Internet Browsers: What are YOU using? (And why?) (1 Viewer)

[Dave Upton]

150 tabs? You're definitely the target audience for Vivaldi - as far as their tab management goes - but since it's based on the same Chromium engine memory usage won't really differ. Do you use an extension like The Great Suspender to reclaim memory from idle tabs? If not it might be worth considering, 64gb is a lot of RAM. That's server territory.

I do run a couple of VMs..

The tab count is mostly due to the fact that I’m doing a lot of testing on here often times and I’m switching between multiple admin panels etc. I stopped using the great suspener because apparently it has been taken over by a new developer who has injected malware

 

[theJman]

Well that's rather disturbing to hear, given I still use it. I just ran scans with both Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, neither of which are triggering an alert thankfully. Was that malware situation recent?

 

[jcroy]

Well that's rather disturbing to hear, given I still use it. I just ran scans with both Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, neither of which are triggering an alert thankfully. Was that malware situation recent?

Try These Alternatives to 'The Great Suspender' Extension

I’ve been a fan of The Great Suspender extension for years. Even when Google would drop new features into its Chrome browser to reduce the resourc

lifehacker.com

We no longer recommend the Chrome extension The Great Suspender. Here is why! - gHacks Tech News

The Great Suspender is a popular Chrome extension with more than 2 million users on Google's platform alone, but we cannot recommend it anymore. Here is why!

www.ghacks.net

 

[theJman]

After Dave posted that I searched around the interwebs and found several articles referencing the issue. Even though scans showed no infections I uninstalled the extension and rebooted my computer. I'll check out those alternatives you linked, for sure I need something to suspend tabs that I haven't used in a while.

 

[theJman]

There's a cleaned version of TGS on GitHub that was posted by some developers who removed all the tracking that was getting the extension flagged as malware. Just click on the Code button, download the zip and following the directions they posted. It's quick and simple.

 

[jcroy]

There's a cleaned version of TGS on GitHub that was posted by some developers who removed all the tracking that was getting the extension flagged as malware. Just click on the Code button, download the zip and following the directions they posted. It's quick and simple.

(More generally).

Fortunately enough folks with coding proficiency skills, actually cared enough to do their own fork without the malicious stuff.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I'm really liking what I'm seeing so far.

The great Vivaldi Experiment is really going well so far. I'm liking it.

One problem though: When I check-in on Kevin's "Today's Blu-ray Movie Price Drop" thread, I cannot see any of the Amazon link widget-things.

 

[BobO'Link]

I'd guess that's due to built-in ad blocking. Whenever I want to see/use the Amazon links here I launch Edge and copy/paste the links into FF.

I've yet to find a chromium fork that I can tolerate. Even without Google's built-in tracking, they all suffer from the same things I never liked about Chrome.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I'd guess that's due to built-in ad blocking. Whenever I want to see/use the Amazon links here I launch Edge and copy/paste the links into FF.

I've yet to find a chromium fork that I can tolerate. Even without Google's built-in tracking, they all suffer from the same things I never liked about Chrome.

That would be too bad, Howie. Vivaldi has three levels of privacy blocking: No Blocking, Block Trackers, or Block Trackers & Ads. I have mine set to No Blocking.

 

[BobO'Link]

That would be too bad, Howie. Vivaldi has three levels of privacy blocking: No Blocking, Block Trackers, or Block Trackers & Ads. I have mine set to No Blocking.

Do you have any ad/script blocker plugins installed? uMatric or AdBlock Plus? Either could also be the issue.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Nope. I toyed around with those on Firefox (which I have used exclusively for several years). But I haven't done any real dabbling with Vivaldi yet--outside some of its own settings.

 

[DavidJ]

Vivaldi sounds like it is worth checking out so I'm going to download it too.

One of the articles I read about The Great Suspender mention that modern browsers do a good job of resource management on their own and that there might not be any reason to use something like The Great Suspender. What do you all think? Is there still a need? I had been a regular user of The Great Suspender because I keep a lot of tabs open.

 

[theJman]

That would be too bad, Howie. Vivaldi has three levels of privacy blocking: No Blocking, Block Trackers, or Block Trackers & Ads. I have mine set to No Blocking.

I did a detailed check of what's being blocked on that link and one of the trackers is called "Amazon Associates" which is likely what you're referring to. But if you have the built-in blockers disabled and haven't installed any other plugin's I wonder what else could be blocking it? Very odd.

 

[theJman]

Vivaldi sounds like it is worth checking out so I'm going to download it too.

One of the articles I read about The Great Suspender mention that modern browsers do a good job of resource management on their own and that there might not be any reason to use something like The Great Suspender. What do you all think? Is there still a need? I had been a regular user of The Great Suspender because I keep a lot of tabs open.

Unless your Dave Upton and bought a gazillion GB's of memory a tab suspender is still worth having (I'm envious Dave, not jealous ). Your system will run more efficiently if there is sufficient excess RAM to handle OS operations and suspending tabs not being used is a good way to achieve that.

