# Up to date browsers



## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Which web browsers are up-to-date with 11.0? Seamonkey isn't, Firefox-esr is beyond slow and cpu hungry, Opera and Linux-Opera don't seem to be supported any longer; thus, what are BSD users having any satisfaction with?


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2016)

All versions of FreeBSD use the exact same ports tree and therefor have the exact same ports available.

www/firefox
www/opera
www/linux-opera
www/chromium
www/ephiphany

To name just a few from the top of my head.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Yes, I am aware of that. I have been using FreeBSD since 4.1, but have never had experienced the lack of CPU usage, non-support such as html5 or the ability to install flash, or simply not keeping a browser such as Opera up-to-date. Does Opera even support FreeBSD any longer. It seems as they don't based on some spat with licensing.


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2016)

Can't comment on the others (I don't use them) but www/firefox is up to date.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Thanks, I will keep on searching and comparing browsers. What is interesting, is that, Seamonkey and Firefox are both Mozilla developed and driven; yet, Seamonkey is much faster, less cluttered, and more responsive than Firefox at this time. Only issue with Seamonkey is Mozilla developers seem to ignore it compared to Firefox. The one aspect of the whole evolution of FreeBSD and browser compatibility is I am happy to experience a movement away from the Flash-player dominance to a more openly supported HTML5 component. Have any other forum members commented on the issues of browser development and support over the years?


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## kpa (Nov 10, 2016)

They are very much up to date with the latest versions, that hasn't been the problem at all. The problem is that the upstream developers of those browsers tend to focus less and less in portability with the more obscure operating systems and focus more in keeping the majority happy and that often results in performance regressions under FreeBSD and other less used platforms.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Yep, that seems to be the main issue; thus, I am saddened because I have so much enjoyed Freebsd over the years. I even exposed a graduate computer science class to it in the early 2000's, yet over the years FreeBSD has become relegated to a less useful and obscure OS as you mentioned. I am wondering if that has been caused by the base licensing agreement of the original FreeBSD founders? Anyway, thanks I'll just keep on with BSD until it has become so obscure to developers that it will not longer fulfill my basic needs. Again, thank all for you for your thoughts and time in this matter.


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## roddierod (Nov 10, 2016)

I was an Opera user until they stopped the FreeBSD version, now I'm using www/conkeror. It's keyboard driven mostly, but I've come to really appreciate that. If you build it yourself from ports you can use either xulrunner or firefox as the rendering engine.  I'm using firefox as the engine currently, I have no problems with sites such as youtube, ebay, amazon even my bank site works with it.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Thanks, I'll build it with firefox rendering. Have a great day


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## NewGuy (Nov 10, 2016)

I think the Qupzilla port is up to date and I find it is pretty fast.


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## Beastie (Nov 10, 2016)

www/otter-browser is up to date. It is a Qt-5-based clone of classic Opera. It's still under heavy development but also quite mature and very much usable.



rpowell47 said:


> Does Opera even support freebsd any longer. It seems as they don't based on some spat with licensing.


No. They dropped support 3 years ago.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 10, 2016)

I don't understand the question. Are you saying you can't run the latest versions of the browsers, as in SirDice's list?

I'm a web developer and use both Chromium and Firefox on my workstation.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

No, I can run any of the browsers, but many of the plugins, addons, etc . . . for each have become either non-usable or simply un-responsive. Mostly by web-sites saying your browser is no longer supported or missing appropriate plugins. Then when you spend hours chasing plugins for multimedia, banking, etc ... most of the browsers listed by SirDice and BSD display a message like: "no plugins supported by your browser." Thus, the question is begged has developers simply relegated FreeBSD OS as ancient or simply not worthy of consideration of development for their current software.


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## Oko (Nov 10, 2016)

rpowell47 said:


> Which web browsers are up-to-date with 11.0? Seamonkey isn't, Firefox-esr is beyond slow and cpu hungry, Opera and Linux-Opera don't seem to be supported any longer; thus, what are BSD users having any satisfaction with?


I don't use FreeBSD on the desktop but I just checked and as I expected all open source browsers


www/firefox-esr
www/chromium
www/netsurf
www/dillo2

are up to date. What web browser are you looking for? Internet Explorer or Safari? Opera (Presto engine) is dead and that has nothing to do with FreeBSD. If you need different skin for WebKit engine there are plenty of different skins.


www/xombrero
www/surf
and more
If you need Internet Explorer you are stuck with Windows I am afraid. In the terms of desktop use BSDs just like any UNIX or even Linux are just statistical error so you can't blame web developer for not supporting your "favorite" OS.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 10, 2016)

rpowell47 said:


> many of the plugins, addons, etc . . . for each have become either non-usable or simply un-responsive. Mostly by web-sites saying your browser is no longer supported or missing appropriate plugins.


