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Hi, I am a dev on Pulse Browser. I want to clarify our current development direction (I haven't significant updated the website recently). We have been moving f

Hi, I am a dev on Pulse Browser. I want to clarify our current development direction (I haven't significant updated the website recently). We have been moving further away from privacy and towards developing/iterating on features faster than Firefox is willing to, along with providing sane defaults. For example, we have been experimenting with a opera/vivaldi-like method of accessing Firefox's sidebar. Whilst you could technically achieve this via patching `omni.ja`, you would need to repatch it every update. At that point, it might as well be a custom browser. Sorry about Vercel's insight stuff, not sure how that got enabled, but it should be disabled now (or whenever Cloudflare invalidates your cache). If you want further reading into some of the specific parts of our code that we are putting most of our effort into, here are some links: - https://github.com/pulse-browser/browser/blob/alpha/src/browser/base/content/browser-sidebar-js.patch https://github.com/pulse-browser/browser/blob/alpha/src/brow... - https://github.com/pulse-browser/browser/tree/alpha/src/browser/components/extensions https://github.com/pulse-browser/browser/tree/alpha/src/brow...

anuragvohraec 4y ago
kudos, we do need new browsers. Appreciate you guys putting efforts. Hope you guys succeed in your endeavor.
csande17 4y ago
> We have been moving further away from privacy [...] I appreciate your honesty, but hearing this was enough for me to file your project into the "not touching with a ten-foot pole" bucket alongside the likes of Wave Browser.
- knok_off 4y ago
  I believe that they meant, changing focus. Which is not a bad thing. Once the majority of the privacy stuff is achieved what more is there to do without making it into Tor browser?
- trickypr 4y ago
  I think you are miss interpreting me. I don't want to focus on privacy above all else. To do that well would compromise on the usability of the browser. For example, if I were to advertise it as "privacy focused", I would not feel comfortable unless I included strict anti-fingerprinting, which would break websites. It is a balancing act, and I won't be collecting or selling your data, but I won't be competing with Librewolf or Tor for the "privacy" market either. However, at the bare minimum, we will be more "private" than Firefox by extent of including uBo and disabling Mozilla's non-critical telemetry by default.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Don't be turned off by people wanting everything to be perfect, to their taste, and right now. Those people are very vocal on HN or on the Foss community, but they do not speak for most users anymore than I do. What you are attempting is very interesting and a lot of work. Even if it's not tor browser level of private, I'll be glad to give it a try. We desperatly need more diversity in the browser space.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Thank you! There are already other Firefox forks that rip out half of its browsing capability.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
GeckoEidechse 4y ago
Currently the 3rd most requested feature on Mozilla Connect is native vertical tabs: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/native-vertical-tabs-like-in-microsoft-edge/idi-p/85 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/native-vertical-tabs-li... Any chance we could see something like this in Pulse Browser or is that something that just requires touching too much of the underlying code base to be viable? ^^
- neodymiumphish 4y ago
  This would be huge for me. I can't really move away from Edge for productivity/work use cases until I have vertical tabs to a comparable usability in another browser.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    I don't know how you can deal with just vertical tabs. Sidebery (FF extension) offers tree tabs and it's really cool.
    - toastal 4y ago
      I thought Tree Style Tab was the preferred Fx add-on.
      - solarkraft 4y ago
        I prefer Sidebery because it feels faster, more reliable (TST seems to struggle much harder with a higher number) and has a prettier default theme. I think it also has many more config options, but I'm quite happy with the defaults.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Please not just vertical, I need my trees. Sidebery works pretty well though. Sometimes updates are a little delayed, but it's not very bad. Native support and optimizations for Sidebery should do the trick.
- 4y ago
enriquto 4y ago
> Sorry about Vercel's insight stuff, not sure how that got enabled, How do you "accidentally" enable such user-hostile tracking? This gives quite a bad image of the site and the associated project. Will you "accidentally" enable telemetry as well on some future versions of Pulse?
- e-clinton 4y ago
  If you were using their browser, you wouldn’t have to worry about that :)
- mikhailt 4y ago
  It's actually an easy and understandable development mistake to make. It's usually an opt out situation, not opt in. Development teams build and test with debug mode builds, send out these builds to internal teams to beta test. These telemetry tools are used to collect data, errors etc. When it was time to ship, they forget to turn it off for the stable builds. I've seen it happen a lot.
webmobdev 4y ago
I appreciate your initiative on creating a fork of Firefox and trying to innovate on it. The following criticism of the project is well intentioned, even if harsh: > We have been moving further away from privacy and towards developing/iterating on features faster That is fine but what have you done on the Privacy aspect? I tried out your alpha and immediately on startup it tries to connect to location.services.mozilla.com . So I disabled geolocation, and it still insists on connecting to Mozilla. So I check settings to see if there is an option to disable checking for updates, but there is no such option. If you want me to create config or policy files, I don't see how your browser is making things any easier than Firefox. And hence my question - what privacy features have you actually incorporated or enabled in Pulse Browser? (Note: I am not questioning your rationale of the default settings, which is necessary for the average user, but the lack of ease for power users to customise any feature. Please look into how Pale Moon / White Star and Orion browsers ensure that disabling phoning home features in settings actually means that the browser will not make any automatic network connections on startups - they are the only 2 browsers that do this, and thus show that they genuinely respect their users.) Otherwise, your whole project is just a browser extension bundled with the browser. Nevertheless, a good effort. You might find this resource useful for your project - https://sammacbeth.eu/blog/2020/12/27/firefox-fork.html https://sammacbeth.eu/blog/2020/12/27/firefox-fork.html

anuragvohraec 4y ago

kudos, we do need new browsers. Appreciate you guys putting efforts. Hope you guys succeed in your endeavor.

