Browser like IE

[Breelander]

...Hosts Manager ... That's easiest! Try it out Bree, you won't go back.

I so rarely find I need to turn it off that I don't think I'll bother with 3rd-party software....

The place I find I need to turn it off most often for is google search results when I'm looking for stuff to buy, i.e. shopping searches.

That would be the sponsored ads, mainly...

Products and offers that match your query. Google is compensated by these merchants. Payment is one of several factors used to rank these results. By default, ranking on Google Shopping is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as your current search terms and your activity.

...not sure I want my every move tracked by GoogleAds at doubleclick.net

[mc2fool]

The place I find I need to turn it off most often for is google search results when I'm looking for stuff to buy, i.e. shopping searches.

That would be the sponsored ads, mainly...

Yes, there are occasions when one wants to see ads.

[kiloran]

...Hosts Manager ... That's easiest! Try it out Bree, you won't go back.

I so rarely find I need to turn it off that I don't think I'll bother with 3rd-party software....

Sounds like a good use for a simple .cmd or .bat file to flip the name of the file, with a shortcut on the desktop. Saves drilling down through the file system

--kiloran

[ReformedCharacter]

Sounds like a good use for a simple .cmd or .bat file to flip the name of the file, with a shortcut on the desktop. Saves drilling down through the file system

--kiloran

Here's one I made (a few years) earlier:

Code: Select all

IF EXIST %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS*.* ATTRIB +A -H -R -S %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS*.*>NUL

IF EXIST %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\newhosts.txt GOTO ISNEW

:ISOLD

DEL %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
COPY /Y %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\newHOSTS %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
REN %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\oldhosts.txt newhosts.txt


GOTO OUT

:ISNEW

DEL %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
COPY /Y %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\originalHOSTS %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
REN %windir%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\newhosts.txt oldhosts.txt

:OUT
EXIT

The newhosts.txt\oldhosts.txt being an indicator as to which is current.

RC

[mc2fool]

...Hosts Manager ... That's easiest! Try it out Bree, you won't go back.

I so rarely find I need to turn it off that I don't think I'll bother with 3rd-party software....

Sounds like a good use for a simple .cmd or .bat file to flip the name of the file, with a shortcut on the desktop. Saves drilling down through the file system

Yes, I used to have a .bat file, back in XP days, with it on the system tray. I can't remember why I stopped using that and went for Hosts Manager instead, 'twas a long time ago.....

BTW, I've not had Bree's experience of most sites letting you in after asking you to turn off your ad blocker just on you clicking you will. I've had that occasionally but my experience is that most sites will just pop up the request again after a few seconds.

There are also some sites where the off-the-shelf mvps hosts file blocks desired non-ad functions. E.g. IWeb's chat facility. viewtopic.php?f=26&t=21387&p=278583#p278583

[Breelander]

BTW, I've not had Bree's experience of most sites letting you in after asking you to turn off your ad blocker just on you clicking you will. I've had that occasionally but my experience is that most sites will just pop up the request again after a few seconds.

It very much depends on the type of sites we frequent, I guess our browsing habits differ The ones that ask, but let me in are generally various Windows help sites.

There are also some sites where the off-the-shelf mvps hosts file blocks desired non-ad functions. E.g. IWeb's chat facility.

The only case where HOSTS has caused me problems was making a purchase at one particular site (Cashconverters). The process would hang at step 3, confirming the billing address. Online purchases at all other sites I frequent work just fine.

[88V8]

The only issue I have with Adblock is that pictures embedded in text sometimes fail to appear.
Example here https://newatlas.com/digital-cameras/be ... ry-winner/ where I see only the first pic. The rest are white space.

V8

[Infrasonic]

Pi-Hole is another option...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXTnrD_Zs4

[AF62]

Pi-Hole is another option...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXTnrD_Zs4

And you can use it without a Raspberry Pi - https://github.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Hole- ... PN-Configs - And that does actually work quite nicely on Android or Apple phones and tablets.

[GeoffF100]

Having praised Firefox, I am now using Google Chrome on my Linux machine. Firefox did not always display the Google fonts, which could give trouble in Street View and Google News. Chrome loads Google News faster too. Firefox also had problems with the Guardian home page. If I clicked on one of the most popular articles, and returned to the home page, I had to scroll down manually to back to the most popular articles. I have not hit any problems with Google Chrome so far.

When I first installed Chrome it came up with an annoying alert asking me to type my password for my key ring whenever I launched it. That enables Chrome to encrypt passwords apparently. I do not allow browsers to store my passwords anyway, so I just added a "do not encrypt passwords" parameter for the three instances of Exec= in the .desktop file for Chrome. That got rid of the alert. There are other ways of getting rid of it, but my change only affects Chrome. I am not likely to use the key ring anyway, but thought it best not to disturb any more than I had to.

