#secure web browsers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moonlit-tulip · 2 years ago

Note

What's your favorite ebook-compatible reading software? Firefox EPUBReader isn't great, but I'm not what, if anything, works better.

Very short answer: for EPUBs, on Windows I use and recommend the Calibre reader, and on iOS I use Marvin but it's dying and no longer downloadable so my fallback recommendation is the native Apple Books app; for PDFs, on Windows I use Sumatra, and on iOS I use GoodReader; for CBZs, I use CDisplayEx on Windows and YACReader on iOS; and I don't use other platforms very often, so I can't speak as authoritatively about those, although Calibre's reader is cross-platform for Windows/Mac/Linux, and YACReader for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, so they can serve as at least a minimum baseline of quality against which alternatives can be compared for those platforms.

Longer answer:

First off, I will say: yeah, Firefox EPUBReader isn't great. Neither, really, are most ebook readers. I have yet to find a single one that I'm fully satisfied with. I have an in-progress project to make one that I'm fully satisfied with, but it's been slow, probably isn't going to hit 1.0.0 release before next year at current rates, and isn't going to be actually definitively the best reader on the market for probably months or years post-release even assuming I succeed in my plans to keep up its development. So, for now, selection-of-ebook-readers tends to be very much a matter of choosing the best among a variety of imperfect options.

Formats-wise, there are a lot of ebook formats, but I'm going to collapse my answers down to focusing on just three, for simplicity. Namely: EPUB, PDF, and CBZ.

EPUB is the best representative of the general "reflowable-text ebook designed to display well on a wide variety of screens" genre. Other formats of similar nature exist—Kindle's MOBI and AZW3 formats, for instance (the latter of which is, in essence, just an EPUB in a proprietary Amazon wrapper)—but conversion between formats-in-this-broad-genre is generally pretty easy and not excessively lossy, so you're generally safe to convert to EPUB as needed if you've got different formats-in-this-genre and a reader that doesn't support those formats directly. (And it's rare for a program made by anyone other than Amazon to work for non-EPUB formats-in-this-genre and not for EPUBs.)

PDF is a pretty unique / distinctive format without any widely-used alternatives I'm aware of, unless you count AZW4 (which is a PDF in a proprietary Amazon wrapper). It's the best format I'm aware of for representations of books with rigid non-reflowable text-formatting, as with e.g. TTRPG rulebooks which do complicated things with their art-inserts and sidebars.

And CBZ serves here as a stand-in for the general category of "bunch of images in an archive file of some sort, ordered by filename", which is a common format for comics. CBZ is zip-based, CBR is RAR-based, CB7 is 7-zip-based, et cetera; but they're easy to convert between one another just by extracting one and then re-archiving it in one's preferred format, and CBZ is the most commonly distributed and the most commonly supported by readers, so it's the one I'm going to focus on.

With those prefaces out of the way, here are my comprehensive answers by (platform, format) pair:

Browser, EPUB

I'm unaware of any good currently-available browser-based readers for any of the big ebook formats. I've tried out EPUBReader for Firefox, as well as some other smaller Firefox-based reader extensions, and none of them have impressed me. I haven't tested any Chrome-based readers particularly extensively, but based on some superficial testing I don't have the sense that options are particularly great there either.

This state of affairs feels intuitively wrong to me. The browser is, in a significant sense, the natural home for EPUB-like reflowable-text ebooks, to a greater degree than it's the natural home for a great many of the other things people manage to warp it into being used for; after all, EPUBs are underlyingly made of HTML-file-trees. My own reader-in-progress will be browser-based. But nonetheless, for now, my advice for browser-based readers boils down to "don't use them unless you really need to".

If you do have to use one, EPUBReader is the best extension-based one I've encountered. I have yet to find a good non-extension-based website-based one, but am currently actively in the market for such a thing for slightly-high-context reasons I'll put in the tags.

Browser, PDF

Firefox and Chrome both have built-in PDF readers which are, like, basically functional and fine, even if not actively notably-good. I'm unaware of any browser-based PDF-reading options better than those two.

Browser, CBZ

If there exist any good options here, I'm not aware of them.

