hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3543.txt

Episode: 3543
Title: HPR3543: Idle thoughts on web browsers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3543/hpr3543.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:12:06

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3543 for Wednesday 2 March 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Idol Thoughts on Web Browsers, It is hosted by D&D and is about
eight minutes long and carries an explicit flag, the summaries and a call for Euro on the same.
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio. This is D&D.
A while ago there was a podcast episode from the company I buy a green coffee from which is called
Sweet Maria's and their staff basically sent each other voice messages on something like
iMessage or whatever it was and then they basically just downloaded those voice messages and put
them together into a podcast episode and the theme they were talking about was how they each made
coffee at home. I thought it made for a really interesting episode because it was just super
informal and we heard lots of different voices and since there wasn't like a single point being
driven you could really well kind of form your own thoughts about it which I think is really cool.
So I thought I might propose something similar here and the way I thought it could be done is
I could create a matrix channel and then I'll give you the name of that matrix channel here at the end
and then anybody who wants to participate just goes on that channel and then drops in a voice message,
records a voice message on their matrix client you know I don't know maybe it'll be a flop because
maybe then the theme the topic that I picked isn't all that interesting to a lot of people but
maybe a few people will respond then I'll go in and I'll pick up those voice messages say after a
couple weeks I don't know then I'll put together an episode after that.
The topic that I meant to talk about here is web browsers this was something that I recorded a
few weeks ago or maybe a few months ago when I had just stopped using web browser that's called
cube browser Q-U-T-E and I stopped using that and started using Firefox, Firefox with the extension
that's called Tridacto which gives you the VIM inspired bindings I should say that you're used to
if you use cube browser and if you're one of those VIM people that want everything to have
been binding bindings Tridacto is pretty good I think in a lot of ways it's even though it's an
extension it is better than cube browser in some ways the user experience at the end of the day
is a little better I think but you know it just sucks that it's an it's an extension and there are
things there that Firefox is bound to take away at work I tried using cube browser for a bit
and it would just crash sometimes so I gave up but I used it for for a little while and then I
used that user chrome dot css file to remove some of the UI elements from Firefox that are useless to
me and then that makes it a lot better and then with the Tridacto app I can scroll up and down
with the JNK keys and I can do the F to show the link hints those are things that I like to use
when browsing to me it makes it it can make some tasks faster at work that's for sure
now about the user interface thing with Firefox the reason it's important to remove some of
those UI elements is because you know that like if you're on the big screen sure it's fine
most of the time it's fine so I'm talking about JIRA specifically at work I have to use JIRA
sometimes now well kind of a lot of times so then you the way I do it is I have a query that's
quite long that shows me the issues that I want to work on next in the order and that I want to
work them in right now that line that query takes up like three lines in the the advanced search field
and you can't hide those you can hide that field so then consider that wasted hide plus the
browser user interface the browser chrome as they say and yeah there's not a lot of space left
for the actual issue that I'm supposed to be working on especially if I'm using just the laptop screen
and if you if you do work in JIRA you may know that the JIRA work is the kind of work that you
really want to do from the sofa you don't want to be at your desk to do that kind of thing right
but you know everyone's in a while I do wish I would go back to using cute browser because
it's just so much more just it's the kind of browser that I would use if I had a real choice you
know that's there's no doubt that I would use cute browser if there were a real choice so I think
back to an episode here on hacker public radio a while back where some guy on the internet was saying
that he um thought we should use Firefox and he makes a very good point you know like he says
because Firefox is our browser but it's I may be you would say that it's the closest thing to
our browser that is still considered a standard browser now this week you look at
on hacker news something came out about how people went Mozilla were working together with people
at Facebook on some kind of solution for how Facebook can continue with their ad-based model
in some way that you know appease this people like if Facebook is at the table then you know
the solution is going to be acceptable to them and you know that they are not in the business
of your your freedom or your well-being they're not in the business of society or the commons or
any of that stuff so it does kind of suck that Facebook that Mozilla is involved in this but you
know I am a realist I understand and I applaud them for what they do for still being added
in much the same way I applaud the people who make known for example I use no one one of my
computers and I don't love it but you know I see that it's very good that someone out there
is making that I think it's probably a common thing that we when it comes to web browsing we
use software that we really wish we didn't have to use I think that's true for a lot of people
so my question is is it true for you have you switched browsers in the past that you remember
tell us why you didn't you know and how did it work out for you and if you have any thoughts on
browsers that you want to share then please do so the the matrix channel I created is thoughts
on browsers colon matrix dot org and yeah you can just drop in and record your voice message and
leave or stay you can listen to other people's messages and while you're there go ahead and
join the heck of public radio room as well sometimes there's some conversation there and you may
add to it thanks for tuning in tuning in again tomorrow for a mystery episode by a mystery
contributor as yet not posted and then on Friday we'll hear from Archer 72 on how he makes coffee
can't miss that one bye bye
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