Which browser are you using on your Pro1?

[Slion 1,201]

I've been using mostly Chrome but lately switched to Vivaldi Snapshot as it has an option to hide the status bar thus going full screen in landscape which is neat.

[CornholioGSM 338]

...i still dot have fx, but i will use bromite ( Chromium) - adblock browser 🙂

Edited March 21, 2020 by CornholioGSM

[EskeRahn 5,460]

@Slion Found a fix!
I can MERGE two threads, and that goes for polls too (loosing the old votes obviously)

So hid the communication on it to not confuse.

But for the benefit of any other wanting to make a poll here a 'summary':

Quote

Unfortunately a Poll can not be edited. So you have to get it right at first shot....

It may sound silly at first, but it does make sense though. Unless we will be allowed to reconsider our votes, editing the poll will not really make sense.

Imagine you had an Other category with votes in it, and you then added an important missing option, then some of the ones in Other might need to be moved, but as there unfortunately is no way the user can currently change a cast vote, the results would easily become misleading.

BUT if a new updated poll is created, the two threads CAN me merged, moving the old comments into the new thread, including the original poll text (but any votes already cast are lost).

[elvissteinjr 359]

While my phone is still somewhere in limbo, I was running Kiwi Browser on it.
I use Vivaldi on desktop, but let's be honest, the Android version is pretty much nothing yet, even after all the years of having that in the works.

[Muth 132]

Using Firefox mainly because of ADblock, it works great so far. Maybe I should investigate other solutions, with this poll I'm learning there is tons of alternatives.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

41 minutes ago, Muth said:

Using Firefox mainly because of ADblock, it works great so far. Maybe I should investigate other solutions, with this poll I'm learning there is tons of alternatives.

Feel the same way.

Tried installing Dolphin that looks promising. Only to experience on install that a browser claiming to be about privacy, not just requests but requires you to give it access to location... So uninstalled before ever trying it.

DuckDuckGo looks interesting too, unfortunately the build in AdBlocker does not seem very effective though, and it does not even offer a "Block Element". To add to that I was a bit surprised to see it claiming to have stopped three 'ads' on my own tiny ad-free wordpress blog - not quite sure what it was blocking though... And clicking the categories to jump to a sub-page was seen as a pop-up I had to allow. So would not say the first experience was super smooth. On the other hand it handled imdb.com better than FireFox, where it is hard to not to be redirected to their lousy m.imdb version... You have to be really quick with the request desktop in FireFox, before the redirect...

[Slion 1,201]

I wanted to try FireFox but discard it pretty quickly as I did not find a dark theme. If I recall well the top bar is bright white.

[divstar 164]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

I wanted to try FireFox but discard it pretty quickly as I did not find a dark theme. If I recall well the top bar is bright white.

Works just fine. Most menus (context etc.) stay white though.

Also there's a plugin for turning white pages into dark(er) ones.

Edited March 22, 2020 by divstar

[Craig 1,435]

Not on the list, but I tried Kiwi Browser.  It has one unique feature - you can set the address bar on the bottom.  That makes it closer to keyboard, etc.    But I went back to Firefox, just used to it.  And I'm double covered for ads, with adaway and ublock origin.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Craig

[Rob. S. 1,660]

I don't have the Pro¹ yet... but when it will be there, I'll be at a loss just as I am with my current phone as to which browser I should use.

Like @elvissteinjr, I use Vivaldi on the desktop, but don't think the mobile version is ready yet. 

On mobile, I've found only one browser which has a feature that I wouldn't want to live without – ignoring text block widths and inserting line breaks to fit text on the phone's screen, as an option that can be set as default: Yandex Browser. I've had to give it up though, not just because it's a data gatherer, but because it often becomes unbearably slow.

What I've been using since then is Brave Browser, but one of these days it crashed three or four times in a row while I was writing a forum post somewhere. 

Since then I'm back to Chrome for the time being. But I would rather not.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Rob. S.

[SchattengestaIt 559]

Haven't yet received the phone but I'll be using Kiwi Browser since it has support for desktop extensions. Having uMatrix on your phone really is helpful. And you know what? You can easily export the filters from your PC and import it on the phone.

The only downside is the missing synchronisation since google blocked any chromium apps from their automatic synchronisation. I'll do it manually every now and then to have the full list of bookmarks.

Edit: Adblock should work too but I didn't really need it with uMatrix yet since it already blocks ads anyways.

Edited March 23, 2020 by SchattengestaIt

[brunoais 334]

Don't have the phone yet but after I do, I'll definitely use Firefox.

[Wasmachineman_NL 99]

Firefox, because I use Waterfox on my desktops/laptops.

 

[Slion 1,201]

I'm just trying out a few browsers and right now I have my eyes set on Bromite. Since the source code is available I'm thinking one should be able to customise it to optimise landscape usage on Pro1.

[glic 8]

This is a surprise to see Firefox as one of the most used. It is a great Desktop browser, but on mobile I was using Brave since it was known widelly(it should have been there as option, instead of Edge), as Adblock at that time was not working on Firefox properly, but from the last year switched to DuckDuckGo.

[Slion 1,201]

I'm trying DuckDuckGo right now and I could stick with it for a while cause it does not open the URL bar when you put the focus on text field. Meaning more precious vertical screen real estate when using your keyboard in forums and wikis.  Most chromium base browser do that for some reason.

Do you guys know on which engine DDG browser is based? I thought it was based on Chromium too but now I'm not so sure.

[Slion 1,201]

1 hour ago, Slion said:

Do you guys know on which engine DDG browser is based?

So it looks like it is using Chrome Web View rather than Chromium directly. That would explain why it does not feel as snappy as Bromite or other Chromium based browser. Going through Web View comes at a slight performance cost I guess. Still DDG is the best landscape keyboard experience IMHO. Even though shortcuts like Ctrl+T don't work there.

[Slion 1,201]

Another plus for DuckDuckGo is that the code base is also available and can be built easily on Windows using Android Studio. Building Chromium is nowhere that straight forward unfortunately. It means that customising DDG for F(x)tec Pro1 should be relatively easy.

Notably on my task list:

• Adding support for keyboard shortcuts.
• Adding option to hide the status in landscape.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

Just published a DuckDuckGo build that's hiding the status bar in landscape.

Well that build was a little rushed so the status bar pops back when opening the menu for instance.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

Just re-published that custom DuckDuckGo v0.0.1.

That status bar should now remain hidden in landscape most of the time.

[D1ggs 141]

Kiwi browser, the only one outside of Firefox that supports extensions. 

[Slion 1,201]

Actually a lot of the stuff I was trying to do on the DuckDuckGo code base is already available with Lightning.

[Slion 1,201]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

Actually a lot of the stuff I was trying to do on the DuckDuckGo code base is already available with Lightning.

After trying quite a few browsers those last couple of days it looks like i'm going to settle with Lightning for a while. It ticks all the boxes for me:

• Dark theme
• Hide status bar
• Aggressively hiding address bar
• Open Source

[peter.s.fidelman 54]

Firefox.  I use the extension "User-Agent Switcher and Manager" to see the desktop versions of websites by default.  These tend to work great on the Pro1!  It's a much nicer experience than the "mobile web".

[Hook 3,020]

I use Firefox on the Pro 1.  I do like it, but I mostly use it because it syncs with my desktop and two laptops (Windows and Linux) that all use Firefox, my preferred computer browser.