLv3 software on my system (all I have are build dependencies, no runtime dependencies) the only GPL2 software I use is Openbox, Tint2, Valgrind, evilvte (looking for alternatives) and a few others I can't think of off the top of my head.
 
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