Windows, EPUB

Calibre's reader is, unfortunately, the best on the market right now. It doesn't have a very good scrolled display mode, which is a mark against it by my standards, and it's a bit slow to open books and has a general sense of background-clunkiness to its UI, but in terms of the quality with which it displays its content in paginated mode—including relatively-uncommon sorts of content that most readers get wrong, like vertical text—it's pretty unparalleled, and moreover it's got a generally wider range of features and UI-customization options than most readers offer. So overall it's my top recommendation on most axes, despite my issues with it.

There's also Sigil. I very emphatically don't actually recommend Sigil as a reader for most purposes—it's marketed as an EPUB editor, lacks various features one would want in a reader, and has a much higher-clutter UI than one would generally want in a reader—but its preview pane's display engine is even more powerful than Calibre's for certain purposes—it can successfully handle EPUBs which contain video content, for instance, which Calibre falls down on—so it can be a useful backup to have on hand for cases where Calibre's display-capabilities break down.

Windows, PDF

I use SumatraPDF and think it's pretty good. It's very much built for reading, rather than editing / formfilling / etc.; it's fast-to-launch, fast-to-load-pages, not too hard to configure to look nice on most PDFs, and generally lightweight in its UI.

When I need to do fancier things, I fall back on Adobe Reader, which is much more clunky on pretty much every axis for purposes of reading but which supports form-filling and suchlike pretty comprehensively.

(But I haven't explored this field in huge amounts of depth; plausibly there exist better options that I'm unaware of, particularly on the Adobe-reader-ish side of things. (I'd be a bit more surprised if there were something better than SumatraPDF within its niche, for Windows, and very interested in hearing about any such thing if it does exist.))

Windows, CBZ

My usual CBZ-reader for day-to-day use—which I also use for PDF-based comics, since it has various features which are better than SumatraPDF for the comic-reading use case in particular—is an ancient one called CDisplayEx which, despite its age, still manages to be a solid contender for best in its field; it's reasonably performant, it has most of the features I need (good handling of spreads, a toggle for left-to-right versus right-to-left reading, a good set of options for setting how the pages are fit into the monitor, the ability to force it forward by just one page when it's otherwise in two-page mode, et cetera), and in general it's a solid functional bit of software, at least by the standards of its field.

The reason I describe CDisplayEx as only "a solid contender for" best in its field, though, is: recently I had cause to try out YACReader, a reader I tried years ago on Windows and dismissed at the time, on Linux; and it was actually really good, like basically as good as CDisplayEx is on Windows. I haven't tried the more recent versions of YACReader on Windows directly, yet; but it seems pretty plausible that my issues with the older version are now resolved, that the modern Windows version is comparable to the Linux version, and therefore that it's on basically the same level as CDisplayEx quality-wise.

Mac, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

I don't use Mac often enough to have opinions here beyond "start with whatever cross-platform thing is good elsewhere, as a baseline, and go on from there". Don't settle for any EPUB reader on Mac worse than the Calibre one, since Calibre works on Mac. (I've heard vague good things about Apple's native one; maybe it's actually a viable option?) Don't settle for any CBZ reader on Mac worse than YACReader, since YACReader works on Mac. Et cetera. (For PDFs I don't have any advice on what to use even as baseline, unfortunately; for whatever reason, PDF readers, or at least the better ones, seem to tend not to be natively cross-platform.)

Linux, EPUB

For the most part, my advice is the same as Windows: just go with the Calibre reader (and maybe use Sigil as a backup for edge cases). However, if you, like me, prefer scrolled EPUB-reading over paginated EPUB-reading, I'd also suggest checking out Foliate; while it's less powerful than the Calibre reader overall, with fewer features and more propensity towards breaking in edge cases, it's basically functional for normal books lacking unusual/tricky formatting, and, unlike Calibre, it has an actually-good scrolled display mode.

Linux, PDF

I have yet to find any options I'm fully satisfied with here, for the "fast launch and fast rendering and functional lightweight UI" niche that I use SumatraPDF for on Windows. Among the less-good-but-still-functional options I've tried out: SumatraPDF launched via Wine takes a while to start up, but once launched it has the usual nice SumatraPDF featureset. Zathura with the MuPDF backend is very pleasantly-fast, but has a somewhat-unintuitive keyboard-centric control scheme and is hard to configure. And qpdfview offers a nice general-purpose PDF-reading UI, including being quick to launch, but its rendering backend is slower than either Sumatra's or Zathura's so it's less good for paging quickly through large/heavy PDFs.