csande17 4y ago

> We have been moving further away from privacy [...] I appreciate your honesty, but hearing this was enough for me to file your project into the "not touching with a ten-foot pole" bucket alongside the likes of Wave Browser.

knok_off 4y ago
I believe that they meant, changing focus. Which is not a bad thing. Once the majority of the privacy stuff is achieved what more is there to do without making it into Tor browser?
trickypr 4y ago
I think you are miss interpreting me. I don't want to focus on privacy above all else. To do that well would compromise on the usability of the browser. For example, if I were to advertise it as "privacy focused", I would not feel comfortable unless I included strict anti-fingerprinting, which would break websites. It is a balancing act, and I won't be collecting or selling your data, but I won't be competing with Librewolf or Tor for the "privacy" market either. However, at the bare minimum, we will be more "private" than Firefox by extent of including uBo and disabling Mozilla's non-critical telemetry by default.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Don't be turned off by people wanting everything to be perfect, to their taste, and right now. Those people are very vocal on HN or on the Foss community, but they do not speak for most users anymore than I do. What you are attempting is very interesting and a lot of work. Even if it's not tor browser level of private, I'll be glad to give it a try. We desperatly need more diversity in the browser space.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Thank you! There are already other Firefox forks that rip out half of its browsing capability.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

GeckoEidechse 4y ago

Currently the 3rd most requested feature on Mozilla Connect is native vertical tabs: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/native-vertical-tabs-like-in-microsoft-edge/idi-p/85 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/native-vertical-tabs-li... Any chance we could see something like this in Pulse Browser or is that something that just requires touching too much of the underlying code base to be viable? ^^

neodymiumphish 4y ago
This would be huge for me. I can't really move away from Edge for productivity/work use cases until I have vertical tabs to a comparable usability in another browser.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  I don't know how you can deal with just vertical tabs. Sidebery (FF extension) offers tree tabs and it's really cool.
  - toastal 4y ago
    I thought Tree Style Tab was the preferred Fx add-on.
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      I prefer Sidebery because it feels faster, more reliable (TST seems to struggle much harder with a higher number) and has a prettier default theme. I think it also has many more config options, but I'm quite happy with the defaults.
solarkraft 4y ago
Please not just vertical, I need my trees. Sidebery works pretty well though. Sometimes updates are a little delayed, but it's not very bad. Native support and optimizations for Sidebery should do the trick.
4y ago

enriquto 4y ago

> Sorry about Vercel's insight stuff, not sure how that got enabled, How do you "accidentally" enable such user-hostile tracking? This gives quite a bad image of the site and the associated project. Will you "accidentally" enable telemetry as well on some future versions of Pulse?

e-clinton 4y ago
If you were using their browser, you wouldn’t have to worry about that :)
mikhailt 4y ago
It's actually an easy and understandable development mistake to make. It's usually an opt out situation, not opt in. Development teams build and test with debug mode builds, send out these builds to internal teams to beta test. These telemetry tools are used to collect data, errors etc. When it was time to ship, they forget to turn it off for the stable builds. I've seen it happen a lot.

webmobdev 4y ago

I appreciate your initiative on creating a fork of Firefox and trying to innovate on it. The following criticism of the project is well intentioned, even if harsh: > We have been moving further away from privacy and towards developing/iterating on features faster That is fine but what have you done on the Privacy aspect? I tried out your alpha and immediately on startup it tries to connect to location.services.mozilla.com . So I disabled geolocation, and it still insists on connecting to Mozilla. So I check settings to see if there is an option to disable checking for updates, but there is no such option. If you want me to create config or policy files, I don't see how your browser is making things any easier than Firefox. And hence my question - what privacy features have you actually incorporated or enabled in Pulse Browser? (Note: I am not questioning your rationale of the default settings, which is necessary for the average user, but the lack of ease for power users to customise any feature. Please look into how Pale Moon / White Star and Orion browsers ensure that disabling phoning home features in settings actually means that the browser will not make any automatic network connections on startups - they are the only 2 browsers that do this, and thus show that they genuinely respect their users.) Otherwise, your whole project is just a browser extension bundled with the browser. Nevertheless, a good effort. You might find this resource useful for your project - https://sammacbeth.eu/blog/2020/12/27/firefox-fork.html https://sammacbeth.eu/blog/2020/12/27/firefox-fork.html