WINDOWS By Josh Hendrickson You’re probably reading this newsletter from Chrome. But I’m not. I’m using Microsoft Edge. I know, I know. It’s pretty ea
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Why aren’t you using Edge?
Home » Forums » Newsletter and Homepage topics » Why aren’t you using Edge?
- This topic has 69 replies, 33 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 6 months ago.
AuthorTopicJosh Hendrickson
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 2:44 am #2592670Viewing 43 reply threadsAuthorReplies-
Alex5723
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 3:07 am #2592676Why use a copycat when you can use the original ?
Edge even copies Chrome’s bugs.Chrome using too much battery
Quick Google search for “Edge using too much battery” You’ll find article after article with tips to help with that problem.. I fact you will find 112,000,000 results
3 users thanked author for this post.
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steeviebops
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 4:08 am #2592691I prefer to use Firefox. I don’t want to contribute to a future where Chrome-based browsers are the only thing out there. It’s IE6 all over again.
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berniec
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 6:06 am #2592693I use neither of the two that you suggest I’m “probably” using. I’ve used Firefox for a very long time and I haven’t seen a reason to use any of the others [ in fact, chrome isn’t even installed on my system [win10/pro]]
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bbearren
AskWoody MVPOctober 9, 2023 at 7:20 am #2592702You’re probably reading this newsletter from Chrome. But I’m not.
Nor am I. But I’m not reading it from Edge, either. In my experience both Chrome and Edge have too many tentacles reaching into my browsing habits that I choose to forego. Chrome has never been installed on any of my PC’s because it comes from Alphabet/Google, and I don’t/won’t use anything Alphabet/Google. I don’t use Google search, either.
Edge/Bing have been completely removed from my Windows installations, including Program Files\WindowsApps. Firefox suits my purposes quite nicely.
Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.We were all once "Average Users".3 users thanked author for this post.
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pmbinc
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exjnb2ny
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 9:24 am #2592730I refuse to use EDGE because Microsoft seems intent on shoving it down mt throat.
Sure, it’s a good browser, but I don’t like the way Microsoft makes EDGE THE default browser on Windows 11. Fortunately there is a way around that.
Plus, the Bing search engine’s headlong dive into AI concerns me.What really pushed me off EDGE was it being the default browser from the Start Menu, even if another Browser was set as the Default. That was on Windows !0 already.
So I applied a tweak and got rid of EDGE going out and searching he Internet with Bing when I was just trying to use the Start Menu.
Chrome isn’t my favorite browser, although it is set to my default browser.
3 users thanked author for this post.
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bmeacham
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 11:15 am #2592775I’ve used Firefox for a very long time and I haven’t seen a reason to use any of the others
Unfortunately I have encountered several sites that don’t work properly with Firefox, so I switched to Opera on my Windows machine. On my Mac I use Safari.
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bmeacham
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 11:17 am #2592778Please do a review of Opera as compared to Chrome and Edge.
2 users thanked author for this post.
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milleron
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Alex5723
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 11:34 am #2592781Please do a review of Opera as compared to Chrome and Edge.
Opera is a Chinese browser since 2016. Would you trust it ?
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OldNavyGuy
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Doug Reed
GuestOctober 9, 2023 at 11:53 am #2592782The current and last several Firefox versions are incredibly glitchy for me when I try to check my yahoo email. I have tried disabling all my adblockers, add-ons, dark theme, etc, but still when I try to sign in it fails to load properly. So that has caused me to use EDGE to log into yahoo mail. I have current, updated win10 with all mandatory updates current, so IDK…
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madhatter
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Mark
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 12:34 pm #2592799I had Opera on Windows 11. I found it slow and quirky, but kept it for testing purposes. I also found that it would not render some websites properly.
I have Firefox replacing Edge for Microsoft news items and others, but I discovered that Opera was being substituted. I have removed Opera from Windows 11, but I keep it for Ubuntu as an alternate.