Linux, CBZ

YACReader, as mentioned previously in the Windows section, is pretty definitively the best option I've found here, and its Linux version is a solid ~equal to CDisplayEx's Windows version. Like CDisplayEx, it's also better than more traditional PDF readers for reading PDF-based comics.

iOS/iPadOS, EPUB

My current main reading app is Marvin. However, it hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer available on the app store, so I'm currently in the process of getting ready to migrate elsewhere in anticipation of Marvin's likely permanent breakage some time in the next few years. Thus I will omit detailed discussion of Marvin and instead discuss the various other at-least-vaguely-comparably-good options on the market.

For general-purpose reading, including scrolled reading if that's your thing, Apple's first-party Books app turns out to be surprisingly good. It's not the best in terms of customization of display-style, but it's basically solidly functional, moreso than the vast majority of the apps on the market.

For reading of books with vertical text in particular, meanwhile, I use Yomu, which is literally the only reader I've encountered to date on any platform which has what I'd consider to be a sensible and high-quality way of handling scrolled reading of vertical-text-containing books. While I don't recommend it for more general purposes, due to awkward handling of EPUBs' tables of contents (namely, kind of ignoring them and doing its own alternate table-of-contents thing it thinks is better), it is extremely good for that particular niche, as well as being more generally solid-aside-from-the-TOC-thing.

iOS/iPadOS, PDF

I use GoodReader. I don't know if it's the best in the market, but it's very solidly good enough for everything I've tried to do with it thus far. It's fast; its UI is good at getting out of my way, while still packing in all the features I want as options when I go looking for them (most frequently switching between two-page-with-front-cover and two-page-without-front-cover display for a given book); also in theory it has a bunch of fancy PDF-editing features for good measure, although in practice I never use those and can't comment on their quality. But, as a reader, it's very solidly good enough for me, and I wish I could get a reader like it for desktop.

iOS/iPadOS, CBZ

YACReader has an iOS version; following the death of my former favorite comic reader for iOS (ComicRack), it's very solidly the best option I'm aware of on the market. (And honestly would be pretty competitive even if ComicRack were still around.) I recommend it here as I do on Linux.

Android, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

It's been years since I've had an Android device, and accordingly have very little substantial advice here. (I'm expecting to move back to Android for my next phone-and-maybe-also-tablet, out of general preferring-open-hardware-and-software-when-practical feelings, but it'll plausibly be a while, because Apple is much better at long-lasting hardware and software than any Android manufacturers I'm aware of.) For EPUB, I recall Moon+ reader was the best option I could find back circa 2015ish, but that's long enough ago that plausibly things have changed substantially at this point. For CBZ, both YACReader and CDisplayEx have Android versions, although I haven't tried either and so can't comment on their quality. For PDF, you're on your own; I have no memories or insights there.

Conclusion

...and that's it. If there are other major platforms on which ebook-reader software can be chosen, I'm failing to think of them currently, and this is what I've got for all platforms I have managed to think of.

In the future... well, I hope my own reader-in-development (slated for 1.0.0 release as a Firefox extension with only EPUB support, with ambitions of eventually expanding to cover other platforms and other formats) will one day join this recommendation-pile, but it's currently not yet in anything resembling a recommendable form. And I hope that there are lots of good reader-development projects in progress that I currently don't know about; but, if there are, I currently don't know about them.

So, overall, this is all I've got! I hope it's helpful.

#Archive #Social #Ask #Ebooks #Infodump #the short summary of why i want to find a web-based epub reader is:#currently i'm learning to read japanese.#one of the natural next steps for me to take in the japanese-learning process is to start reading actual books.#i have some very useful browser extensions—yomichan and jpdbreader—which make reading japanese in-browser more convenient than elsewhere.#(jpdbreader in particular is probably the best training-wheels-ish japanese-reading tool i've found to date.)#however i can't use firefox extensions in non-firefox reader apps such as calibre #and browser security limits are such that i can't use them on other extensions' associated webpages either #thus i need to find a non-extension-based website i can get to display my japanese books so i can then read them with those extensions.