There's a difference. Plugins and add-ons are written by third parties in most cases. All of the plugins and add-ons I use work but you haven't said which ones you use. 

Web sites claiming they don't support a current browser are wrong and programmed incorrectly. They are looking for things in the user agent string and some of those won't be there when running a browser with FreeBSD. For example, they may be trying to find out which version of Windows or OSX or Linux you are using but that won't happen with a FreeBSD installed browser. 

This, of course, is a blunder on the part of the web site. No web site should be scanning the user agent to determine what to serve.


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## rpowell47 (Nov 10, 2016)

Hey, Thanks. After so many years of sim-links, complying, working with Makefiles etc ... I have the same perception as your comment. BSD has simply become a secondary OS in many of web-site developers. I am saddened, to say the least, about that very obvious aspect of your beloved, fantastic FreeBSD OS. Its been sixteen years since I feel in love with it but never had the computer training to write or develop my own programs like I did as a secondary teacher of music when I wrote GW-BASIC for an old Commador to have programs to inventory marching band uniforms, catalog the sheet music, and keep an up-to-date inventory of instruments. Anyway, I will stop, but will always keep the faith that, people with much better training and compassion will keep up the great work with FreeBSD and hopefully those who develop web based software will remember our beloved BSD.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 10, 2016)

rpowell47 said:


> BSD has simply become a secondary OS in many of web-site developers.


You are confused. Except for using FreeBSD as a server, and FreeBSD serves nearly 40% of all internet traffic by Netflix alone, which OS delivers the web site is inconsequential to the web developer creating the pages themselves. But, I, too, and going to stop now.


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## roddierod (Nov 11, 2016)

Oko said:


> are up to date. What web browser are you looking for? Internet Explorer or Safari? Opera (Presto engine) is dead and that has nothing to do with FreeBSD. If you need different skin for WebKit engine there are plenty of different skins.
> 
> 
> www/xombrero


This at one time was a good browser and my main one, but it has been updated since 2013.  If you use this you will get tons of SSL version errors because it doesn't support the version most sites are using now.


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## SirDice (Nov 11, 2016)

rpowell47 said:


> Then when you spend hours chasing plugins for multimedia, banking, etc ... most of the browsers listed by SirDice and BSD display a message like: "no plugins supported by your browser."


This has more to do with those plugins than with the browser or the OS. Which plugins do you require? I have zero plugins installed and I can do pretty much everything. Even my online banking. But then again, my bank has a proper website and doesn't require dodgy third-party plugins. 




rpowell47 said:


> BSD has simply become a secondary OS in many of web-site developers.


This is a complete non-issue. It's a browser. All it has to do is render HTML and perhaps execute some javascript. This has nothing to do with the OS the browser runs on. I have zero issues with websites, as long as they're properly made and don't strictly depend on Internet Explorer specific features (like ActiveX for example). Ten years ago this was quite different when IE held 90% of the browser market, nowadays sites are built to support a variety of browsers regardless of the OS that browser runs on.



> when I wrote GW-BASIC for an old Commador to have programs


Erm, GW-BASIC ran on MS-DOS. The venerable Commodore 64 did have a BASIC written by Microsoft, but it had nothing to do with GW-BASIC.


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## kpa (Nov 11, 2016)

rpowell47 said:


> Hey, Thanks. After so many years of sim-links, complying, working with Makefiles etc ... I have the same perception as your comment. BSD has simply become a secondary OS in many of web-site developers. I am saddened, to say the least, about that very obvious aspect of your beloved, fantastic FreeBSD OS. Its been sixteen years since I feel in love with it but never had the computer training to write or develop my own programs like I did as a secondary teacher of music when I wrote GW-BASIC for an old Commador to have programs to inventory marching band uniforms, catalog the sheet music, and keep an up-to-date inventory of instruments. Anyway, I will stop, but will always keep the faith that, people with much better training and compassion will keep up the great work with FreeBSD and hopefully those who develop web based software will remember our beloved BSD.



You're overgeneralising. It's true that on the client side FreeBSD is severly lacking because the browsers can't be made to support all the bells and whistles what the latest and greatest "innovations" in web technologies are using. On the server side however FreeBSD is on equal footing, I can't think of anything that Linux has and FreeBSD hasn't when it comes to mainstream web server technology. We basically have all the same server software, all the same interpreted languages, PHP, python, younameit.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 11, 2016)

kpa said:


> It's true that on the client side FreeBSD is severly lacking because the browsers can't be made to support all the bells and whistles what the latest and greatest "innovations" in web technologies are using.


Well, no. As far as browsers go, I can't think of anything FreeBSD doesn't support inside any browser.


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