And what features and/or technologies you’d rather not see in a web browser
Lets make this interesting: you can imagine features ( there’s no wrong answers ) , its not just about features that you already saw in other browsers
The thing I want natively is a built-in way to control volume per tab- not just mute, not through a plugin… Just a simple volume slider that works.
- Tab-organisation features (e.g. stacking, trees)
- Synchronised history - so you can find something you were looking at on your phone on your desktop or vice-versa
- Containers (Firefox) are great
- Full-page screenshot (Firefox) is very handy
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built-in adblocker
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ability to have JavaScript / sound / image loading turned off by default but with a whitelist of sites that can run / play / load them
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built-in secure password manager
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open-source, natch
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native ssh and ftp
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a button that autogenerates a metadata-free, archived link to the current page
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bring back flash
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can open any folder of folders of images as a slideshow
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feeds false metadata to sites trying to fingerprint the user
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rejects / autodeletes all but whitelisted cookies
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built-in tamagotchi / virtual pets
bring back flash
There are really good reasons flash died. If you’re desperate for flash content, use ruffle.
Upvoted for the tamagotchi / virtual pets. The other stuff, too, but mostly the virtual pets.
ftp
It’s crazy that Firefox was good with ftp until they just decided to not support it anymore 😕
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I want the old animated Netscape logo in the corner back
😏
Them were’t dairz
I really just want web browsers to die, and be replaced by one of the slimmed down options like gemini, gopher, or some markdown viewer.
The web just keeps getting increasingly bloated and ad-ridden, and filled with popups. Web browsers are as complex as entire operating systems now, so only 2 orgs (google and mozilla) have the resources and expertise to build a browser, and mozilla might throw in the towel eventually, leaving the internet as one big google ad.
IE move viewing of mostly static content into these simple variants like gemini, and move dynamic things to local apps with API access.
that’s a quite pessimistic stance, yes I do agree that web browsers are complexe and hard to maintain, but they can do more than viewing websites, you can play games, draw art, video chat, PDF viewing and editing, you can do a lot with just one app… that’s the beauty of Web browsers… The problem is in the Ad business model…
They shouldn’t be doing any of those things, html should be for simple, static content only.
For dynamic / interactive things, programmers should write programs again like they used to.
I want browsers to not choke and die whenever you idle on a video for too long. I’ve noticed this with Chrome and Firefox both. If I leave a YouTube video on idle for longer than a half hour and I come back to it, I gotta refresh or sometimes copy the link, open a new tab, paste it there and go to the video to resume. Sometimes it doesn’t even resume where I left off, gotta start from the beginning.
It’s aggravating.
In part that’s on YouTube and their bandwidth saving measures.
Data saving option for mobile netwerk , and website’s RSS feed finder , webpage translation too … As for what I don’t want to see : big installation size , ugly design and tracking
website’s RSS feed finder
On Firefox, the RSSHubRadar extension is useful for that.
The feature being available by default in browsers would be cool
if i open a site that ive opened x times this week/month a popup appears that says “no” then the pc shuts down and cannot be turned on for 3 hours.
saying: “no” sounds rude… maybe something like “no, go touch grass” that’d be better
Dark theme and accessible color contrast enforced by default.
If the site owner makes stupid choices, my browser should ignore them.
Edit: And an automatic switch to light theme if I decode to print something, obviously. I wasn’t raised in a barn.
background/defocused tabs are ‘paused’ by default.
paused meaning no runtime execution of scripts or anything else.
firstly, there’s always some security and plenty of privacy mischief around focus.
secondly, it’s almost always wasting cycles, so its just wasteful of resources and energy.
ofc with some option for you to eg. right-click on a tab and mark it as ‘runtime in background’ or something, for webmail or messengers etc which you do want runtime.
but it should essentially be whitelisted.
i’ve actually played with this in the firefox debugger and it essentially appears feasible so really hope this feature comes oneday - or i finally get some time to look into making an addon for it.
firstly, there’s always some security and plenty of privacy mischief around focus.
Oh, how so?
i’ve actually played with this in the firefox debugger and it essentially appears feasible so really hope this feature comes oneday - or i finally get some time to look into making an addon for it
that’s cool, yes a browser should stop using resources when you stop using it ( minimize it ), or using that particular tab by making it inactive, chromium based browsers behave like that if I’m not mistaken
how so?
check here for some basic examples. eg. it can be used to leak info from one context to another.
there’s ofc legit uses for it too, which is why i argue for user intervention.
chromium based browsers behave like that if I’m not mistaken
i may be wrong? but my understanding is they’ll currently limit resources, but execution still takes place? that’s definitely useful, but my argument is for for an option where CPU resources be limited to 0 in background (without user intervention).
A limit of data that can be used daily and we can track how much data we consume.
A little discrete “progress bar” at the bottom of the toolbar would be cool to see in the blink of an eye where I am on my daily limit.
That would also look cool, aesthetically speaking
I’m still looking for the browser with the best tab design and management (sync across devices being a requirement). Arc was pretty good in this regard, but the AI stuff was too obnoxious for me. Now I’m back to Safari.
As an addition to the translation tool (context menu in Firefox) it would be nice to have a conversion tool for the conversion of temperatures and lengths. I know there are addons for this purpose, but last time i checked they weren’t good or they were a hassle to use. Opera nailed it a few years ago with a little pop-up window when text got highlighted. It recognized when it was a SI unit. This is a feature that I have not seen in any other browser yet.