44 notes · View notes

infosanjay · 11 months ago

Text

What are the features of browser security?

Keeping your stuff safe online is super important. When you're browsing the web, you want to make sure nobody's sneaking in to steal your info. That's where web browsers come in. They're like your online bodyguards, keeping the bad guys out.Think of it like walking through a busy street. There are shady characters trying to pickpocket you, but your browser's security is like having a strong friend who watches your back. So, when your browser has good security, it's like having a tough bodyguard who keeps you safe from viruses, fake websites, and people trying to mess with your accounts.Browser security is all about making sure you can surf the web without worrying about someone stealing your stuff. So next time you're online, thank your browser for keeping you safe!

Here are some important features of browser security that will help you ensure a safe browsing experience —

First, update your browser - It is very important from a security aspect.

Secure and Encrypted Connections – Modern browsers use secure protocols, such as HTTPS, to establish an encrypted connection between the user's device and the website they are visiting. This encryption ensures that the sensitive information, such as login credentials and payment details, is transmitted securely and cannot be tampered with by hackers.

Anti-Malware and Phishing Protection – Browsers often come equipped with built-in features that can detect and block malicious software and phishing attempts. These features can flag suspicious websites, warn users about potential threats, and even block harmful downloads that could infect their devices.

Pop-up Blockers – Pop-up windows can be not only annoying but also potentially dangerous. They can contain malicious ads, deceptive messages, or attempts to trick users into downloading malware. Most browsers have pop-up blockers that can prevent these windows from appearing, reducing the risk of users by clicking on harmful links.

Cookie and Tracking Controls – Browsers allow users to manage cookies, which are small files that websites save on a user's device.

#update #web browsers #chrome #firefox #microsoft edge #opera #browser history #data security

5 notes · View notes

readingwriter92 · 22 days ago

Text

Me trying to get fighter's block to work: "Damn why is it so hard to load an insecure webpage these days"

#like-it's a good thing that web pages default to the https but also #idk why fighters block doesn't work on the secure version. thats not in my pervue of knowledge #but. i know that if i can force the browser to load the http version #which is gets grumpy about doing #then i can have my beloved #for the most part. it seems (ive tested this with safari and chrome) if you remove the s in https -- sometimes you gotta remove the #pound sign at the end. or make sure after the .com it has /.#idk i usually just do a diff combo of all those things until it works XDD #the things i do for my beloved

1 note · View note

mikestek · 3 months ago

Text

Is it time to re-consider your browser? Top Alternatives to Google Chrome with Pros and Cons

Alternatives to Google Chrome are becoming increasingly popular as users seek improved privacy and performance. If you’re feeling the pinch of data collection or find Chrome slowing down your browsing experience, it may be time to explore your options. This guide will probe into the pros and cons of various web browsers that could better suit your needs while ensuring a more secure and efficient…

0 notes

zapperrr · 1 year ago

Text

Stay Ahead of the Curve: Latest E-commerce Development Trends

Zapeerr provides comprehensive e-commerce development services tailored to meet the unique needs of businesses seeking to establish or enhance their online presence. Here are the key e-commerce development services offered by Zapeerr:

1. Customized Website Development: Zapeerr specializes in building customized e-commerce websites from the ground up, ensuring that each site is designed to reflect the brand identity and offers a seamless user experience.

Platform Selection and Implementation: Zapeerr helps businesses select the most suitable e-commerce platform for their needs, whether it's Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, or a custom solution. They then handle the implementation and configuration of the chosen platform to ensure optimal performance.

Mobile Optimization: Zapeerr ensures that e-commerce websites are optimized for mobile devices, providing a consistent and intuitive shopping experience across all screen sizes and devices.

Payment Gateway Integration: Zapeerr integrates secure payment gateways into e-commerce websites, allowing businesses to accept payments from various sources securely and efficiently.

Inventory Management Solutions: Zapeerr develops robust inventory management systems that enable businesses to track stock levels, manage product variants, and prevent overselling, ensuring smooth operations and customer satisfaction.

