# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Ubuntu Community Discussions > Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat >  Firefox vs Chrome vs Chromium vs Opera vs Slimboat vs Slimjet vs ...

## oldefoxx

I keep trying different web browsers out, and each has its own psrticular features and aspects that mark it "Best Suited For ...", to which you fill in the blanks.  For instance, If you want to run two browsers at once, thesr pairings ore pretty good. 

Firefox & Opera
Chrome & Chromium
Slimboat & Slimjet

And the hands-down winner is:

Slimjet by itself.

Slimjet has the unique ability to let you open either a second instance of itself, which shares the same user aspects, or open an Incognito window, which creates a new user aspect.  Now you can't save the user settings that go with the Icognito window, so you have to do these over each time you open it up, but this really only effects stored usernames, passwords, and the like.  Everything else, like opened tabs, files downloaded, and doing copy-and-paste between the original, which would be the parent, and the Incognito window, which would be the child.  

Slimjet is the replacement to Slimboat. which used an outdated central core, but comes from the same people.  It has a nice online feedback system that I've used a number of times to let them know there is still a bit of further work needed, and they have responded a number of times.  It is very customizable, and both Slimboat and Slimjet are noteworthy because they are fast, and can support a good many tabs being opened at the same time.  Actually, Chrome and Chromium support a good number of tabs being opened at once, but they are generally slower.  Still, I have situations where Chrome and Chromium are the pair I need, and I use them at those times.

Why open up more than a few tabs at once?  I have my reasons, and you may find some as well.  For instance, I get Amazon or Walmart or some other site to show a fill list of possible replacement laptops (I;m using an L355 with a Celeron cpu and only 4GB of RAM, so need a replacement), And I can pick out the ones that interest me, open each in a new tab, and just go on to the next one.  I have sometimes a dozen or so open tabs when I get through the list, and with the right browser, I CAN SAVE THEM ALL AS BOOKMARKS into a new (or existing) folder.

Then I can bring them all up individually in the future (or BRING THEM ALL BACK AS SEPARATE TABS with one effort) and explore each one for the fine details that might make one laptop stand out over the others.  For comparison, I enter these details into a spreadsheet where I can sort through 
and arrange them in any order.  This will probably be my last major computer buy (I'm 74), and I want to get it right.  Heck, my wife wants me to get it right.

During this comparative process, I've come to realize more and more features of laptops in general that I need to weigh in the balance.  So I/ve added more and more columns to my spreadsheet over time, and more and more rows as I unearth new offerings.  As to the old offerings, being able to bring up all the bookmarks in a group at a time, I can quickly find any that have expired, or marked with out of stock or sold.  I cave a header cell on one column that I update daily with the current date, and use that coumn to validate when last checked for the laptops currently listed.  It's a lot of work, but I'm learning a lot about laptop choices at the same time.

Now the Ubuntu Software Center (USC) warns you about installing things like Opera, Chrome, Chromium, Slimboat, and Slimjet, that it does not recognize them in some cases as being a part of official channels offerings.  So you have to search for them online by hame. probably with the added word of 'download', and then try to get the Ubuntu or Debian (ends with '.deb') version that will be either 64- or 32-bit sized.  The sizing goes with the scale of the operating system you have installed, not necessarily the size of the hardware underneath.

Sometimes what you get is just a Linux version, or it comes in a compressed file form (there will be a 'z' in the extension).  If it is a '.deb' file, it will open under USC when yiu double click on it.  If a compressed file, it will upen unser the Archive Manager or the uncompress/extract program of your choice.  The file will download in the Downloads folder unless you changed the browser default setting for this.

Slimboat and Slimjet also give you a warning from USC that a mouse is required.  Laptop users will see this warning because apparently a touchpad is not considered a mouse by USC.  But don't worry.  The touchpad will do the trick.  In fact, for some tasks, the touchpad is superior to any mouse.  If you want to adjust the size of the window by moving it borders, the touchpad gives you much more precise pixel location to make that work.  What a touchpad lacks is a third button or a scroll wheel.   Neither is essential with a browser.

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## night_sky2

I would choose Firefox before any of those.

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## Kpenguin

So would I  :Wink:

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## pretty_whistle

I don't know.  I use chrome and firefox only.  My chrome is the updated one but keeps having shockwave flash crashing, really annoying.  I have maxthon but don't use it and today I installed opera.  I'm thinking I may need to look into using different ones and see how that goes.

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## wildmanne39

I use firefox, but on occasion I need chromium.

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## v3.xx

> I use firefox, but on occasion I need chromium.


Lately I been playing with chromium and adding pepper flash to it.  I think this is the same as having chrome, just lets me use the repositories.

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## night_sky2

uBlock Origin, BluHell Firewall, NoScript; these are all great addons available in Firefox.

Plus, it is way more customizable than any Chromium-based browsers.

Since we can now use pepperflash in Firefox with the Fresh Player Plugin, the outdated adobe plugin is no longer an issue for me.

So, Firefox hands down.  :Wink:

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## pretty_whistle

> uBlock Origin, BluHell Firewall, NoScript; these are all great addons available in Firefox.
> 
> Plus, it is way more customizable than any Chromium-based browsers.
> 
> Since we can now use pepperflash in Firefox with the Fresh Player Plugin, the outdated adobe plugin is no longer an issue for me.
> 
> So, Firefox hands down for me.


Oh yeah?  The adobe is no longer an issue?  I think I'll have to switch to only using Firefox...........

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## night_sky2

> Oh yeah?  The adobe is no longer an issue?  I think I'll have to switch to only using Firefox...........


http://www.webupd8.org/2014/05/insta...in-ubuntu.html

Fresh Player Plugin + pepperflash-nonfree package works great for me.

