This has gotten some attention, especially about a week ago, but I really hope more people will continue to try it and, if interested, support it. It is Firefox, but heavily modified to please a different audience that prefers a slightly different UI than Firefox. It has some of the appeal of Arc, Vivaldi, and the Sidebery extension.
In my view, it is very promising, and all competition in this space is good. Here it is on Github, also.
The UI/UX is so good for a one-person team that I hope it embarrasses Mozilla into actually making serious improvements to their browser for the first time in a decade.
The UI looks mostly like Firefox IMO. Critically, it’s just as slow as Firefox.
I’ve used it for a bit, and it’s really really nice. I just don’t know if I trust it to keep up with security updates, especially something so sensitive as a web browser.
It’s just Firefox with a custom skin.
A great custom skin, and far better defaults for both privacy and speed, based on Betterfox.
The fact that a fork that simply has a better UI and default settings is gaining so much popularity shows how bad Mozilla is fumbling their product.
I know, but that means it needs to keep its firefox source version up to date to keep up with security, and as its source diverges more and more from vanilla firefox, it’ll get harder to do that.
Plus they’ve already proved to be amateurs by enabling some things that really shouldn’t have been enabled: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/pull/927.
Yeah enabling remote debugging because the dev thought it made it easier is a pretty big oof.
But this is just strike one. It’s a one man show, after all, so cutting them some slack is warranted when it comes to this specific topic.
Nevertheless, your concerns aren’t unfounded. This project needs more contributors to be able to keep up. (Thorium is basically in the same boat)
I’ll wait and see before I actually make a decision for real. But so far, not looking great.
I’m digging it so far! Definitely nice to have more FF-based options 🦊
Can you use FF extensions with it? The web site doesn’t say one way or the other.
yes. it’s Firefox with some extra UI modifications, but it’s the same thing under the hood.
now that I have been spoiled by floorp with workspaces, I have to ask… does it do workspaces? I can’t find it on the site if it does
It does indeed. There is a button in the top left for it by default.
So Firefox with a user.js and a CSS theme. I’m not saying Zen Browser is bad. But it’s nothing new.