Security Enhancements: Zapeerr prioritizes security by implementing measures such as SSL encryption, PCI compliance, and regular security audits to protect sensitive customer data and safeguard against cyber threats.

Performance Optimization: Zapeerr optimizes e-commerce websites for speed and performance, employing techniques such as caching, image optimization, and code minification to ensure fast page loading times and smooth navigation.

SEO Integration: Zapeerr integrates search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into e-commerce websites to improve visibility and attract organic traffic, helping businesses increase their online presence and drive sales.

Integration with Third-Party Services: Zapeerr facilitates seamless integration with third-party services such as shipping carriers, accounting software, CRM systems, and marketing tools, enabling businesses to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.

Continuous Support and Maintenance: Zapeerr provides ongoing support and maintenance services to ensure the smooth functioning of e-commerce websites, including software updates, bug fixes, and technical support to address any issues promptly.

With Zapeerr's expertise in e-commerce development, businesses can achieve their online objectives effectively and stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape.

#E-commerce website development #Custom e-commerce solutions #Platform integration. Mobile optimization #Payment gateway integration #Inventory management #Security enhancements #Performance optimization #SEO integration #Third-party integration #Continuous support and maintenance #User experience design #Responsive web design #Cross-browser compatibility #Conversion rate optimization

0 notes

procrastiel · 11 months ago

Text

Ok, now that you wiped away your tears of laughter, here’s how you can change your web browser and search engine:

- download one of the browsers that put privacy and security first. Here’s a great list. Examples include: Brave, Mozilla Firefox, and for more advanced users: Tor, Ungoogled

- use a VPN. There’s free and paid options.

- change your default search engine to something other than Google. Your online traffic matters. Which websites you load matters. Think of your time and clicks as online currency. Ecosia is a great Bing/Microsoft based search engine that also plants trees with every search! And it gives great results. Another one is DuckDuckGo. Here’s a list of alternative search engines.

Hot tip: the operating systems also collect data whenever you use an online keyboard (and suggested text). Don’t want them to know what you’re typing? You can download a free privacy keyboard for Android (haven’t found one for iOS yet but Apple says the data is stored on device only. Let’s hope so🤞).

Another idea for advanced users: operating systems (such as macOS and Windows) still collect tons of data about you, and cost money if you want to install them on a 2nd hand device, for example. You can use operating systems that are completely free, open-source and user-friendly, such as Ubuntu.

Now go and roam the internet, be free, and donate to open-source programs if you can 😘

23K notes · View notes

johnliterblog · 1 year ago

Text

A Closer Look at the Dark Web

In the vast realm of the internet, where the surface web serves as a bustling marketplace of information and commerce, there exists a hidden, mysterious underworld known as the dark web. This enigmatic space, concealed from traditional search engines, has earned a reputation for harboring both illicit activities and a haven for privacy enthusiasts. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the depths…

View On WordPress

1 note · View note

shtaras · 1 year ago

Text

youtube

#installation #google #chrome #extensions #random #password #ai art generator #ubuntu #linux #web browsers #cyber security #Youtube

1 note · View note

techtalkiz · 2 years ago

Text

#browser #browser extension #web browsers #browser security

0 notes

reinanova · 11 months ago

Text

false. duckduckgo is an independently owned company (x)

duckduckgo can be used in web browsers like chrome, firefox, and edge bcuz duckduckgo is a search engine that offers browser extensions for the different web browsers (x)

web browser = the application on your computer that allows you to access the internet (ie chrome, firefox, edge, safari, etc)

search engine = the thing that compiles websites based on your search and returns the links in a list (ie google, bing, duckduckgo, yahoo, etc)

(x)

the search engine google (not google the company) is the default search engine on most web browsers, including firefox. you have to manually go into settings and switch your default search engine by adding an extension.

so even if you use firefox instead of chrome, google can still access your data if you’re using google to search the web

duckduckgo was literally designed to be an alternative to google and it is part of their mission statement to NOT track their users data. duckduckgo protects your privacy. google doesn’t. (x)

Let’s see how Google’s AI is getting on!