I've no need of the older 11.2 adobe plugin anymore.

Cheers.

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## pretty_whistle

> http://www.webupd8.org/2014/05/insta...in-ubuntu.html
> 
> Fresh Player Plugin + pepperflash-nonfree package works great for me.
> 
> I've no need of the older 11.2 adobe plugin anymore.
> 
> Cheers.


Thanks.

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## matt_symes

> http://www.webupd8.org/2014/05/insta...in-ubuntu.html
> 
> Fresh Player Plugin + pepperflash-nonfree package works great for me.
> 
> I've no need of the older 11.2 adobe plugin anymore.
> 
> Cheers.


Thanks for this.

Pretty simple to set up by installing the packages freshplayerplugin and pepperflashplugin-nonfree and adding the pepper library to the list of alternative under mozilla-flashplugin and then switching to it. A grep on ps seems to show the pepper library being using when watching flash videos.

No need to install chrome either.

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## night_sky2

> Pretty simple to set up by installing the packages freshplayerplugin and  pepperflashplugin-nonfree and adding the pepper library to the list of  alternative under mozilla-flashplugin and then switching to it.


Yep and by adding the Webupd8 ppa you receive automatic update of the Fresh Player Plugin.

However, the pepperflash-nonfree package has to be updated manually. That's why some people prefer to get Chrome instead to have their flash updated for them.

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --status

And if there's a new version available upstream:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install




> Thanks for this.A grep on ps seems to show the pepper library being using when watching flash videos.


Right click on a video (for exemple Youtube) and you'll see:

''About Adobe Flash Player 18.0.0.160...''

Thus making sure that The Fresh Player Plugin has indeed detected and are using Pepperflash as it should.  :Smile: 

*PS: In the link it says that it is still an Alpha release but that was last year, now it's pretty stable.

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## Mike_Walsh

Strange.

I've never yet had an install of Firefox that doesn't just get slower & slower (and that's with regular 'house-cleaning' of the caches, etc.).....and will eventually start to just crash at random.

I've been using Chrome & Chromium for ages.....and never had a minute's trouble with them.

 :Think: 


Regards,

Mike.

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## night_sky2

> Strange.
> 
> I've never yet had an install of Firefox that doesn't just get slower & slower (and that's with regular 'house-cleaning' of the caches, etc.).....and will eventually start to just crash at random.


Odd.

 I find Firefox to be a bit faster than Chromium/Chrome and no slowdown overtime. Stability has vastly improved.

 Maybe it's something related to the hardware? I couldn't tell.

And with NoScript, one no longer needs to put up with contents he doesn't want to see again. It can be a pain to set up but the end result is yet even faster page load (lots of junk scripts these days) and increased security. There's just too many advantages for me in using Firefox. Google Chrome may be more user friendly but that's about all I am willing to concede.

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## monkeybrain20122

> Strange.
> 
> I've never yet had an install of Firefox that doesn't just get slower & slower (and that's with regular 'house-cleaning' of the caches, etc.).....and will eventually start to just crash at random.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> ...


Clean the Cache sometimes.

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## oldefoxx

Google Chrome is not Open Source, but Chromium is, yet they go back to the same roots.  It's been said online that Chromium was derived from Chrome, and indeed, they appear very much alike.  And they also appear to share the same plug-ins.  This is good, because there is a Google online "Store" where you can find all manner of Add-ons and Plug-ins.

In their settings, you can enable and disable any Flash modules.. I frequent a web site that subjects me to endless streams of video ads, eating up my time, to I disable the flash plug-ins in both.  Now when I go there, I see a message that I should really install Adobe Flash, but I ignore that, and the wasted time is cut way down,  To visit YouTube or see some video action, I use Slimjet instead.  I looked once, but could see not easy way to disable Flash in it, but I believe it uses Pepper.

With YouTube, the new hot thing is HTML5.  I haven't found any plug-ins specific to HTML5, but so far Slimjet has not failed to show me the video feed from the YouTube website.

I count 6 browser icons on my desktop right now, and there is anorher showing in the Applications/Internet menu, plus more out there in the USC catalog, plus others mentioned online.  I figure I spend 80% and more of my time and efforts online, so the best possible browser is an important, if not easy, matter to resolve.

My best hope at present is Slimjet, which does a lot, both quickly and simply, and they have a support group that really listens to suggestions about future improvements.  I keep them busy by feeding them both ideas and observations.  If you are going to have multiple tabs open at once, Slimjet handles them in a more timely manner than most other browsers do.

And you may know that you can easily open multiple tabs at once using a bookmark manager feature, but you may not know that you can save multiple opened tabs at once into a bookmark folder by using Ctrl+Shft+D.  Ctrl+D only saves the current opened tab into a bookmark folder.

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## night_sky2

> My best hope at present is Slimjet, which does a lot, both quickly and simply, and they have a support group that really listens to suggestions about future improvements.  I keep them busy by feeding them both ideas and observations.  If you are going to have multiple tabs open at once, Slimjet handles them in a more timely manner than most other browsers do.


Slimjet looks like a Chrome clone with some extensions out-of-the-box. Nothing to be excited about as far as I am concerned.

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## Mike_Walsh

> Google Chrome is not Open Source, but Chromium is, yet they go back to the same roots.  It's been said online that Chromium was derived from Chrome, and indeed, they appear very much alike.  And they also appear to share the same plug-ins.  This is good, because there is a Google online "Store" where you can find all manner of Add-ons and Plug-ins.