Mark
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Cybertooth
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 1:23 pm #2592806Speaking of Chrome substitutes, Vivaldi has been rising fast in my browser rankings. The developers appear eager to please and actually respond to user feedback. Good privacy controls, lots of extra features available if you want them, decent customization possibilities.
2 users thanked author for this post.
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mimo001
AskWoody LoungerOctober 9, 2023 at 1:53 pm #2592804May I suggest you try the Vivaldi browser?
I think you´ll be quite pleased, and amazed too, of what a real customizable browser can be, without sacrificing performance.
One of my favorite functionalities is customizable workspaces – I suggest you try them.
I started using it some months ago, and I have not looked back (it is also based on Chromium). -
WSmslizzyj
AskWoody LoungerOctober 9, 2023 at 1:55 pm #2592812Before I retired and worked with the College’s online learning management system, and supervised the online student tech support desk, we found that many of the problems students contacted us about with the LMS was due to them using Edge when working in their online courses. We ALWAYS advised them to switch to Chrome, or Firefox, and the problems would clear up. The LMS worked fine in Firefox, but Chrome seemed to be the browser that worked best. We always told them they were welcome to use Edge for anything they wanted, but to just make sure NOT to use it when doing their online coursework or they would have lots of headaches. Just my observations. I’m sure Edge is a solid browser, but it just doesn’t play well with some other programs.
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Vince
GuestOctober 9, 2023 at 2:10 pm #2592818- Trust
- Search for ‘Edge’ using Autoruns (I’d give a list but removed all that were easily removed).
That said, I do use Edge on occasions that Brave won’t do as required without tinkering with settings. Edge does seem to hit a brick wall with resource intensive tasks (e.g. online photo editing) .
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Still Anonymous
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 2:27 pm #2592823Although my primary browser is Firefox, I’m finding that Edge works well as a secondary browser, especially on the occasions that I find a page that simply will not render correctly in any non-chromium browser.
The place where I find Edge preferable over Chrome is where there’s a lot more granularity of user preferences (especially privacy). Although it takes a little bit of effort, if you review all of Edge’s settings, it’s possible to turn off pretty much everything that sends data to Microsoft. And it is possible to replace Microsoft’s default home page, the sidebar and Bing as the default search engine. Plus you can also turn off Windows auto-starting Edge in the background at login time.
To me, one of the most important differences is that like Firefox (and unlike Chrome), Edge has the capacity of auto-clearing some or all accumulated data at shutdown. This includes cookies, browsing history and more. Having this set, it means that every time I start Edge, I have a clean browser with no history.
Even if you don’t normally use Edge, if it’s on your machine, it is active, as evidenced both by processes visible in the Task Manager, and data accumulation you’ll find with a run of either CCleaner or BleachBit. Microsoft does use Edge for its preferred rendering of HTML content for various things, and where they will bypass user preferences for other browsers. Thus, you do want to do the exercise of reviewing all the settings to minimize what gets accumulated, including cookies and cache content
One other twist — in Firefox, it’s possible to auto-export all your bookmarks (in about:config set browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML to True). With that set, each time I close out Firefox, the export is placed as bookmarks.htm in my Firefox profile (in Windows, that’s %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[something].default\bookmarks.htm). In Edge (and for that matter, other browsers I use) I set this file to be my home page, and as a result, when I’m working in a secondary browser, I have access to all of my bookmarks, current as of when the last time I closed Firefox. The raw HTML display of a bookmarks file isn’t visually appealing, but all the bookmarks are there and usable.
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Microfix
AskWoody MVPOctober 9, 2023 at 2:37 pm #2592828The following fact influenced my decision years ago when chrome appeared on the scene, name a linux distro’s that sets Chrome, Brave or Edge as default browsers?
Good enough, each to their own, enjoy the adverts with neutered extensions.Windows - commercial by definition and now function... -
Mothy
AskWoody LoungerOctober 11, 2023 at 8:09 am #2593331Linux Lite includes Google Chrome now as their default web browser in an attempt to appeal to Windows users that also use Chrome. But I think it’s rather silly and defeats the purpose of switching to an open source operating system to then use a closed source web browser. Better to use one of many other Linux distributions that stick to open source software as well as try to protect your privacy from the spying eyes of big tech.