#also let’s be clear. *google* owns chrome. that’s why the default search engine is google #also duckduckgo does have its own web browser that you can download #i personally use firefox as my browser and duckduckgo as my search engine #so don’t come at me saying i should use firefox instead. bcuz i do #and firefox has google as its default web browser. which means google can access all of your data on firefox whenever you google something #*search engine not web browser #i know this is an anti ai post #and it still is. bcuz duckduckgo doesn’t force ai down your throat with every search #there might’ve been one time that the *option* for ai generated results popped up but it was very easy to say no #and i haven’t seen any ai results since #notice how they gave us the *option* to see ai generated results rather than forcing us to look at ai results without consent #i’ve taken a whole bunch of computer classes including computer security #me choosing to use firefox and duckduckgo is a direct result of what i’ve learned from these classes #fuck ai #anti ai #firefox #duckduckgo

9K notes · View notes

joyflameball · 2 years ago

Text

Making my own post abt this actually, since there is a more popular version running around that has shitty advice and I sure as hell ain't gonna manage to hijack that

Switching to Firefox: What do?

Now a lot of us are neurodivergent and have FAR too many tabs for our own good, and I can understand if you're nervous about switching because of that, since that's a LOT of tabs and you don't wanna lose them. Trust me, I relate to that immensely. I have FAR too many tabs open for my own good.

So what you should do in that case is save your tabs. I personally saved my tabs in a private Discord server, since that let me open the tabs again easily, and make categories for each type of tab, but you can use something like Notepad to save them as well. So, you copy-paste all your tabs over to wherever you're saving them (and additionally, copy-pasting all of them will allow you to see tabs you don't need and delete them, since they're no longer buried).

Once you're into Firefox and signed in, head to Settings. You should see in the general tab the button that says "Import Browser Data." You'll see a dropdown arrow that will let you pick whatever browser you wanna import your data from.

That easy! From there, pull up ALL your tabs and you're good to go!

Simplified explanation:

Save all your previous tabs, maybe in Notepad (I personally used a private Discord server, for the reasons I explained).

Once in Firefox, head to Settings and import your Chrome data.

Pull up your tabs that you saved, and you're in!

Settings

So, you're in the general tab with your data from Chrome imported. Now, keep going through the Settings, because there's a LOT more you can do, and Firefox's settings are fairly simple to navigate. I can't give you any advice for the general tab, that's all for you to handle.

Head to Home, and this is where you'll need to start changing some stuff. I recommend disabling "Recommended By Pocket" for the safest experience, not just because it's better for privacy, but also because the Pocket stuff is annoying. Also disable "Snippets" at the bottom.

Head to Search. From here, you'll be able to disable Google as the default browser, which is good for everyone. You can use DuckDuckGo, which pretty safe.

If you wanna use a different search engine from what is shown, it's gonna be a bit more complicated to set up. In the Search tab of settings, set it so there's a search bar in the toolbar.

Go to the address of whatever new search engine you wanna use (I'm personally using ecosia.org, as it helps w the environment by planting trees, AND it's got a really good privacy policy). Let's use as example: youtube.com .

You'll see a magnifying glass with a plus sign in the smaller search bar. When you click it, you'll be shown a dropdown that says "This time, search with: [all the search engines]." Click the YouTube icon that has a plus sign next to it (again, YouTube as example).

I'm explaining this somewhat confusingly- Mozilla's website has a much better explanation.

Head back to the Firefox settings, and set your default search engine to the new site. Bam.

(Additionally: to disable ever searching with Google, scroll down to Search Shortcuts, and remove the check mark next to Google.)

Simplified explanation:

Set it so there's two search bars.

Go to the address of whatever search engine you wanna use.

Click the magnifying glass, then the icon of the new search engine.

Head back to the Search settings, and switch to the new engine.

Privacy and Security

THIS is what you're here for. Firefox has LOADS of settings to make you more secure. My personal recommendations are:

Set enhanced tracking protections to Strict, or if you wanna customize it yourself, Custom. This will allow you to block cryptominers, trackers, cookies, and fingerprinters.

Set it to clear history when Firefox is closed, if you wish.

Set it so that the search bar will not show you suggestions from sponsors, and don't allow Mozilla to process your search queries.

Under Permissions > Location, set it to block all requests to access your location. You can do the same for whatever other permissions you'd like, but especially block Location.