Actually, that's the wrong way round. Chrome is derived from Chromium. The Chromium Projects is where all the bleeding edge development work is done on the browser. As soon as there is a new, 'stable' version ready, Google take it, add their proprietary coding (including the auto-updater, and Adobe's latest version of the Pepperflash Shockwave FlashPlayer), and release them, all bundled in together.....and re-branded as Chrome.

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

This being the case, you would think that Chromium ought to be one release *ahead* of Chrome (or at least on level pegging). The reality is that Chromium is very often one release *behind* Chrome, in terms of 'stable' releases.....unless you don't mind being a 'guinea pig' and helping to test the alpha & beta versions...

The 'Canary' channel is the absolute latest, newest (and thus far, most untested) code for the browser, whichever name it's released under. As far as I am able to understand it, Google actually funds the Chromium Projects.....or at least, has a major, controlling interest in it. You have to remember that the Chrome browser, popular as it is, is only one, very *small* part of Google's wide-ranging business interests.....

So; now you know!


Regards,

Mike.  :Wink:

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## Matejko

For me best is Chrome. But with many browsers I had big problems with freezing. Chromium, Firefox, Chrome - same problem on all web browsers.
When I've found information that Chrome need to start witch parameter: google-chrome --disable-gpu, then all problems gone!

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## t0p

I occasionally use Firefox, but nowadays it's mostly Chromium (or Chrome if I have to Windows online).  I like the way all my bookmarks,extras, etc are "remembered" for me over different computers using Chromium.  Only problem for me there is paranoia about someone leeching my info off Chrome when I'm on the Windows box (I really need to make that laptop a dual-boot, lazy lazy me... but I'm a tad worried I'll screw things up, what with the UEFI or whatever it is replacing BIOS...).

Anyway: browser of choice = Chromium.  But I've never tried Slimjet (indeed I haven't tried many browsers at all).  A stick in the mud, me.

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## t0p

I occasionally use Firefox, but nowadays it's mostly Chromium (or Chrome if I have to Windows online).  I like the way all my bookmarks,extras, etc are "remembered" for me over different computers using Chromium.  Only problem for me there is paranoia about someone leeching my info off Chrome when I'm on the Windows box (I really need to make that laptop a dual-boot, lazy lazy me... but I'm a tad worried I'll screw things up, what with the UEFI or whatever it is replacing BIOS...).

Anyway: browser of choice = Chromium.  But I've never tried Slimjet (indeed I haven't tried many browsers at all).  A stick in the mud, me.

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## monkeybrain20122

Firefox. Its rich addon ecology is unmatched and it is fast even with 200+ tabs open. Use Chrome only occasionally for some sites that require up to date flash, but now with the freshplayer plugin shaping up really well it is just as easy to use pepperflash in Firefox for those occasions, there is even less reason to use Chrome (maybe Netflix, but I don't watch it very much) There is just so much more one can do with Firefox. Chrome is very memory hungry if you use a lot of tabs even with an addon to prevent tabs from loading from start. For some hardware Chrome may be faster on html5 and flash sites because  of hardware acceleration, but I don't notice very big difference on my  main machine because the cpu is quite powerful enough (core i 5)

I personally cannot see the point of Chromium, just a buggy, outdated and crippled version of Chrome and perpetually in alpha. I also don't see much point of Opera now it is like Chrome except almost with no extension and netflix doesn't work there (the only advantage of Chrome over Firefox if you watch it), so it is again a much crippled version of Chrome basically.


P.S For those who complain that Firefox slowing down I have seen that in some very weak machines (~ 1 G of ram) but it is easily fixed by simply clearing the cache and don't have too many tabs open (easy way to do this would be just to run bleachbit from time to time)

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## night_sky2

> I like the way all my bookmarks,extras, etc are "remembered" for me over different computers using Chromium.


There's a similar feature in Firefox that's called ''Firefox Sync'': https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/sync/

You can sync all your bookmarks, addons, history from your main desktop/laptop to different computers or Android devices.

Personally, I find that useful for a tablet or smartphone but for my main PC, I only need saving my bookmarks and NoScript pref file to a USB flash drive.

Backing my own data may therefore result in slightly more time to set up a fresh install of Firefox, but it's a no-brainer for me.

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## oldefoxx

I find multiple browsers handy, and an easy way ro speed up some online activity.  With a wide screen, I can put up two browsers side-by-side and use them both.  One gets tied up, I can switch to the other.  You can also get an add-in that puts up two tabs at the same time, or use the unique feature in Slimjet that creates a separate "incognito" version of itself (shares same bookmarks, but different aspects such as open tabs, cookies and history).

I disable Flash altogether in Chrome and Chromium when I pair them, as I find it makes things a lot faster if you are being subjected to a bombardment of video ads in some of the places you visit (I won't say where I go, but it is not illegal, vile, or anything of that nature.  It's harmless fun, and always rhe possibility of a big win someday).

I keep getting informed of the flash plug-in having stopped working, which is not a problem with Chrome or Chromium as I have disabled it there.  But in Slimjet, it keeps coming up when I really put the pedal to the metal.   I wanted to give it a try with Slimjet, but nobody besides me seems interested in disabling the Flash feature of Slimjet, just to see what difference it might make in terms of avoiding notices from the browser that the flash plugin has stopped, is not responding, needs to be reloaded, or whatever. 

Know something?  You either have Dlash enabled or disabled, and maybe there should be some mid-ground on this matter.  How about a choice between the two, or maybe for just some tabs, or for specific sites.  That way I can visit YouTube if it suits me to see some live action, while I blacklist (or disable) flash when I go anywhere that I  don't want it to be used.  Have it both ways at once, just on different tabs.