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astro46
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 2:40 pm #2592831I have been using Vivaldi for years. I tested page loading against Chrome, and Firefox. As of the last time I did this, a year ago, I found Vivaldi loading pages faster.
And it has tons of customization, including tab stacking, keyboard shortcuts, privacy options, search options, tool for screen clipping, etc.
It can do password managing, but I would never consider letting my browser manage my passwords.
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bmeacham
AskWoody PlusOctober 9, 2023 at 3:00 pm #2592834I use Edge for reading and annotating PDF documents. It’s easy to highlight portions of text with different colors and to add comments.
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doriel
AskWoody LoungerOctober 11, 2023 at 7:22 am #2593319I dont think browsers should be also PDF editors, picture viewers, or anything else. This “complexity” can bring bugs and unpredictability to the system (look at MS Teams, which tries to be even EXCEL file displayer and how gigantic part of memory it takes…). Then it require constant patching and so on..
Edge is good for enterprise, it supports login with multiple accounts. I have some problem with all data collectiong from my activity on the internet that Edge seems to perform, so I use Vivaldi now.
In the past Opera was the best, but its slow and not so good anymore.
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Norio
AskWoody LoungerOctober 9, 2023 at 10:02 pm #2592932Vivaldi is my default browser. Edge is a good application. However, I resent Microsoft trying to force me to use it, and I don’t trust them to responsibly use the data from their telemetry mechanisms. I have Edge set up so all cookies, cache, passwords–everything, is deleted when I close it. But I bet there’s some back door that isn’t closed.
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rekcah
GuestOctober 9, 2023 at 10:08 pm #2592879Main reason for not using Edge:
- TEL-SPYWARE CREATED BY MS to spy on users. Plus left over spyware from Google Spymasters
- HOGS CPU and GPU to almost 90%…
- CRASHES PC very often
- HIGH power consumption do to a bitcoin miner embedded into it
- HUGE BUGS in there from the Google Spymasters
Never use Edge or Chrome. Period
1 user thanked author for this post.
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Bubblefish
AskWoody LoungerOctober 10, 2023 at 4:55 am #2593002Got bad news. Due to low Edge adoption, the bitcoin miner was embedded into windows
Personally I use firefox as main and vivaldi as backup. No MS or Google.
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Ascaris
AskWoody MVPOctober 10, 2023 at 7:38 am #2593037Using Chrome to read this?
Definitely not. I’ve never even had it on any of my PCs. I’m using Waterfox, a fork of Firefox. I have tried out Vivaldi, and it is certainly the best IMO of all of the Chromium derivatives, but I have yet to find a Chromium variant that I could live with full-time when I don’t have to. If anything happened to Firefox (and therefore Waterfox), Vivaldi would be the instant go-to.
Just knowing that Chrome is from Google is enough. Edge and Microsoft would not be much better. It’s pretty chatty too… just to Microsoft instead of Google.
I know that (sadly) most people today don’t seem to care much about this stuff (not enough to overcome the desire for the convenience), but that’s not me.
That ties in with some of the other comments from the article:
All day long, our phones report to persons unknown where we are, what apps we run, and how often we look at the screen.
I would not own or carry a phone that did any of that. How can anyone think that’s acceptable?
Alas, the OSes on our PCs (especially Windows 10) and the browsers aren’t much better.
I would not tolerate that from a PC either. My OS defaults to no telemetry (but I can opt in to limited diagnostic telemetry if I wish), while the browser simply has none. All the telemetry code in the Firefox base is removed.
Have you ever looked at an item on Amazon for just a moment and then found that every website you later visit seems to display an ad for that item?
