Chrome...Your opinion please

[heatedmonk]

Google moves its privacy offering from Abysmal to Appalling as EU regulators force change - June 2015

"The scale of the privacy risk associated with Google’s gargantuan enterprises is sometimes easy to understate, even though privacy has become the company’s most famous failing"

"Chrome allows Google to track your activities in areas of your life that are so well established that you don’t need to research them."

 

[mnorian]

Ya...well...but... when what you use, don't work, you use, what works.

 

[heatedmonk]

There be too many options to fall back on Chrome as the only choice.

 

[mnorian]

There be too many options to fall back on Chrome as the only choice.

What you using?

 

[heatedmonk]

Depends on which company computer I'm at. Opera or Firefox browsers are installed on our units here.
With add-on's that include, No Script, AdBlock+ HTTPS Everywhere and AVIRA browser safety. Depends on which browser you're using as to what extensions/add on's are available.
And of course an anti-virus.

ETA: No Script now has "ClearClick" protection in the newest versions .

 

[mnorian]

Depends on which company computer I'm at. Opera or Firefox browsers are installed on our units here.
With add-on's that include, No Script, AdBlock+ HTTPS Everywhere and AVIRA browser safety. Depends on which browser you're using as to what extensions/add on's are available.
And of course an anti-virus.

I tried Firefox; it crashed the first time I used it and every time there after in about 20 minutes of use. I don't use ad blockers as sites like CF and others I use rely on ad generated revenue to stay in business. I used to pay for anti-virus software and had ad, mal and vicious ware (lost a computer to a virus) ; the last four years I have let Microsoft Essential security updates run the show and haven't had a problem since. If Edge worked better I would be a 100% MS user. There hasn't been another browser that has come out of the herd; I have had about 6-7 that various people have promoted but none that stands out.

 

[heatedmonk]

Sorry to hear about your Firefox experience. I'm not IT proficient so I wouldn't know what to offer as a suggestion for the cause. Did you alert Firefox of the bug?
I used IE with security essentials as a standby browser. But IE has it's bugs too.
Opera on my other machine serves well so far. No problems on my end at least.

 

[Jesus' Follower]

I use SlimJet which is Chrome will additional features; very good and easy to use.
If you like Chrome, you'll like this.
It's FREE too.

 

[paul1149]

I never tried Slimjet, as there was nothing about it on the web, so was kind of leery. Now that I've got used to it, Chrome is working out pretty good. As I said previously, I like their bookmarks. But, the real reason I've been using it, is because it plays videos like Edge wont and doesn't crash like Firefox does.

I use SlimJet which is Chrome will additional features; very good and easy to use.
If you like Chrome, you'll like this.
It's FREE too.

Slimjet is build on the same base as Chrome: Chromium. But SJ adds a lot of features, and takes some of Chrome's "features" out. Thus we avoided the "OK Google" spying mess a couple of months ago.

Some of the added features are for power and convenience. For instance, I use aliases all the time. When I need to schedule a USPS pickup, I simple type uu into the address bar and hit Enter. aa takes me to my Amazon account page. Etc.

Some time ago google figured out that it is far better to simply log search clicks than to use its spider's original cross-linking algorithm out on the Web. Thus, every click you make off a google search is routed through its servers. So google knows where you go, what your interests are, etc. SJ has a option that will disable the redirect.

These are is just a couple of examples of many. There is auto-refresh, now there is a built-in ad blocker, which is faster than any extension, upload picture from clipboard, bookmarks side bar.... I honestly don't get why anyone would use Chrome over SJ.

 

[mnorian]

Well; I took JF and Paul's advice and downloaded Slimjet yesterday, and you guy's are right; you can't hardly tell the difference between SJ and Chrome. I enabled the ad-blocker just to see what it was like, and it does a great job of blocking out ads.

Too good in fact, there was a review of Laptops on PCmag, that looked like an ad so much; it wouldn't let the video play about them, so I had to disable it for that one site.

Outside of that the only problem was getting all my favorites from IE and bookmarks from Chrome set up, not a problem just a hassle to get all them in the same spot I had them in Chrome.

The Slimjet search engine wouldn't work, but Google was readily available so that was no problem; only Google is supposed to be the SJ search, so don't understand why it wouldn't work, but all it would do is keep saying it was loading.

From the users stand point, you can't see that it's not sending Google any info on your browsing; and the only thing about that I don't like is all the ads Google tailors to what they think you would buy; so if you use the ad blocker, you will never know the difference.

One problem I did have was trying to set up the auto-fill feature SJ has that remembers not only your password but will remember the things you need to use to fill in applications like filling in your credit card information at different sites; but you need the have a master password set up and after the first time I was asked to do that, I was leery of setting this up till I looked up in the Slimjet help files why I needed to do this. So I went back into the settings to set the master password and even after using the help tutorial, could not find the place to set the master password. I left that go till I needed to set up one of my email programs on-line and the master password option came up again and I set it up.

All in all the Slimjet experience has been mostly painless; just those few things that didn't work or I was just on the learning curve for a while; much easier to transition from Chrome to SJ, then it is from IE to Chrome or Firefox. I did have a problem of not being able to post images to CF last night but don't know if that had anything to do with downloading Slimjet or not.


Edit: is there a way of putting a web site short-cut; like you used to be able to do in IE, on your desktop? The way it is in Chrome and Slimjet both, is you have to save-as the site and then put the desktop as the location. No shortcuts in SJ?

 

[Jesus' Follower]

Edit: is there a way of putting a web site short-cut; like you used to be able to do in IE, on your desktop? The way it is in Chrome and Slimjet both, is you have to save-as the site and then put the desktop as the location. No shortcuts in SJ?