I just realized something.  I don't get much light where I routinely sit, which is good for rrading a screen, but plays hard in using a keyboard.  This new laptop is big enough that they have real separation of the keys, and my hands are use to keys being closer together.  So I make a lot of typos.  But the worse is Passwords, because you can't look up and see if you made an error.  But I suddenly realized, that with a laptop, I can tilt the screen down as I type in a password, and the light drom the screen will help me pick out the right keys as I hunt and peck my way along,  It does help.  Another oddity of this laptop is that the F-keys have other tasks, and to use the F-keys as F1 thru F12, you have to hold down the Ftn (Function) key at the same time.

Through me for a loop the first time I tried to use F11 to take a browser to Full Screen and it would not respond.  Took awhile to figure out what it might be.  Only clue U had was that the other function or task was featured predominently on the keytops, and I can't even make out the lettering for the F-key when I look for it.  I began by just counting key positions from one side or the other until I got to the right key.  The better way turned out to be to get a thin black permanent marker and write the key number on the apron just above every even key.  So now my new laptop is tatooed with 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 above the topmost keys.  It really helps.   Maybe the mfr ought to legend the apron that way to start with

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## ashish21

For me too Slimjet is the clear winner.

I have used almost every browser out there, Chrome, FF, Safari, Maxthon, Slimjet, UC, Opera etc and the kind of features and easy surfing i have experienced with Slimjet is exceptional.

Here is the list of features i like

- Youtube Downloader - Awesome feature(with slimjet while watching videos you get a small button beneath videos to download easily right there and then)  :Razz: 
- Faster downloads (oh yeah tested with Chrome and FF parallel)
- in built Bookmarks side bar - Just like top bookmarks bar but on side so that more bookmarks can be accessed at same time(you need an extension to enable this in Chrome)
- Social sharing feature - Share on facebook as you surf without actually going to facebook  :Guitar: 

Source of my data - http://www.slimjet.com

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## denaxin

Guys? What browser would be best for a extremely low-end computer with; 3GB RAM, HDD, Single-Core Intel Celeron M 530 1.76 GHz and Intel GMA 950,
Im looking for something that would not kill the machine, like Chrome. Currently Im using Pale Moon, but It's slow. Any recommendations?

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## rrnbtter

Greetings,
@op: I put Opera on a tablet and liked it so much that I use it on my desktop also. It gets rid of all of the cling-ons trying to scam information plus many other really innovative extras.  It will import your firefox bookmarks if you export them from FF first. If you want a first class upgrade of that computer of yours I would suggest a SSD drive and upgrade to Vivid for your OS. You will get a hefty performance increase. My wife has a 10" netbook with 1.6ghz 2gigRam Intel Mobile processor and I installed a SSD and Vivid and it is much better than when it was new several years ago.  All for a third of the price of the cheapest new computer.

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## night_sky2

> For me too Slimjet is the clear winner.
> 
> I have used almost every browser out there, Chrome, FF, Safari, Maxthon, Slimjet, UC, Opera etc and the kind of features and easy surfing i have experienced with Slimjet is exceptional.
> 
> Here is the list of features i like
> 
> - Youtube Downloader - Awesome feature(with slimjet while watching videos you get a small button beneath videos to download easily right there and then) 
> - Faster downloads (oh yeah tested with Chrome and FF parallel)
> - in built Bookmarks side bar - Just like top bookmarks bar but on side so that more bookmarks can be accessed at same time(you need an extension to enable this in Chrome)
> ...


The funny thing is that 'Slimjet' is nothing more than Chromium rebranded with some Chrome Store extensions.

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## night_sky2

> Guys? What browser would be best for a extremely low-end computer with; 3GB RAM, HDD, Single-Core Intel Celeron M 530 1.76 GHz and Intel GMA 950,
> I’m looking for something that would not kill the machine, like Chrome. Currently I’m using Pale Moon, but It's slow. Any recommendations?


Try Midori. But Firefox has more possiblities, maybe if you desable all the features you don't need (Firefox Hello, Pocket, Reader View for instance) it will speed things up a little bit.

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## oldefoxx

When working with bookmarks and sharing them between browsers, I find that chrome and chromium are so alike that i can just copy from one and paste on the other.  Could probably do the same thing with Slimjet, since it has fundamentally the same core.  All three browsers share the Incognito feature, and what you do with bookmarks under either the original or the incognito windows effects the other side instantly.

Firefox and Opera don't manage their bookmarks nearly as well.  Working with the Bookmark Bar in Firefox, you can create a new folder, but when you try to paste a bookmark into it, it spills out onto the Bookmark Bar instead.  To get the first one into the folder, you have to get the greyed-out "empty" tag exposed with the cursor point on it, and do your paste there.  After that, adding others is easy.  But the Bookmark Bar editing in FF lacks a Copy feature, and using Cut means loosing the original location.  However, if you open your bookmarks up completely, you can locate the desired bookmark, and here you have the Copy option present.

Learning to bookmark with Opera is a chore.  You can import bookmarks, but then getting to them is a major undertaking.  Anf none of the browsers in this group support links.  By this, I mean that if you have a bookmark that you update in one place, it only updates in that one place.  All the other duplicate bookmarks are still set as they were originally,  You have to go around and edit every one to give it the new URL with an Edit, right-click on the location/URL box, do a Select All, then do a Paste from the clipboard (which you preset with the new URL).

Why have multiple or duplicate bookmarks?  Because you can treat all the bookmarks in any folder as a group, opening them all at once, or taking all the presently opened tabs and adding them to a new folder with a Ctrl+Shft+D key combo (a Ctrl+D combo only deals with the current tab).

