Browser

Alternative browsers

Firefox

• The browser engine is Gecko. It supports MathML (Chrome or Safari does not).
• How to install, uninstall and update Firefox on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux
• How To Install The Latest Firefox (Non-ESR) On Debian 10 Buster (Stable) Or Bullseye (Testing)

Tor

3 Ways Of Installing Tor Browser On Linux

Chrome or Chromium

The browser engine is Blink

Chromium And Ungoogled Chromium Web Browsers Are Now Available On Flathub

Install from ubuntu repository. sudo apt-get install chromium-browser To launch it, type chromium-browser.

Install the latest version of chromium.

sudo apt install curl git
git clone https://github.com/scheib/chromium-latest-linux.git
cd chromium-latest-linux
./update-and-run.sh

# next time
./run.sh

Note that the chromium program is not in the global environment. That's why we use run.sh to launch chromium.

Proxy

• To use a proxy server,
• Manually configuring proxy settings of Google Chrome on Ubuntu

chromium-browser --proxy-server="10.130.5.180:3128"
chromium-browser --proxy-server="socks://localhost:4096" # Useful if we use "ssh -D"

Enable hardware acceleration

enable hardware acceleration in chrome / chromium browser [quick tip]

• check if your Chrome / Chromium browser uses hardware acceleration chrome://gpu
• force Chrome / Chromium to use hardware acceleration chrome://flags Search for "Override software rendering list", enable it and restart Chrome. This does not work. The update method is How To Enable Hardware Acceleration In Chromium On Ubuntu Or Linux Mint (VA-API Patched PPA Builds).

Electron

Electron Can Bring Your Web App to the Desktop. Here’s How to Get Started

Microsoft Edge

Edge has a pretty neat trick up its sleeve here—you can use the “Read Aloud” feature to have the entire article read aloud to you using natural sounding voices

7 Microsoft Edge Flags to Supercharge Your Browsing Experience

Vivaldi

Based on Chromium.

Block Ads and Tracking With Vivaldi's New Built-In Browser Settings April 2020. But the default does not enable the option: “Block ads and trackers”. After I select this option, it works.

A sidebar provides a place to quickly access your bookmarks, downloads, and history. Less standard is the built-in ability to write and save notes, also available in the sidebar.

While cool, Vivaldi is also a proprietary browser.

The proxy setting is not found in the latest version. To use it,

$ vivaldi --proxy-server="127.0.0.1:8118"

To uninstall it, open the package manager to remove it.

There are many unique/interesting features that are not available in other browsers.

• To search using google, type "g keyword". To search using bing, type "b keyword".
• To add a web panel, click the "+" sign and enter an URL. It's best the website is targeted for mobile devices like twitter.
• We can install any chrome extension; eg adblock. Just go to chrome store to search and add them.
• It has a built-in Note application.
• It can view two websites at the same time. Use shift key to select another tab(s) and right click selecting "Tilt 2 Tabs".
• sync
• screenshot
• Android

Opera

Based on Chromium.

Like Chrome, Opera is closed source.

Ad blocking and Block Pop-ups are turned on. But it seems they are not working:( Tested on iOS.

GNOME Web

There are browsers made specifically for Linux, and GNOME Web is the most mature of the bunch.

It looks and feels like a program intended to run on Linux.

Web lacks the kind of extensions you see on Chrome and Firefox (though ad-block does come built-in).

Eolie

Eolie is another browser built specifically for GNOME.

The URL bar shows a site’s title rather than the web address.

Brave - private, secure, support Chrome extensions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)

The browser uses a fork of Electron, called Muon, designed with a focus on browser features. For example, it has support for Chrome extensions, and a higher level of security.

Lacks the in-browser proxy (even version 0.57)

Chromium版隱私瀏覽器Brave 0.57出爐了，要給你Chrome方便性但不回傳資料給Google, Brave browser moves to Chromium codebase, now supports Chrome extensions Dec 2018

It is slow to scroll R code chunks of an HTML file obtained from kitting an R markdown book (macOS, version 1.0.1).

Test pages: How to Work with Scales in a ggplot2 in R

Privacy-Focused Brave Browser Caught Sneaking In Cryptocurrency Affiliate Links

How do I remove Brave completely?

Falkon and formally Qupzilla

QupZilla is a new and very fast QtWebEngine browser. It aims to be a lightweight web browser available through all major platforms.

Wikipedia. Download: only Windows and Linux binaries are available.

When I tested Falkon-3.0.1.AppImage - for 64-bit Linux on Mint 18.3, it gives an error

10:39AM ~/Downloads$ ./Falkon-3.0.1.AppImage 
QApplication: invalid style override passed, ignoring it.
Could not find QtWebEngineProcess

Text browser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_web_browser

lynx

• Lynx User Guide
• What is Lynx, and how do I use it?
• How and why to use Lynx – the faster web browser
  • g: go to some URL
  • Up/down: up/down
  • Left: back
  • Right: follows a link
  • Q: quit
  • ?: help
  • d: download the file on a link
  • /: search forward. n: forward match. N: backward match.
  • Ctrl-g: abort your connection to a slow or unresponsive link
  • o: option screen
  • If you want to always accept or reject cookies, edit ~/.lynxrc file to set accept_all_cookies=TRUE
• In one instance the html contains Chinese characters, w3m just give GC error. I need to close the terminal. However, lynx works well. sudo apt install lynx

w3m

It is available in NIH/Biowulf. Works well. It works better than lynx for displaying tables.

sudo apt install w3m w3m-img

• Shift-B will take you back a page.
• Shift-U and you’ll get an URL prompt.
• +/Space: Scroll down a page
• -: scroll up a page
• g: Jump to beginning
• G: Jump to end
• Shift-H to view the help page if you want to see a more complete list of keyboard shortcuts.

One cool thing is I can save a file that I can't do with the wget command (if I copy the download link from chrome Downloads), such as the bam file (look at the bottom of the webpage, Output this run in XXX format to Screen/File) from SRA repository.

Links

• http://pcworld.com/article/3196428/linux/why-installing-a-text-mode-web-browser-is-a-good-idea.html
• http://links.twibright.com/user_en.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_%28web_browser%29

Misc

User agent

How to Change Your Browser’s User Agent and Trick Websites

Hard refresh

How to Hard Refresh Your Browser

Shift + F5. This will force the web browser to discard what it already has in the cache and to download the latest version of the site.

Read Aloud

• How to Use Your Browser's 'Reader Mode' to Actually Read What You Click
• How to Set Up and Manage the Read Aloud Feature in Microsoft Edge

Ads: pixels

How tracking pixels work

Cookies

• Internet Cookies for Beginners: What Are They and How Do They Work?
• Firefox: See the Storage tab.
• My automatic NYT crossword downloading script

Anonymous Web Browsers That Are Completely Private

4 Free Anonymous Web Browsers That Are Completely Private

Javascript

• Firefox:
  • Use JavaScript within a webpage
  • How to I find JavaScript source in web page?

Hidden browser games

How to Unlock Hidden Browser Games in Edge, Firefox and Chrome. Go to chrome://dino on chrome browser.

Browse the Web Without a Mouse

6 Fast Ways to Browse the Web Without a Mouse

Password manager

Should You Pay for a Password Manger?

Translate

6 Ways to Translate Any Webpage You Visit