I'm not sure on that I will have to check. I know you can add a site to the bookmark bar.

The SJ browser isn't good, I would recommend you stick with Google or use Bing if you want a jazzy front page.

 

[Jesus' Follower]

Too good in fact, there was a review of Laptops on PCmag, that looked like an ad so much; it wouldn't let the video play about them, so I had to disable it for that one site.

It's #1 at present I believe hence me downloading it - I have always used Chrome as its fast so I thought SJ would be just as good and for what I use it for it is.
Have you synced your Google account over? If you have one of course.

 

[paul1149]

The Slimjet search engine wouldn't work

I've never used it, though this is surprising. I strongly recommend using DuckDuckGo as your search engine.

Also, you will find that SJ manifests certain icons in the toolbar, such as FB, amazon, weather. It only does this once. The commercial site icons are a way that SJ makes money. Just remove them once and they don't come back.

One problem I did have was trying to set up the auto-fill feature SJ has that remembers not only your password

I use and recommend LastPass, which is cross-browser, so I have no experience with this.

is there a way of putting a web site short-cut; like you used to be able to do in IE, on your desktop?

Simply drag the page icon in the address bar to the desktop.

Keep looking through all the settings and context menus of SJ, and you will find a goldmine of power features. Tab control, cache control, picture upload control, etc. And it's still growing rapidly.

 

[Jesus' Follower]

I've never used it, though this is surprising. I strongly recommend using DuckDuckGo as your search engine.

Also, you will find that SJ manifests certain icons in the toolbar, such as FB, amazon, weather. It only does this once. The commercial site icons are a way that SJ makes money. Just remove them once and they don't come back.



I use and recommend LastPass, which is cross-browser, so I have no experience with this.



Simply drag the page icon in the address bar to the desktop.

Keep looking through all the settings and context menus of SJ, and you will find a goldmine of power features. Tab control, cache control, picture upload control, etc. And it's still growing rapidly.

Thanks for helping on that @paul1149, I didn't get chance to have a look.

 

[MrJim]

I strongly recommend using DuckDuckGo as your search engine.

DuckDuckGo is my default with Safari on my mac but sometimes I still use google because DDG just doesn't do as well with some things..especially "images"....shame..

 

[mnorian]

DuckDuckGo is my default with Safari on my mac but sometimes I still use google because DDG just doesn't do as well with some things..especially "images"....shame..

Yes, I tried DuckDuckGo for an icon image search that I had done in Google for a post here at CF and DDG came back with 33 images; while Google had 33 PAGES, with approximately 12 per page, and more that I didn't click on. Maybe DDG is limiting the number of images to be faster, and as most of the searches that bring back 1,333,333 hits, after the first pages or so the rest are a waste anyway as most people don't or can't use that much information. And after the first two or three pages the search seems to loose it's way as the hits have nothing to do with your original search; anyway.

 

[paul1149]

Google is my SE of last resort. It's strong on images, and I'll use it for data as well if the others aren't coming up with what I need. But there are a lot of strings attached to using google, so it is my last resort.

 

[mnorian]

Well; it's been a little over a month now since I installed Slimjet; and I have to thank the two gentlemen who convinced me to try it; as I find it working out well:

I use SlimJet which is Chrome will additional features; very good and easy to use.
If you like Chrome, you'll like this.
It's FREE too.

+1 and agree with this statement

These are is just a couple of examples of many. There is auto-refresh, now there is a built-in ad blocker, which is faster than any extension, upload picture from clipboard, bookmarks side bar.... I honestly don't get why anyone would use Chrome over SJ.

Yup; agree with this one too. The ad blocker is the deal maker for me; I had stated before in this thread that I didn't want to use an ad blocker because sites I use, besides CF, rely on ads for their income; but, the difference in speed of loading web pages with SJ's ad blocker; has to be experienced to believe.

It went from 2 to 3 minutes to load a page on CF and to scroll down to thread content; or to go to the bottom of the page if you were going to post a reply, it might even take longer if a video ad was loading; to like 10-20 SECONDS with SJ's ad blocker enabled.

Slimjet and it's blocker has transformed my web experience from one of constant waiting for web pages to load, jerky page scrolling; jumping back up the page to an ad; and general slow surfing; to quick page browsing, smooth scrolling up and down a page, and not being jerked around by ads when your trying to read content on a web site.

I will never, if I can help it, to go back to being lead and jerked around by ads. It's not the web content providers like CF that are to blame with the way ads are, it's the ad network companies; but CF and the others are the ones that pay for it in lost revenue and ill will from frustrated web users. I hope the net doesn't have to go to subscription services to fix this ad problem.

 

[mnorian]

I had some trouble with SlimJet crashing after installing Microsoft's, Nov 8, major upgrade of Windows 10. You can read the whole story on the Win10 & Edge thread here: http://www.christianforums.com/thre...of-windows-10-and-edge-browser.7900142/page-3

 

[mnorian]

Slimjet has worked out pretty, pretty, well all things consider; it's crashing was due to some conflict with the 64 bit version with Windows 10; after installing the 32 bit SJ it's doing OK; with one small glitch. When I brows the net, I have my laptop set at 150% magnification, which fills the 17 inch screen and makes it easier to read the small print, that web sites are going to for mobile users, as they tend to have the screen closer then with a PC; mine I use at arms length. So I go into the menu on SF and set it for 150; but, every new page it's back to 100%. I have look in Chromes store for a zoom lock; found one by that name; but when I went to down load it, it wasn't there. Anyone got a fix or work-around for this; like maybe @paul1149? Thanks for all your help here.