Block Firefox from making personalized extension recommendations, at the very least. If you don't want Firefox to use telemetry data, set it so Firefox won't send technical and interaction data to Mozilla.

Block dangerous downloads, obviously, and set it to HTTPS-Only Mode on all windows.

Enable secure DNS stuff using Max Protection. I'm personally using NextDNS (recommended by r/piracy).

Again, I'm not the arbiter of information here. You do whatever you want with your privacy and security settings. These are just my personal recommendations.

Extensions

A point of contention in the original post was how many fucking addons the OP had that essentially did the same thing, like several different adblockers when just one is enough. This is risky not just because it'll slow your browser down to hell and back, but also because it'll make you MORE traceable.

However, this doesn't mean you should go around with zero extensions. Especially since In Today's Day And Age, you WILL get ambushed with ads wherever you go. So at the very least you'll need an adblocker. However, there are extra extensions you can use to help clean up, for example, YouTube Search.

Here's my personal list of extensions. I made sure these aren't redundant, or don't cover settings that Firefox already has.

I could be wrong in places, so if anyone wants to push back on this, I encourage it.

Ublock Origin: GET THIS ONE. Everyone and their mother loves this bad boy. Great adblocker that works REALLY well to clean up the web and make things less... awful. It lets you block specific website elements (so if Tumblr's pulling shit you can block it), and in settings it has a WHOLE lot of privacy/safety settings you can turn on which I won't go over, since this is a post about Firefox. The point is: GET UBLOCK. Everyone loves it, it's great, it's reliable, 10/10.

SponsorBlock: This is a GREAT addon that completely skips sponsored sections in YouTube videos. It feels kinda seamless sometimes. It also lets you skip a lot of extra unnecessary stuff as well.

Youtube Search Fixer: Unclogs YouTube's search so you won't get playlists, shorts, unrelated search results, all that fun stuff, so you can just find what you're looking for. Not entirely foolproof, as the search is going down the drain generally, but gets rid of shorts and shit.

Youtube Shorts Block: Automatically turns YouTube Shorts into standard YouTube videos so you can get away from the fucking TikTokkification of the Internet.

Return Youtube Dislike: Remember how YouTube inexplicably removed the ability to see dislikes? This addon reverts that. You can see dislikes again.

Auto Tab Discard: We're all neurodivergent here and have way too many tabs, and that slows down our fucking computers. Auto Tab Discard basically puts those tabs into sleep mode- not deleting them, but making them go offline so they aren't taking up as much running time. It also lets you mark specific sites to NOT get put into sleep mode, if you need them up for whatever reason.

XKit Rewritten: Look. We're on Tumblr. We know this site's bullshit and how it's impossible to use. XKit helps fix a LOT of the bullshit on this site and adds on helpful stuff. Seriously, get XKit, they're the ones carrying this whole fucking site.

Again- I could be wrong. And I think the only one you 100% DEFINITELY NEED is uBlock. The others are just for convenience. You don't need to install any of these extensions except uBlock. It's just my personal recommendations.

TLDR

Get Firefox. Save all your tabs from Chrome, sync your data, do all that jazz.

Set your default search engine to anything but Google. You can do DuckDuckGo.

USE FIREFOX'S GREAT SECURITY SETTINGS. You don't need a million extensions to do stuff Firefox already CAN do.

The only extension you 100% need is uBlock Origin, but here's my list of ones I personally recommend to help clean up the web and have a better experience.

Get off of Chrome. Google is currently on trial, brought there by the fucking DOJ, for being an illegal monopoly. The trial started about a week ago, and will last for about three months. Depending on how this goes, this could shake up Google's whole monopoly, and change the future of the entire internet.

Firefox is better in every way than Chrome. Firefox will actually try to protect you and lets you opt out of unnecessary data collection. Firefox is not based on Chromium. Firefox is open source, and its code has been scrutinized and deemed as safe. It's not perfect, no corporation is- and Mozilla is ultimately that, a corporation. But god, it's leaps and bounds ahead of Chrome. Switch to Firefox.

#cassie rambles #switch to firefox #firefox #google #google chrome #mozilla firefox #web browsers #browsers #chrome #browser #fuck google #internet privacy #internet safety #digital privacy #internet security

167 notes · View notes