I do not recall actually seeing an ad from Amazon. But even if I didn’t use an adblocker, and it has been a very long time since that was the case, Mozilla’s “total cookie protection” built into Firefox (and also present on Waterfox) would mean that the cookies set when I visited amazon.com were invisible to the Amazon ad script running in the namespace of a non-Amazon site. That is, if the cookies had not been deleted by Cookie AutoDelete, an addon that does just what it says.
Have you ever visited an online store out of curiosity, left, and then received an email from that store — despite never having handed over any information?
No, certainly not. That’s creepy. Not as bad as the people who report talking about some topic in front of their (idle) Alexa or phone and then see ads for that thing, or when people report that they walked into a McDonald’s and had their phone offer them promos from McDonald’s, but still creepy.
Occasionally, I do have my adblocker off for some reason (usually for troubleshooting), and I will see an ad or two, and I am quite happy that they are always irrelevant suggestions for me. If they served up things that were in line with my interests or recent browsing history, it would mean they are somehow getting information that I do not intend to provide them.
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Alex5723
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 1:21 pm #2593128I would not own or carry a phone that did any of that. How can anyone think that’s acceptable?
Any mobile phone does that
Have you ever looked at an item on Amazon for just a moment and then found that every website you later visit seems to display an ad for that item?
No
Have you ever visited an online store out of curiosity, left, and then received an email from that store — despite never having handed over any information?
Never
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Ascaris
AskWoody MVPOctober 10, 2023 at 9:49 pm #2593201Any mobile phone does that
Mine doesn’t.
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doriel
AskWoody LoungerOctober 11, 2023 at 7:30 am #2593323Any mobile phone does that
I hope not. It can be question how “tight” the user is, what he allows or not, but certainly this should not happen in default. But Im affraid such backdoors really do exist.
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bmeacham
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 10:10 am #2593067does edge save comments with the pdf? can be viewed in different pdf viewer and see comments?
Yes and Yes. I can see the highlighting when I look at it in Acrobat Reader, and I can see comments too.
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Will Fastie
Newsletter EditorOctober 10, 2023 at 10:11 am #2593068Vivaldi has been rising fast
I agree. Underrated.
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Will Fastie
Newsletter EditorOctober 10, 2023 at 10:16 am #2593069Definitely not.
Regrettably, certain sites important to me require Chrome. Otherwise, it would not be installed on any of my PCs.
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bmeacham
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 1:08 pm #2593123Definitely not.
Regrettably, certain sites important to me require Chrome. Otherwise, it would not be installed on any of my PCs.
Just curious, what sites require Chrome. Will they not work with another chromium-based browser?
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Still Anonymous
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 3:13 pm #2593145It’s been a couple of years since I tried, but I remember problems with American Red Cross, when signing up to do an online CPR class. I couldn’t get Firefox or any non-Chrome browser to work there. That one was Chrome or nothing.
Unfortunately, too may site developers work in Chrome and live in Chrome, and they don’t care about anything else. Their implied attitude is “Chrome is the standard, and we use it. If you use something else, and it doesn’t work, switch to Chrome. Anything else is not worth the effort to support, especially when there is no prominent alternative.”
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Ascaris
AskWoody MVPOctober 10, 2023 at 9:50 pm #2593202Regrettably, certain sites important to me require Chrome. Otherwise, it would not be installed on any of my PCs.
But do they require Chrome proper, or just any Chromium variant? They should all behave the same from the web end of things.
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Still Anonymous
AskWoody PlusOctober 11, 2023 at 2:31 pm #2593392There are a few sites that do require Chrome proper. Yes Chrome and everything else derives from Chromium, but Google does things in Chrome that are not necessarily in Chromium and other browsers derived from Chromium. It’s the same kind of thing, of what makes Edge unique, of what Microsoft does to its own copies of Chromium.
A lot of the challenge tends to be in how scripting is handled. If Google adds some scripting enhancements to Chrome, and site developers build their content based on those enhancements, then other browsers aren’t going to have those enhancements. Unfortunately, even if Chromium is considered to be the baseline, what Google does with Chrome is the leading edge. Google’s enhancements may eventually find their way into Chromium, but there’s no guarantees of either if or when.
