Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgv | Hacker News Reader

I'm also interested in new browsers. I mainly use Firefox, and have been using it since its Navigator days (although for a long period I used a derived version for OSX, Camino), and I use Chromium and Safari when I have too. A new browser is welcome for multiple reasons. But the article is very light on details, such as: what features does/doesn't Orion's engine support? It's fast, but the author doesn't even mention if Orion uses Google Safe Browsing or an alternative (which could be why Safari briefly lingers).

As it turns out, Orion is webkit based. That would explain how there can be an iOS version in the works. That seriously reduces my interest. I've signed up, because you never know, but Orion is not an undertaking comparable to Chrome, Safari or Firefox, that will add a much needed breath of fresh air/diversity to the browser landscape.

View on HN

Orion uses the latest webkit release so it's usually ahead of Safari. The team is working to implement the web extensions API. It's not perfect yet but I use a number of extensions with no problems (Bitwarden, Dark Reader, Request Control, Sponsor Block) and a couple with minor issues (Reddit Enhancement Suite, Mate Translate).

Many extensions are not functional at the moment, owing to the incomplete extension API implementation, but the progress so far is very encouraging.

I also use Dark Reader on the iOS app which is pretty cool (haven't tried any other extensions on iOS).

I can see the appeal in particular on iOS: having real extensions is attractive. It will influence speed, though: Firefox is much faster when I start it without them. So the perception of Orion as a snappy browser might conflict with its ability to load extensions.

I think the time taken by extensions loading is order of magnitudes lower than the time saved by skipping the hundreds of MBs of ads every page has to offer.

> the author doesn't even mention if Orion uses Google Safe Browsing or an alternative (which could be why Safari briefly lingers).

Aside: do you keep Safe Browsing on? I always turn it off, as I'm pretty wise to phishing / download buttons etc. I don't know how much of a performance increase there is, but I'm sure I've saved quite a few seconds from not having it on.

I have it on, but I can only remember one time it warned me, and that was when I knowingly opened a potentially malicious page (after a colleague had clicked a suspicious email). I'm always doubting about turning it off: Google is not your friend. But I'm not even sure how it works. I did read that Apple proxies it on iOS, so I suppose Firefox does expose part of the URL and your IP address.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com