If you merely put a new or copied/cut bookmark on a folder, it goes right to the bottom of the folder's contents.  If you open the folder and put the mouse on an existing bookmark, the most-like Chrome browsers all add the bookmark immediately below that point when you do a Paste.  With FF and Opera, it will put the added bookmark immediately above that point.

None of these browsers merge imported bookmarks with existing bookmarks or folders.  They merely tag them as being there, and you are either left with merging them yourself, or going to where you can access all the bookmarks in order to get the ones you want.  Fortunately, you can use drag-and-drop to get the important ones added to the Bookmark Bar, but these do not merge with existing folders or files found there, so you can end up with multiple bookmarks all going to the same place on the Bookmark Bar.  Now bookmark folder contents are treated somewhat differently, depending on the browser:  With some, multiple bookmarks with the same name is no problem.  With others, duplicate names in the same folder means appending a (1), (2), (3), etc. to the name to distinguish one from another.

You can use drag-and-drop with folders and bookmarks on the Bookmark Bar, to change the order from left-to-right.  Be careful though, as if you are hovering over a folder, the pasted folder or file may go into that folder, not alongside it.

You cannot group-select folders or bookmarks by using the shift or control key along with the mouse of arrow keys.  You have to group them into folders if you want to treat them collectively.  You can open all the bookmarks at a given level inside a folder, but this does not include any subfolders or their contents.

I find that for all practical purposes, my limit on opened tabs with one browser is under 25 at once.  But this is highly dependent on the amount of RAM present.  With my older laptop, with only 4GB, the practical liming is more like six or 7.  Beyond that, there is way too much reading and writing to the hard drive where RAM has to be offloaded into storage space ro make room for more demands on memory.  It's been so long since I really worked with Windows that I don't even remember what the HDD storage area was named, but with Linux, is is generally the swap partition.  I just did a quick check in another tab, and Microsoft refers to this as the Virtual Memory Paging File, but in your hard drive it is usually named PageFile.sys.  In linux, it is generally recommended that the swap partition be presized at about 1.5 times your actual amount of RAM, but in Windows, since it is a file, you can increase it's size as needed.  The better solution is just to have more RAM, since by electonic circuitry standards, HDDs are increadibly slow, adding huge delays to getting things done with your PC.

Whicj brings up an interesting question.  I read post of people using hundreds or even having thousands of bookmarks, and I have to ask myself:  What universe do they live in?  It's not one I am familiar with.

The thing is, based on my experience, browsers are too manually focused.  For instance, my thought was to come to these forums and see if any of the threads I have an interest in have had new posts added.  So I have to log in, use advance search, and either find posts where my userid appears, or search on some term that should be used somewhere in one of the thread's posts.  Then from a presented list, I have to pick a topic, click on it, and go to the last page.  I can't even designate the last post on the last page.  It all depends on my eye, my mind, and my actions.  The PC and browser are just tools to be used.  So this is one area where more could be done in software than the simple nature of web browsers supports.

Another area is webmail.  Compare how we have to deal with webmail as opposed to working with email clients.  With email clients, you have routine checks for new email and notifications if there are any, plus under POP, it just shows up on your PC.  With webmail, you have to go after it, log in, and screen it, then deal with it there.  Not that much different at that point than dealing with IMAP., an alternative to POP.  The difference between POP and IMAP in this regard is that with POP, you download the emails and any attachments onto your PC, and after this, and a certain interval of specified days or weeks, it is wiped off the email server's drives.  With IMAP, permanent storage is on the webmail servers, and you organize it there and access it there, meaning the same achieved results and store of information can be accessed by you from any PC.  With POP, you have only one store of information, usually, though by leaving it on the email server long enough, you can pull down copies onto other PCs if you make use of them during that time.  And you don't have to be on the internet when going through your email.  With IMAP, less redundancy, but more dependence on the internet and access to your webmail account.

I set up a new gmail account yesterday, where I indicated I wanted desktop notification that I had new mail, but I also wanted emails forwarded to my existing email account.

Why do this?  I'm not sure.   Mostly it was a venture to see if I had missed anything in my understanding of the gmail process, but for my added convenience, I'm having any email delivered to me, rather than having to go after it myself with a browser.  Anf to tell you the truth, I can get to my existing emails via webmail through my ISP, but that experience is not really an easy one.  Get to the right page.  Get logged in. Designate whether to use classic or new webmail format.  Search the page for the webmail link (Don't always get the same page, and they do modify it over time),.  Go there.  Go to the inbox.  See a handful of emails listed (most recent first),  Deal with these.  Then as some are deleted or filed, a few more come forward.  How many pages of emails to wade through this way?  Scads?  I don't have scads of time for this.  Just get my email client to download it to my PC, and I will deal with it later.

Oh, to assist me in relearning some of my forgotten programming skillls, I had to set up a Windows 7 client under Virtualbox, running on Ubuntu 14.04.  It was a bit tricky, since they changed the interface in Virtualbox 5.0, and the online manual is weak on specific details of doing things, but I used the Oracle forums and got an answer back in mere hours.  But that made it happen.  This is a bare bones install, so I added a few browsers and Incredimail.  I first went over an article on the five top rated  emails clients for Windows 7, but the following comments steered me away from them.  IncrediMail has incredibly weak security, since the account data is all exposed to anyone that knows how ro use Regedit, but some fantastic graphics features and is a decent enough email client.  Some email services reject Incredimail's broad use of included graphics capabilities, but you do have the choice of sending text-only emails.  Unlike Outlook and Thunderbird, with Incredimail, the graphics elements are on full display when you open a message containing them. 

