A Brief Note on Mozilla and BraveOn Brendan Eichβs brief promotion to CEO at Mozilla, the fallout for Mozilla and the creation of Brave.
Consent-O-Maticβ β β β β Convenient browser extension that detects cookie consent pop-ups and automatically fills them out according to your choices. Lets you know itβs working without getting in your way.
Firefoxβ β β β βI still have a soft spot for Firefox. At times itβs been the best web browser on Windows and Linux. Itβs still good, has a solid extension ecosystem, and serves as an important bulwark against one company dominating browser tech.
Firefox Syncβ β β β βWorks on nearly every Firefox-based browser and can mix and match. Even IronFox and LibreWolf recommend using it, as itβs encrypted end-to-end.
Floccus Bookmarks Syncβ β β β β Very flexible, syncs across many different desktop browsers and mobile devices, and for privacy it can run on your own server or encrypted on another cloud service.
GNU IceCatβ β β ββFirefox minus all branding and connections to Mozilla services, plus add-ons to block non-FSF-approved JavaScript.
IronFoxβ β β β βA privacy-hardened Firefox variation for Android, comparable to LibreWolf on desktops. Removes Mozilla tracking and services like Pocket. Locks down features that can leak data, but those changes can break some sites.
KeePass Password Managersβ β β β β KeePassXC, its browser extension, and KeePass2Android are a nice, clean set of apps to manage your passwords on your OWN desktop and mobile devices, auto-fill websites and apps, and sync over your own server or cloud provider.
LibreWolfβ β β β βCustomized Firefox, with an eye toward security and privacy. Follows the stable release channel. Works well most of the time, but privacy features can break some sites.
Mastodon β Simplified Federationβ β β β β A Firefox add-on that automatically opens remote Mastodon users or posts in your home server when you interact with them.
Privacy Badgerβ β β β β Tracking protection add-on for web browsers that also converts embedded media to placeholders and adds GPC support to browsers that donβt have it built in. (It used to detect new trackers automatically, but had to stop when someone figured out how to track that.)
Tor Browserβ β β β βWhen you really want (or need) to stay private while using the web, Tor is the way to go. Just keep the drawbacks in mind when you do.
Waterfoxβ β β β βA Firefox fork aimed at improved performance and privacy, without sacrificing usability. Also available on Android.
Wayback Machine Browser Extensionβ β β β βUseful for when you want to make sure the pages youβre reading will still be around in some form in the future, and to easily get at additional context. Checks every page you view against the Wayback Machine, so turn it off when youβre not using it.
Xmarks (Discontinued)β β β β βXmarks was a cross-browser bookmark sync service that I used for a long time to keep Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari on multiple computers using the same set of bookmarks. It shut down in 2018.