Problems with forum text editors in Chrome

[Zanick]

I prefer Chrome as my browser when I'm not on my mobile, and I had this same problem on Zoklet.

When I'm on Firefox, I can highlight some text and press Ctrl + (x) to modify font, where (x) is either "i" for italics, "b" for bold, etc. In Chrome, however, this simply does not happen with Chrome, and I have to highlight the text, then scroll up to hit the button that will modify my post accordingly.

What causes this difference? Is there some kind of attachment I can download that would allow me to use my favorite browser more efficiently with our text editor?

[devnull]

First, you should kill yourself for preferring a bloated piece of spyware over the free and open source firefox.

Secondly, the extent of my experience with "Chrome" is installing said bloated spyware application on the machines of simpletons who don't understand or care why firefox is infinitely better, so I can't help you much, other than to tell you that if you value your freedom as an individual and do not wish to be enslaved to a data mining corporation like Google, you should just use FF.

[Zanick]

First, you should kill yourself for preferring a bloated piece of spyware over the free and open source firefox.

Secondly, the extent of my experience with "Chrome" is installing said bloated spyware application on the machines of simpletons who don't understand or care why firefox is infinitely better, so I can't help you much, other than to tell you that if you value your freedom as an individual and do not wish to be enslaved to a data mining corporation like Google, you should just use FF.

To be honest, much of it is because of issues particular to my computer. My only computer right now is this cheap netbook that had low memory to start with and is probably now riddled with viruses because of my browsing habits, and for some reason Firefox is more glitchy than any browser I try. Aurora seems to be an improvement, but I still encounter less problems when I use Chrome, as unfortunate as that may sound. I'm saving up money though, and a good friend is willing to help me build a reasonably priced desktop once I have enough for the budget he's got in mind.

I'm not so tech-savvy, as you might have guessed by my making this thread. But the ideals of personal freedom and privacy you described are in line with some concerns I've had as of late about data mining and the like. Can you direct me to some links or give me a briefing on why Chrome is inferior and how they use my information in ways that aren't in my interest?

[RustyShackleford]

Zanick first fix your computer. Have someone help you reformat it (irl if possible, but many here including myself would help you). On any somewhat modern system firefox will work fine. Don't know why chrome is giving you problems, you could also try one of the chrome alternatives like chromium. Honestly I love firefox, but it is nearly unusable on android. On a pc the extra bloat is negligible. Reinstalling chrome might also fix your problem. It sounds like you have a lot of garbage on your comp which is interfering with things.

[Lanny]

Lol, my first thanked post on zoklet was posting this same extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bolder/cpfdokjdhbabkjaebccefdaophaeodlp/related?hl=en

for Fish asking the same question. Chrome wants to do other things with those hotkeys which is why they don't work but the above extension fixes it.

As for the quasi-religious matter of FF vs. Chrome, there's no need to switch. Firefox is mostly open source, and historically has been more open than Chrome which offers some promise of privacy (although as was demonstrated by the heartbleed incident, an open code base is no promise of correctness/security/privacy). It's worth pointing out that the majority of Chrome is open source and you're trusting Mozilla 100% as much if you run their precompiled builds (which everyone does) as you are trusting Google when you run Chrome.

As for actual quality of product, Chrome is easily better. Blink/webkit (chrome's render engine) has historically been much lighter than Gecko, chrome's sandbox model (which has since been mostly adopted by FF) is clearly superior, and Chrome is consistently more adherent to standards than FF. Fire Fox is a great project and the mozilla/google competition has done wonders to drag browser development out of the darkages but the whole "oh no, google botnet" line is just spreading baseless FUD.

[devnull]

Chrome logs your activity (searches, page visits, etc.) and sends it to Google, even if you opt out of their analytics. For this reason alone it should not be used by anyone who is privacy conscious. Open source Chromium, where most of the development happens, is a far better choice if you're looking for a simple, fast and fairly secure browser. It tends to use fewer resources than Firefox.

Mozilla OTOH has proven to be far more trustworthy and committed to user freedom than Google. Firefox is also much more customizable and extensible, and has features more suitable for power users and developers.