With email, I can filter through and deal with a box's contents all at once, even pick out easily the ones that merit more attention by eye.  Webmail does not give you the same level of control and visibility.  I've experienced it through Yahoo and Gmail and my ISP.  Maybe there is something better.  If not, there ought to be,  What is it that browsers need to do in order to help us more in routine tasks, like checking if a forum thread has been responded to, or if we have a webmail account with new messages in it?  Think of some of the other things that the appropriate software could be helping us with.  Anything to make them true Personal Assistants.

I was going off on a tangent, and suddenly lost what I was typing.  I guess that is a signal to close up now.  'Bye.  Oops!  See what I was typing up above.  It got out of place, but not that much.  Will leave matters as they are.

I'm back.  Rwi details about Firefox that I don't appreciate.  The first is that to open another tab, I have to go to the right side of the screen.  I like it better where you just ckick on the link symbol besides the last tab opened.  The other problem is much more serious.  Firefox does not obey the up and down arrows correctly when it comes to sctolling through web pages.  Instead of a line at a time, sometimes it does nothing, and other times it leaps through large portions that you can't visit at all.  I find I have to use the mouse and the vertical scale on the right side to move up and down the area in between Firefox's extremes.  I don't visit every site and use every browser to see how they react, but to me, this is a definate turn-off.

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## oldefoxx

I thought this might be worth passing on in the debate about web browsers.  I haven't used them all, and the ones I have used have quirks that show up under what you might think of as atypical or unusual circumstances.    That is, I don't want video playback, so disable Flash, I need good response from the mouse and keyboard to keep up with screen action, I need a large number of tags opened at once, and I simply don't get all this with each and every browser.  The one that comes through the best is:

Slimjet. 

The next one is almost as good, but it crashes a lot when I try to open as many tabs as I can open under Slimjet.  So I had it as my #2 choice.  But it just got superceded, and I will name the replacement last. This one is:

Chromium

The third one is almost the equal of Chromium.  In fact, some people put it ahead.  But it is unable to complete some of the actions onscreen when I click on a moving sprite.  Odd behavior, and means I have to use a different browser when I get involved in that manner.  This one is:

Google Chrome

Number four was low rated because it's just not as good for what I do as the others are.  This one will surprise you, because for many, it is their prime or only choice:

Firefox

Number five was good, but has been superceded by Slimjet.  It's not really in the competition, but worth the mention.

Slimboat

Competing for last place was the following browser.  It is difficult to input and organize bookmarks from another browser, so I was not that pleased with it.  But once pass that hurdle, it showed is was as good as Chronium in action and almost the equal of Slimjet in handling a large number of open tabs.  This is the new #2 choice:

Opera

The others slide down a notch as a result.  Now the Chromium Project is likely to inspire more competition and more browsers going forward, and quite frankly, they've really have to work at it to make any that equal these.  But I can suggest three areas where I would like to see effort made:

(1)  Ability to set up profiles that allow multiple users per browser, or one user to have different profiles for different purposes.  Right now the best way to do this is to set up a profile per browser, and go to that browser when you want to engage that profile.

(2)  Ability to check, and if desired/warranted, download emails from webmail servers.  Webmail servers don't deliver the mail, they wait for you to come to them, and you read it on your screen.  Then it's up to you to respond there rather than bring it down onto your PC.  Why not the best of both worlds combined?  At least let you know when there is new mail present by checking periodically on its own.  IMAP email account act much this way, but they go through email servers on the other end.  Webmail servers let you access store messages via an HTML document that it creates on the fly for the purpose, so it does not abide by the POP3/IMAP and SMTP protocols.  It only deals with the HTML protocol.

(3)  Ability to do something very similar, but with forums, selected threads, and and any added posts.  Saves you from remembering to get back there and check for any possible replies, from having to just bookmark the link there, and from having to remember to do it from time to time.

(4)  Ability to designate a default background for use with HTML documents.  Right now the only choice is bright white.  You might like something a little bit easier on the eyes.  It's a matter of painting the background first, then painting the objects in the HTML document over it.  If the document is too small to fully occupy the screen, the chosen background fills in the blank areas.  Technically, an image could be painted there, or a textured background, but anything rather than a harsh, bright white.

(5)  Some HTML documents paint their own backgrounds, or the web developer made poor choices and the letters are hard to read against the background.  You might need the ability to refill the background to a different color to make the foreground stand out better.  You can't change the color on the server side, but there is no reason the HTML document, once received, can't be customized a bit before being displayed.

(6)  You don't want to customize the same web pages over and over again, an aggravation of you plan to return there often.  So these effects should become part of what the browser remembers about web pages it returns to.  Sort of like cookies and bookmarks, but reflects the user's tastes and preferences as to how that web page should be displayed.  You might like some added features as well, like:
    a.  Remember the size setting for this page
    b.  Remember to automatically enable/disable the Flash player temporarily when visiting this page
    c.  Remember to automatically enable/disable the sound temporarily when visiting this page
    d.  Remember to assume a designated profile temporarily when visiting this page
    e.  Return to this page on a scheduled bases, reusing the current tab if already active (don't want the number of used tabs to keep expanding).  If already active, drop the connection and reconnect (clears hung connections).

The Chromium Project invites new browser development using the web tools they have developed.  The results are expected to be free to the eventual user, but some of the developers are open to donations to compensate them for their time and efforts.  If you like the product, this would be a good thing to do.

Once years ago, a company I worked for paid for a product it bought, but because it was software and presumed eternal in nature, they did not pick up a maintenance or support contract.  About five years later, they wanted some changes coded into the original programs.  But unfortunately, the software company no longer employed any of the original program developers.  Since they apparently weren't needed anymore, the company either let them go, or they went on to find other lucrative work on their own initiative.

