[alcover]

So.. Chrome is too big to fork. Then why don't we make a bare-bones OSS no-DRM browser with only a subset of JS and CSS and promote at the same time an old-school webring of 'virtous' websites.

If it catches on (and it could since it'd be free and fast), maybe some big sites would evolve to advertise themselves as 'virtous'.

[TremendousJudge]

I don't get it, Firefox already exists and is a complete OSS reimplementation of everything Chrome does (and works better imo). Only thing to do is convince sites to test more on Firefox. This strategy worked last time around.

[alcover]

I've been using Firefox forever but the problem is - it's now too big. Because it's - like you mention - following Chrome. To stay relevant, FF implements all the bloat Chrome churns out. Even worse, it's tempted to follow Chromes' extension manifest to stay compatible.

So I meant it looks like a lost battle. And it may be better to reboot to a smaller, nifter browser that a small team/community can handle.

edit: and of course cut all ties with Google financing.

[JohnFen]

Firefox may work great for many people, but it certainly doesn't for me. I finally gave up completely on it late last year.

[jeffbee]

Firefox gives up 40-60% of the performance of Chrome on my platform, using common browser benchmarks. I don't see Firefox as a substitute good for Chrome. It has much worse performance, worse security, and lacks features I want. Its performance is equivalent to using Chrome on an 8-year-old CPU. The only thing it has going for it is being perceived as counter-cultural, despite the fact that it is 100% funded by Google.

[reciprocity]

Your claim is that you suffer a _40 to 60_% performance impact by using Firefox from Chrome? Would you like to try that again? I see egregious comments like this of Firefox every so often and I always have to wonder if the last time people making these remarks actually used Firefox was in the pre-Quantum era (assuming one charitable interpretation). To claim that its performance is equivalent to using Chrome on a CPU from 2013 is disingenuous at best.

Firefox is not just perceived as 'counter-cultural', its importance lies in the fact that not using Chrome and similar browsers is also a vote not to support a browser monoculture online.

[jeffbee]

I invite you to try Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on an Apple Silicon CPU right now. Firefox is the slowest of these by a HUGE margin.

[nklmilojevic]

Not only the slowest, it also uses the most energy of all browsers on Mac. Scrolling the old Reddit spikes the CPU to 10x more than Brave.

[jhasse]

Something like Ladybird? https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird

I think it wants to implement all of JS eventually though.

[alcover]

  it wants to implement all of JS

ES6 why not. But the whole Web API is crazy. Bluetooth ? Barcode ? Geolocation ? What the hell. Let's go back to a documents web.

Also small JS engines already exist, like QuickJS.

[3np]

dillo.org

More recently, Ladybird, which was discussed last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126