 

[theJman]

For you guys trying out Vivaldi... as you've probably already noticed, it's packed with features. Here are 2 of the many you might find interesting:

• F2 Quick Commands. Scroll through your active or recently closed tabs and select them for instance access. You can search through the active tabs and history as well. Also shows some of the more common commands.
• Ctrl-H History. The history function in all other browsers is pretty generic, but not here. You'll need to have opened a lot of tabs and given it some days to fully populate with useful information, but once you do it becomes one of the most detailed aspects of the browser. More information about your browsing trail then you ever thought existed, including usage patterns.

 

[farnsbarns]

Different web browsers have different compatibilities so whatever works best for you.
Though I don't think browsers belong in the political or any other type of censorship game. (Also adds additional unnecessary layer). What was good yesterday may not be so tomorrow.

Brave lets you open a new tab with blank page like the (also Chromium based) new Edge and Chrome browsers used to allow, but no longer. Just that alone uses significantly less memory resources. Chrome, Edge & Brave all automatically suspend inactive tabs now after x amount of time (Edge lets you specify). This is done to limit memory consumption. Maybe that's one reason the Great Suspender guy sold his app to malware company before anyone realized it's no longer necessary? The one minor thing I've noticed Brave lacks is doesn't seem to carry over Windows color theme. But I found a nice little theme that has multiple colors and shades with black inactive tabs, unlike many color themes that add only a single, flat color.
Free extensions I always install are Adblock Plus (adblockplus.org) and Malwarebytes Browser Guard. Brave has it's own built-in shield so now Malwarebytes blocking way less ads and trackers since Brave is catching most of them first. They claim this feature makes Brave much faster.
Also recently discovered some nifty 'beta' customizations I've been adding to all my Brave installs.
Type brave://flags in address bar - that opens 'experimental settings' or flag toggles (for Edge or Chrome browsers replace the word brave, though 'availables' may differ).
It's a huge available list but 'smooth scrolling' is near the top - the rest I enable are all tab related so I search flags for "tab" to easily find those. My recommended tweaks:

sorry for an over-techy, veering off topic post but hope maybe some will find useful/helpful

 

[farnsbarns]

My above post was moved here from a different thread to this more appropriate thread.
So the last sentence can be ignored and the first paragraph was discussing Mozilla's Firefox browser, btw.

Vivaldi sounds like it is worth checking out so I'm going to download it too.

One of the articles I read about The Great Suspender mention that modern browsers do a good job of resource management on their own and that there might not be any reason to use something like The Great Suspender. What do you all think? Is there still a need? I had been a regular user of The Great Suspender because I keep a lot of tabs open.

Haven't heard of Vivaldi will have to look into that (and also read some of the previous pages here).

I have a relative/family member that's seriously out of control with the tabs in multiple windows (don't think in hundreds).
I often run a lot of tabs but usually only in one window. So we naturally panicked when TGS was blocked.
Did a lot of hunting for decent alternatives which there really aren't. Did some more research, also found in Edge settings that it's built-in, can be toggled on and off and idle time before suspending is adjustable.

So where was it in Brave and Chrome? Found some articles mentioning those as available flags (experimental features).
Where were those flags? Not available. Further research revealed that tab suspension is now integrated in both browsers with no toggle or settings available and I think a very short time threshold.

So that article you read is correct at least for the three mentioned (by me) Chromium-based browsers.
I see above that Vivaldi also has Chromium under the hood.
Anyone using Chromiums with a lot of tabs (once there are so many they disappear you can use Ctrl+W to close active tab, btw) I strongly recommend scrollable tab strip and buttons flags enabled.

 

[theJman]

Brave lets you open a new tab with blank page like the (also Chromium based) new Edge and Chrome browsers used to allow, but no longer. Just that alone uses significantly less memory resources.

There's an extension called Empty New Tab Page that allows all Chromium-based browsers to open a blank page. I've used it for Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and Chromium without issue.

Anyone using Chromiums with a lot of tabs (once there are so many they disappear you can use Ctrl+W to close active tab, btw) I strongly recommend scrollable tab strip and buttons flags enabled.

This is odd; I can find that setting in Vivaldi but not Chromium, the code every other browser - except FireFox and Safari - is based on. And that's with Chromium 91 as well. Weird.

 

[farnsbarns]

Yes I had used I think that same extension before moving to Brave where they have it as a native setting.

Surprising the flags not available in Chromium, (but I did mention, "though 'availables' may differ", realizing that particulars may vary from browser to browser). Actually didn't even know Chromium was a standalone browser.

And I only just discovered today that if you hover over the open tabs you can scroll through tabs with the mouse wheel.
So that's even handier than the buttons but buttons still neat.

 

[theJman]

Surprising the flags not available in Chromium, (but I did mention, "though 'availables' may differ", realizing that particulars may vary from browser to browser). Actually didn't even know Chromium was a standalone browser.

I could understand the option not being available on the derivative browsers - because maybe some distro didn't feel the need to support it - but Chromium is the taproot for all of them so it doesn't make sense. But such is the case.