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IT Manager Geek
AskWoody PlusOctober 11, 2023 at 4:44 pm #2593415To the question “Just curious, what sites require Chrome?” I have my, currently, short list that doesn’t work in Edge.
- MyIBM, yeah, I kid you not, it breaks in Edge when you purchase a license (maybe they’re giving Microsoft the bird);
- xoyondo (a polling solution, recommended by my committee administrator friends) breaks during the Credit Card entry.
Nothing new, a decade ago, Internet Explorer would sometimes be the only browser that would work with Microsoft type hosted site and I have to, very grudgingly, open it up.
Take care,
IT Manager Geek
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Josh Hendrickson
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 11:35 am #2593091One thing’s for certain, y’all are amazing people.
I definitely will want to try out some of the browser suggestions made here, as I’m at heart a software junkie. But I do suspect that, much like Will, I’ll encounter multiple instances where Chrome/Edge are requirements for me… not by my choice, but because many outlets I work for/with only allow Chromium.But it’s worth a shot! Thanks for reading everyone!
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Peobody
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 3:15 pm #2593146Slimjet with uBlock Origin for me; Vivaldi as the backup. I LOVE Vivaldi for its customization but it uses more resources than Slimjet. Slimjet mostly does what I need. It lacks support for external pdf viewers and occasionally has a problem with a site but its low resource usage makes it worthwhile (about 20% lower in both memory and cpu than Edge in my brief, just-completed comparison).
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Steve S.
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 3:45 pm #2593153I don’t use Edge or Chrome because of privacy concerns. Google is an advertising company and Microsoft is morphing into one as well. I do all I can to “exorcise” anything Google from my computer.
Currently I use Firefox, with Brave and LibreWolf as alternatives as needed. Firefox has often disappointed me the last several years so I’m always on the lookout for alternatives. Also, I have a friend who has been using Opera (ugh!) so I’ve been looking into browser recommendations for her. While I moved her to FF, I’ve also been looking at others.
Yesterday, I came across this website https://privacytests.org/ (GitHub: https://github.com/privacytests/privacytests.org/tree/a0c5937ccacb044631bd9d1b850eea312ebff276) which frequently runs open-source automated privacy testing against the most used browsers for Windows, Android and iOS – including Desktop, Private Mode, and Nightly Builds. The latest test results were posted on 9-26-2023. One can click on any of the results in the tables and see the source code for that particular test & result. Keep in mind, these tests are done using the as-installed defaults, so user tweaks may improve results. All in all it seems to be a valuable resource for browser privacy info.
At default settings, Brave, Firefox, LibreWolf and Mullvad appear to do quite well in comparison to Edge.
Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.
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Microfix
AskWoody MVPOctober 10, 2023 at 4:22 pm #2593159Nice link Steve S.
I’m intrigued by Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/en/browser
May have to give that a whirl..Windows - commercial by definition and now function... -
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Will Fastie
Newsletter EditorOctober 10, 2023 at 5:08 pm #2593170Just curious, what sites require Chrome.
Varies, but I’ve had the most problems with video streaming sites. For example, DirecTV’s original streaming service was flaky, eventually resulting in their requiring Chrome. Things are better now, but whenever there is such a problem, the provider invariably fixes it for Chrome first. And I mean Chrome, not Chromium. Just because it gets fixed in Chrome does not mean it will work in Edge. And sometimes the provider simply blocks anything but Chrome.
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Ascaris
AskWoody MVPOctober 10, 2023 at 9:55 pm #2593203And sometimes the provider simply blocks anything but Chrome.
How would it know the difference if the useragent says it is Chrome? Do you have any example sites that are accessible to non-members (of any kind) that can be used to test?
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Still Anonymous
AskWoody PlusOctober 11, 2023 at 2:43 pm #2593394Pretty much every Chromium-derived browser uses the nearly the same UA string:
- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/117.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
From there, other derivatives differ only in showing what version of Chrome they’re based on, and tagging their own identity at the end of the string. The following are UA strings from current versions of Opera and Edge.
- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/117.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 OPR/103.0.0.0
- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/117.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/117.0.2045.60
I do have a portable version of Chrome that I use rarely, and the actual build number for that is 117.0.5938.150 . It’s entirely possible that Google has put capacity in that build that is not included in what is published by Chromium as Chrome 117.0.0.0
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Peobody
AskWoody PlusOctober 10, 2023 at 7:00 pm #2593187I just tested Mullvad. Performance was similar to Slimjet on the 10 sites I loaded. Memory usage was ridiculously high though. Slimjet with one tab open was at 67MB whereas Mullvad was at 525MB. This on an 8GB i7 laptop. Interestingly, Mullvad comes with uBlock Origin and by default installs in the \User\<username> directory instead of \Program Files. Best I can tell, it keeps all of its data there as well. I found an empty \AppData\LocalLow\Mullvad directory but that was it in AppData. It appears to have potential especially for anyone wanting its reported level of privacy but its resource usage is a deal breaker for me.
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Mothy
AskWoody LoungerOctober 11, 2023 at 7:48 am #2593324I consider Microsoft Edge spyware if not malware (ex. Webview2) and even avoid using it at work where it’s installed by our IT department (on Windows 10 Enterprise).
Otherwise on my personal systems with Linux Mint, I only use Firefox ESR and Ungoogled Chromium as a secondary web browser (it removes all Google web service dependencies/connections for added privacy from Google’s spying too). But I rarely ever use it as Firefox ESR has worked well for most websites I use/need. On the rare occasion a website complains about Firefox I either change the user agent to look like Chrome (on Windows 10) or use Ungoogled Chromium.
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JNygren
GuestOctober 11, 2023 at 10:53 am #2593356I occasionally use Microsoft Problem Steps Recorder (PSR.exe). (Amazing tool! Records every step you take in reproducing a problem.) Microsoft Edge CAN’T HANDLE THE OUTPUT FROM PSR! How stupid is that?! I need to keep an old copy Internet Explorer around just so I can view PSR output.
My browsers of choice are Firefox and Chrome. Edge just doesn’t cut it for me.
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Will Fastie
Newsletter EditorOctober 11, 2023 at 3:19 pm #2593401Do you have any example sites that are accessible to non-members that can be used to test?
As of today, no. I recall a number of Google sites and services that required Chrome, but that was sometime ago and I can’t remember the details.
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Will Fastie
Newsletter EditorOctober 11, 2023 at 3:22 pm #2593403… the same UA string
There are ways beyond the user agent string to determine the browser. For example, Google Analytics can distinguish between Chrome and Edge.
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Ascaris
AskWoody MVPOctober 12, 2023 at 1:34 am #2593508Edge uses a useragent string that is different from Chrome:
<span class=”code”>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/117.0.2045.60</span>
Chrome would skip that last bit from Edg/ to the end. Vivaldi used to have such a thing too, if I recall, but they changed it to the Chrome useragent because there were some sites that didn’t like it.
The idea behind Google’s development model (Chromium as the open source base, with the proprietary bits on top of that) should have all the backend stuff, the stuff that the web servers see, in the Chromium base. They do add some codecs that are not in the base product, as well as the bits that handle the Windows updates… and all of the objectionable bits that track users (beyond what any browser does with cookies and what not). Other than autodetecting the codec support (which other Chromium-derived browsers may also have), what method could a server use to know if they are dealing with actual Chrome or not?
It is certainly feasible that Google put some kind of thing in where the server could send an innocuous looking string to the browser to ask it to identify itself, and the closed-source bit of Chrome would respond with a secret “Yes, I am Chrome” string, but the Chromium-based non-Chrome browsers would not. It doesn’t seem likely, though, as this would be a deliberate effort on Google’s part to thwart competition, and Google is already wary of their monopoly status and the potential for it to bring unwanted government action, as it did once for Microsoft. With all of the millions of people out there, some using tools like Wireshark and the like, it seems that at some point, such a thing would be discovered.