[Lanny]

Chrome logs your activity (searches, page visits, etc.) and sends it to Google, even if you opt out of their analytics. For this reason alone it should not be used by anyone who is privacy conscious.

Including if you decline to log into your google account? Can you prove that claim?

Mozilla OTOH has proven to be far more trustworthy and committed to user freedom than Google.

Like when mozilla gets bullied into including DRM plugins with their browser?

Firefox is also much more customizable and extensible, and has features more suitable for power users and developers.

Citation needed on everything but the developers claim, where you're just wrong. Chrome's dev tools are easily superior to FF's. It took chrome happening before mozilla would even build their own tools rather than delegate it to a hacky third party extension. You're going to have to prove your customizable/extensible claim but I can say having developed extensions for both browsers, chrome's extension system is definitely the easier to work with from a developer perspective. There's also the fact that there is no permission system in FF's add-on system and a malicious add on is implicitly trusted.

[Rizzo in a box]

I used to be all about firefox but after making the switch to chrome no way am I looking back.

[devnull]

Including if you decline to log into your google account? Can you prove that claim?

As I stated, my experience with (Google) Chrome is limited. I have a trusted contact who claims to have tcpdump captures showing rogue connections to Google servers while browsing with all tracking services disabled. This is enough for me to disregard Chrome as a suitable option for anonymous browsing. I don't intend to investigate it further, because I have no interest in Google, or any company with known affiliation to PRISM and the NSA.

Like when mozilla gets bullied into including DRM plugins with their browser?

Yeah, not a fan of that decision. But you can't win 'em all. They're still miles ahead of Google.

Citation needed on everything...

Show me where I can find extensions like NoScript, Cookie Controller, FoxyProxy, JonDoFox, etc. for Chrome, and I'll submit that it's on par in terms of extensibility and protection of privacy. Show me Chrome's equivalent of about:config and I'll concede that it's just as configurable. Most extensions I've used in Chromium are crap, and even basic configuration like proxy settings are hidden or completely inaccessible. I can't see how a power user would find it suitable for anything more than basic web surfing or interfacing with other Google services.

but the developers claim, where you're just wrong.

Maybe. I study mech engineering and have limited experience with software development. The statement above is merely the consensus of my university's CompSci department, where only a handful of people take Chrome seriously as a development friendly browser. I could be wrong; it's happened once before.

[Lanny]

As I stated, my experience with (Google) Chrome is limited. I have a trusted contact who claims to have tcpdump captures showing rogue connections to Google servers while browsing with all tracking services disabled. This is enough for me to disregard Chrome as a suitable option for anonymous browsing. I don't intend to investigate it further, because I have no interest in Google, or any company with known affiliation to PRISM and the NSA.

That's an anecdote. If you don't want to use chrome for that reason that's fine but you'll have to forgive me if a third hand account of a tcp dump I haven't seen fails to convince me.

Show me where I can find extensions like NoScript, Cookie Controller, FoxyProxy, JonDoFox, etc. for Chrome, and I'll submit that it's on par in terms of extensibility and protection of privacy.

NoScript: You can disable JS in the browser config pages, there's also https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf/details?hl=en for more granular control
Cookie Controller: Devtools let's you manipulate cookies, but if you want something more clickable there's: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vanilla-cookie-manager/gieohaicffldbmiilohhggbidhephnjj?hl=en
FoxyProxy: Proxy SwitchySharp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/proxy-switchysharp/dpplabbmogkhghncfbfdeeokoefdjegm?hl=en
JonDoFox: Never heard of this before, it's just a set of configs? Last I checked firefox, just like chrome, had actual config menus where you can choose settings so I'm not seeing the point.

Show me Chrome's equivalent of about:config and I'll concede that it's just as configurable.

chrome://flags/

Maybe. I study mech engineering and have limited experience with software development. The statement above is merely the consensus of my university's CompSci department, where only a handful of people take Chrome seriously as a development friendly browser. I could be wrong; it's happened once before.