There is a lesson here:  If it's free, what's to keep the developers involved?  Either you pay for what you get (as well as for what you will want in the future), or you run the risk of it all just petering out.  You don't have to do it every time, but you stumble onto something that really suits you, think about a donation or two to keep the faucet open.  It encourages these developers, and others, to do more.  And from their side, it shows their efforts are appreciated, and a little can total up to quite a bit if the user base is broad.

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## yoshii

I use Firefox because of the humongous wealth of customizations and addons available for aesthetics, privacy, downloads, speed enhancements, and format support.  
They really make Firefox very powerful.  If you've never tried them you are possibly missing out.  

I don't use Chrome because I was informed by a security site of a serious flaw in Chrome's blacklisting of dangerous websites that Firefox does implement correctly.  I would link to it, but it was about a year ago and I've long forgotten where the article was.  But it was possibly on https://www.schneier.com/ which is a really good site.  

I also keep Qupzilla handy for the few times when Firefox temporarily wouldn't load.

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## oldefoxx

When it comes to managing bookmarks, Opera is the most difficult to work with.  You can do it, but it's trial and error all the way.

The second most difficult is Firefox.  It's not intuitive, amd it only imports from Chrome.  For the others. you have to work with HTML files.  And the imports don't blend in with what you have, but are just added to the tree.  However, you can copy and paste imported bookmarks by using the Ctrl and left mouse button to select more than one, then paste them all to your bookmark bar (as an example).

The other three browsers, Chromium, Chrome, and Slimjet, are all based on the Blink web library, and you can easily copy from one and paste to another.  I play the PCH sweepstakes daily.  There is somerhing wrong in one of the fly-over games that shows up in Chromium, Chrome, and Opera.  For that one game, I have to use Firefox and Slimjet.  I play two at once, one for me and one for my wife.  She does everything else for me, so this one thing I can do for her in return,

Why don't I use Firefox and Slimjet for all the games?  Because they are different from each other and from the rest.  I switch to Chrome and Chromium because they are very much alike. meaning a simpler interface from the user end.

The PCH odds are not good odds, but the drawings run for a long time, meaning you can leep playing and your odds get better over time.  In state-run lotteries, you pay $1 to $2 per chance, and that is only for the next immediate drawing.  You can't keep piling up the chances of winning as you can with PCH, which costs you nothing.  How bad are the odds with PCH?  The most quoted figure is 1 in 1.7 billion.  One sweepstakes shows them picking from ten digits.  That's 10 Billion total.  So if that is true, they are only using about 17% of the combinations available to them.  Lots of room to grow in.  PCH is only available in the USA and Canada.  I'm not sure if there is anything like it available elsewhere.  It could be one of a kind.  It's about ads, and trying to get you to buy something.  Many items sold there appear in late night tv ads and in infomercials.  If you saw it on tv, and now you want it, check out PCH and it may be offered there as well.

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## monkeybrain20122

I use Firefox for its endless extendibility and addons and plugins. e.g you can only watch this in Firefox (with the gecko-mediaplayer plugin) http://msl.stream.yorku.ca/mediasite...rType=WM64Lite


I would be interested if you can watch it with any other browser on Linux.

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## mystics

Firefox has been my main for a long time due to its customizations. Lately, though, it has been a bad dog. It decided to stop rendering pages correctly, and I've been too lazy to figure out what the problem is, so I've been using Chromium a lot lately and have been enjoying it. It seems a little more stable, is very elegant, and has access to the Chrome web store. I haven't really expanded it much, though, but again, I'm being a little lazy right now. Still not sure at this point if it will replace Firefox for good (especially once I fix Firefox), but it has been an enjoyable experience.




> I use Firefox for its endless extendibility and addons and plugins. e.g you can only watch this in Firefox (with the gecko-mediaplayer plugin) http://msl.stream.yorku.ca/mediasite...rType=WM64Lite
> 
> 
> I would be interested if you can watch it with any other browser on Linux.


I haven't tried it, but I guess some people over at the Arch forums have gotten the plugin to work on Chromium: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113548

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## night_sky2

Anyone tried Midori (latest version 0.5.11)?

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## monkeybrain20122

> I haven't tried it, but I guess some people over at the Arch forums have gotten the plugin to work on Chromium: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113548


The thread was from 2011, that was long before google banned all NPAPI plugins on Chrome/Chromium. For a while gecko-mediaplayer worked on Chrome/Chromium though kind of glitchy from time to time. Now you can't play any video on Chrome/Chromium unless it is either flash or html5 (for example, Apple trailers won't work since it is quicktime)

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## mystics

> Anyone tried Midori (latest version 0.5.11)?


I've tried it a couple times. I like what they're going for since the major players (Firefox and Chrome/Chromium) aren't exactly the most lightweight. Personally, though, I'm not looking for a lightweight browser. I'm looking for an extensible browser, and in that regard, Firefox and Chrome absolutely dominate. So Midori isn't really for me, but it has served me as a nice third browser in the past when both Firefox and Chromium weren't working properly.

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## monkeybrain20122

If lightweight is my priority I would use the Ubuntu Browser (just called Browser), which comes preinstalled since 14.04. I tried in on 15.04. While it doesn't have many features, it is insanely fast.

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## jbaerboc

For whatever odd reason Ffox has decided to be slow, and act all "buggy" on my lately. This is both in Windows, Linux, and my Work Win7 computer at the office. So I've switched back over to Chrome for now. I tried out Opera but then realized it's just a customized Chromium...so kinda pointless. And Chromium is not much different than Chrome...soooo Chrome it is lol.

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## NathanRodriguez

Opera is using Chromium engine?! Used to be more independent...