If it is possible to detect Chrome vs. the same version of Chromium, I would love to know how it is done.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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Aphbout
GuestOctober 11, 2023 at 11:44 pm #2593396Some sites say that Edge is even worse for privacy than Chrome, having multiple machine specific IDs that cannot be reset, acting like cookies that can’t be cleared allowing a user to be tracked over a long period of time. However, Bing and other advertising at Microsoft are a drop in the bucket compared to Google, so the financial incentive for Microsoft to encourage tracking seems less than Google. According to some sites, Brave is better. Firefox would be good for privacy as well, if it suits your use case but I have too many hiccups with it now.
In any browser, ublock origin will help reduce tracking. Note that if an employer or serious opponent is interested in what you are doing, even severe methods like VPN may not be deniable enough to help you.
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MHCLV941
AskWoody PlusOctober 12, 2023 at 2:01 am #2593512Why use a copycat when you can use the original ?
How do figure Edge is a “copycat”?
Chrome is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
This browser (Edge) is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
Both programs are based on the same underlying code, so no one is copying anyone.
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MHCLV941
AskWoody PlusOctober 12, 2023 at 2:05 am #2593513I dropped Chrome in favor of Edge not long after Edge was released.
Why? Because of something I read somewhere (likely either here or in a PCMag newsletter)?
To paraphrase, Microsoft makes money selling software. Google makes money selling you.
Not to say Microsoft is “pure” but its business model is not based on selling customer information. Google has just one way: selling one’s information.
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MHCLV941
AskWoody PlusOctober 12, 2023 at 2:08 am #2593514I’ve been using Brave for sometime now, how does that stack up to Edge?
According to the more adamant Chrome fans, it’s just another copy.
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Alex5723
AskWoody PlusOctober 12, 2023 at 3:58 am #2593526Chrome is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
This browser (Edge) is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
Chromium is “open source” just like Android is “open source”. Neither is.
Google controls Chromium.New releases of Edge always follow Chrome releases and are usually 1 day behind.
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astro46
AskWoody PlusOctober 12, 2023 at 12:40 pm #2593628wow. the discussion of chrome vs chromium and some sites not working with chrome or chromium has gone on and on.
For me, I haven’t encountered a site that hasn’t worked using Vivaldi, which is based on chromium. From what I have been told in the Vivaldi forum, Vivaldi has removed all the privacy related google code, except for a couple of bits that the user can turn off/on, which are needed for downloading addons from the google store. At one time, some of these bits had to be turned on to access gmail sites, but this no longer seems to be the case. Of course, i don’t see the underlying code, so can’t say for sure what is really going on.
I don’t use Edge because it is not as convenient for me as vivaldi, plus I presume that it sends demographic info to microsoft. I use the Win10 Privacy app to turn off as much as possible of privacy related settings in win10. and Adnauseum and Canvas Blocker to obfuscate privacy related web data.
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Sven the Viking
Guest
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MHCLV941
AskWoody PlusOctober 14, 2023 at 6:32 am #2594022Chrome is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
This browser (Edge) is made possible by the Chromium open source project and other open source software.
Chromium is “open source” just like Android is “open source”. Neither is.
Google controls Chromium.New releases of Edge always follow Chrome releases and are usually 1 day behind.
Right, but you stated that Edge was a copycat (“Why use a copycat when you can use the original”). It’s no more or less a copycat than Chrome is. They are both based on the Chromium base. This is likely why they have the same bugs.
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ibe98765
AskWoody PlusOctober 19, 2023 at 5:32 pm #2595499There is an experimental addon to Chrome I use called (I think) scrolling tabs that allows for an unlimited number of open tabs. You can also construct tab groups in this implementation, which allows you collect and collapse multiple tabs under one tab.
The big problem with Chrome is that each open tab is s separate Windows process with its own ID.
Does anyone know how to export my Chrome tabs (I have 72 open right now) so I can import them to another non-Chromium browser?
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