CS people are kind of biased towards Mozilla for historical reasons (including the relative browser positions in the open source space). Again, I think firefox is great and I'm glad it exists but I think Chrome, at this point in time, offers a better user and developer experience. And again, any security benefit that comes from FF being open source is lost as soon as you download that binary, so I don't think the privacy claim is really well founded when telling people which browser they sould use unless you're ready to recommend that everyone read and compile their own browser from source.

[devnull]

That's an anecdote. If you don't want to use chrome for that reason that's fine but you'll have to forgive me if a third hand account of a tcp dump I haven't seen fails to convince me.

Fair enough. Personally, I'm of the opinion that one can never trust a browser offered by an organization that depends so heavily on data collection for its business model. It can be argued that this is partially or wholly blind intuition, but I'm rather privacy conscious and Google has given us plenty of reasons to question their ethics.

NoScript: You can disable JS in the browser config pages, there's also https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf/details?hl=en for more granular control
Cookie Controller: Devtools let's you manipulate cookies, but if you want something more clickable there's: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vanilla-cookie-manager/gieohaicffldbmiilohhggbidhephnjj?hl=en
FoxyProxy: Proxy SwitchySharp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/proxy-switchysharp/dpplabbmogkhghncfbfdeeokoefdjegm?hl=en

Tried all of these, couldn't get any of them to work as well as their FF counterparts. NoScript in particular is a fantastic extension that seems to have no equal under any other browser.

JonDoFox: Never heard of this before, it's just a set of configs? Last I checked firefox, just like chrome, had actual config menus where you can choose settings so I'm not seeing the point.

It's shipped as a profile that includes configs and several extensions.

https://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/jondofox.html

chrome://flags/

I'll check this out.

CS people are kind of biased towards Mozilla for historical reasons (including the relative browser positions in the open source space). Again, I think firefox is great and I'm glad it exists but I think Chrome, at this point in time, offers a better user and developer experience.

I appreciate your input. You've convinced me to install Chromium on this system and have another go at hardening it for my purposes.

And again, any security benefit that comes from FF being open source is lost as soon as you download that binary, so I don't think the privacy claim is really well founded when telling people which browser they sould use unless you're ready to recommend that everyone read and compile their own browser from source.

Depending on the distro I'm using, I either compile from source or the package maintainers do. If they can't be trusted, well, surveillance code in the browser is pretty low on my hierarchy of concerns.

If you're running it on Windows or OSX then your browser choice doesn't matter; you're being surveilled anyway.

[RustyShackleford]

Does chromium alleviate the privacy concerns of chrome? Anyways if you are logged into google and doing searches in any browser it is recording your browsing history unless you have specifically opted out. That is about the last straw. I am going to attempt to completely cut off from google services or at least minimize it. Eg. Accessing email from thunderbird so I don't have to be logged into a browser.

[Lanny]

Does chromium alleviate the privacy concerns of chrome?

Which privacy concerns are those?

Anyways if you are logged into google and doing searches in any browser it is recording your browsing history unless you have specifically opted out. That is about the last straw. I am going to attempt to completely cut off from google services or at least minimize it. Eg. Accessing email from thunderbird so I don't have to be logged into a browser.

How is accessing email from thunderbird any different than whatever webmail client through firefox?

[RustyShackleford]

Does chromium alleviate the privacy concerns of chrome?

Which privacy concerns are those?

I don't actually know. If chromium is open source I will choose that over a closed source version.

Anyways if you are logged into google and doing searches in any browser it is recording your browsing history unless you have specifically opted out. That is about the last straw. I am going to attempt to completely cut off from google services or at least minimize it. Eg. Accessing email from thunderbird so I don't have to be logged into a browser.

How is accessing email from thunderbird any different than whatever webmail client through firefox?
[/quote]

Anyways if you are logged into google and doing searches in any browser it is recording your browsing history unless you have specifically opted out.

[Rizzo in a box]

How is accessing email from thunderbird any different than whatever webmail client through firefox?

Isn't webmail in general much less secure than using something like thunderbird?