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## oldefoxx

Yep, they were.  But I read about the changeover not long ago.  Their bookmark approach is really bad IMHO,and you get these really big icons for the sites that provide them, but you learn to deal with that, it's pretty good overall.  It's more focused on Speed Dial, and if you shut it down with multiple tabs open, it reloads with the same tab setup.  With the other browsers, you get asked if you want to restore previous tabs or not.  And it has one glaring issue, which is that the message boxes do not always appear on top.  So it appears to hang, when it is only awaiting confirmation for closing a tab or something.

I top-ramked Slimket, but it has a couple of problems as well.  First, you can start a download, but it may flag the file as potentially harboring malware, and want you to check whether you want to keep it or not.  But you don't see this offhand unless you go to the download page and see the information in small print.  You only find out there is an issue when you try to close Slimjet, then learn a download is still in progress.

The second problem with Slimjet also involves downloading, where you can elect to download all the files of a given wildcard configuration via the link you are connected to.  It's very vague on what's available, until you create a filter, after which it shows you a list of what matches.  But it could be a very long list, and a bit difficult to work through.  It would benefit if there were check boxes beside each file that could be all checked, all cleared, or changed individually.  And what you want may be in a folder tree that is not included.  You might want to get the folder tree and the files all together.  I think it could be improved, but few people would pick this option to start with,  I only used it to try to download a bunch of PureBasic example files from a source that would only let me do a file at a time by hand.  I got a bunch of files, but these weren't the ones I was going for at the time.

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## Sweet_Baby_Jamie

Well nobody has mentioned it yet, but Seamonkey is awesome!  It's light and speedy and Firefoxy and has great integration with it's Thunderbirdish e-mail client.

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## oldefoxx

> Well nobody has mentioned it yet, but Seamonkey is awesome!  It's light and speedy and Firefoxy and has great integration with it's Thunderbirdish e-mail client.


I remember seamonkey coming to my attention briefly back around release 8,04.  I haven't thought about it in years.  Back then it was pretty much a Firefox show. unless you were a Windows buff and thought IE was tops.  The Ubuntu Software Center does not list seamonkey as a choice, but there is other software that it misses as well.  I did a search and found the website at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/rel...seamonkey2.38/

I looked for dates, just to get a feel for how active it is and whether it is moving forward or not.  I didn't find any.  So I downloaded it and opened the compressed file, and the last modified date was 24 September 2015, so I guess it is active alright.

I've other pressing issues to deal with now, so am not going to get distracted with another browser at this point.  But someone else might be interested in checking it out.

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## oldefoxx

In the current versions, Slimjet will close unexpectedly for no apparent reason beyond having multiple tabs open.  The more tabs, or adding Incognito window with multiple tabs, the more likely it will close.  This has been reported to Slimjet support.

Chrome and Chromium both have Bookmark Manager issues.  You think you added a new bookmark to a  folder, but it just replaces one already there if it has the same URL.  Cuts down on duplications, but plays hell if saving duplicates was the intent.  You cannot manually override the manager on this, and take the wrong step in trying to do so can suddenly cause a whole selection of bookmarks to be lost forever.  Problem has been reported to Chromium support.  Slimjet, though it runs on Blink like the other two, is fine on bookmarks.  So create your bookmarks on Slimjet and do a copy/paste to either Chrome or Chromium, or both.  You can also use the built on method of transferring by html file, but that really isn't necessary.  With html, you still have a problem with melding the several imports with what was already there, but with copy/paste, you can put folders and files right where you want.

Firefox has also shown that it will take a paste of bookmark files and folders, but it uses the URL as the bookmark name.  That means editing the pasted bookmarks if you want the original names back.  Haven't tried any of this with Opera yet, which also has Blink, but a rather strange bookmark arrangement.  Don't know if Opera has been or will be impacted in any way, as it is not my first choice and has not been out with a new release for awhile now.

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## pelikano

> I personally cannot see the point of Chromium, just a buggy, outdated and crippled version of Chrome and perpetually in alpha. I also don't see much point of Opera now it is like Chrome except almost with no extension and netflix doesn't work there (the only advantage of Chrome over Firefox if you watch it), so it is again a much crippled version of Chrome basically.
> )


Haha! I'm so with you on this. I was using Chromium the other day, wishfully thinking perhaps it's a Chrome clone that doesn't archive your... _yo_ the way I can only assume Chrome does--full disclosure, I haven't wiresharked any of this, with regard to Google, so I can personally only conjecture--but I noticed it just sorta sucked; I can't quantify it, but it feels like Chrome just works better than Chromium. And I'm sure there's good reason: why would Google--and I do like Google (way more than Facebook and many other online behemoths)--make it more pleasant to use an opensource version of their flagship, proprietary browser? I wouldn't if I were them, not because it's evil, but they need revenue and, as we all know, even if a product is free up-front, opensourcing it is rarely the path to wealth.

Now Opera... I haven't used that stupid browser since was a _big deal_ hitting the scene as the alternate to IE, Netscape/Mozilla (not Firebird  :Smile:  --just Mozilla), As I recall, its claim to fame was this crazy idea of tabbed windows rather than multiple windows. And I left it where I found it... 15 or so years ago.

I'm about to jam my paws up on this Slimjet business. Chrome, functionally, aesthetically and passing the I'm done test--as MS Windows did not when I quit for good in 2004--is awesome. Multiple tabs, like 100 tabs, seems to cause memory leaks or, certainly, unnecessarily high memory use, so I'm intrigued. As an embedded software engineer, I spend a considerable amount of time trying to hunt down obscure stuff, and, if you're anything like me, that results in dozens of tabs in a window only before I realize _this is out of control... I better open a new window_... and the cycle continues.

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## wildmanne39

Old thread closed. Edited for language.

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