[Infrasonic]

I installed Brave on my Linux container on my Chromebook this evening, if anyone wants a privacy prioritised Chromium variant for Linux.
https://brave-browser.readthedocs.io/en ... html#linux

[yorkshirelad1]

I've always used IE. I like IE. I like the solid way it renders text. I like the Favourites.
But increasingly website warn me it is or will be unsupported.
Tried Edge - slow.
Chrome text is whispy and there are no Favourites.
So many browsers... which browser is most like IE?
V8

I use mainly Firefox, then Chrome, then IE*

I tend to stick with/mainly use Firefox on Windows 10 with Adblock Plus# (if I visit a site that doesn't like adblockers, I switch to Chrome: NB: sometimes I find that when trying to buy things on the web, an adblocker can upset the purchasing process...)

*: I do quite a lot of saving web pages & emails to pdf (by using a pseudo printer, such as pdf-redirect at http://www.exp-systems.com/; no connection with them other than as a customer). This is useful if I want to save T&Cs or a purchase confirmation etc. Sometimes Firefox will print to pdf and make the text in the pdf as a graphic (so not searchable in the pdf which is annoying). Then I turn to IE which almost always will print any page as text so that it arrives in the pdf as text (and therefore searchable).

#: I stumbled across an adblocker DNS (https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html; ; no connection with them). If you configure that into your router (if your router/ISP will allow it), it's pretty ruthless, and I did have a careful look at its origins and confidentiality. If you put it in your router, it would cover your whole network. I did not end up using it, because sometimes I do want to see ads and do online purchasing, and it did interfere with some websites (false positives) and I wasn't entirely happy with who was running it etc, but as a concept, having an adblocker DNS (assuming you trusted it) would be a useful.

[didds]

Chrome test is whispy and there are no Favourites.

apologies if others have alreadsy mentioned this - but Chrome does have "favourites" - it just calls them bookmarks?

didds

[ReformedCharacter]

Pi-Hole is another option...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXTnrD_Zs4

Just before I read this my OH complained about the adverts that appear on Youtube on her elderly iPad. I use uBlock Origin on my PC and never see them at all. Anyway, I thought to myself 'I've got a Raspberry Pi in need of use, so I'll give pi-hole a go.'

When I got the Pi hooked up I found that the version of Raspbian on it is no-longer supported so I decided to upgrade it. My Pi is an early model B which I originally set up to run from a USB stick. Actually, that's not quite correct, it boots from the SD card and then subsequently runs from the USB stick. It is apparently possible to run the newer models from a USB stick completely.

Of course it was some years ago that I set this up and couldn't remember the details of how I'd done it originally.

I found that I needed to:

Copy the latest (Buster) image onto both the CD card and USB stick, then

Get the PARTUUIDs of the boot partition of the SD card and the rootfs partition of the HDD with the blkid command on the Linux PC.

Then:

Edit /boot/cmdline/txt on the SD CARD and change the PARTUUID to match the PARTUUID of the rootfs partition of the HDD.

And then:

Edit /etc/fstab on the HDD and change the PARTUUIDs to match the PARTUUIDs of the boot partition of the SD Card and the rootfs partition of the HDD.

Then I ran into the first problem, my Debian install didn't recognise blkid although the files were there and the package manager showed it as having been installed. Re-installing it fixed that.

I duly carried out the PARTUUID edits and then booted up the Pi. It started up but was really slow and as I suspected still running from the SD card. Just too slow.

I looked a bit more closely and realised that I had missed the fact that the 2 partitions on the SD card had the same PARTUUIDs as those on the USB stick (Doh!) and therefore the Pi would have just continued to run from the SD card. One might think that that would be obvious given that the images are identical on both media, but I understand from a little searching that on previous versions that this was not the case. I admit to knowing little about PARTUUIDs but can only guess that in earlier versions the install routine would generate new ones.

So, how to change the PARTUUIDs on one set of media?

A little searching led me to a BASH script to do that, so again I booted up the Pi and found that it was now running properly from the USB stick.

And not only that but the new version of Raspbian now has VNC server set up and ready to go. That's saved me the pain of finding out (again) how to set it up to start each time at boot.

Installing pi-hole was easy and then I proceeded to change the DNS settings on OH's iPad. I started the Youtube app and then chose a video at random. Oh no, an advert

Apparently blocking Youtube adverts is like whack-a-mole, yet uBlock Origin manages.

I think I'll have to see if there's an ad-blocker from the Apple store that will run on an old iPad

RC

[88V8]

Took me a long time, where technology is concerned I prefer the steam age, but last week I switched over to Firefox as my default.

I still use IE to an extent as I haven't uploaded all the Favourites to FF, indeed I'm posting this via IE as that's where this Topic was saved as a Favourite.
I've learned a few keyboard shortcuts in FF so I don't have always to faff around with the mouse.

The Bookmarks are slightly annoying, as one can only scroll through them from the top down whereas with IE one can also scroll from the bottom up but that's a minor point.

Some websites render quite differently via FF. A few are too big and I have to dial down the zoom. So far, the only site that doesn't work well is eBay and that worked even less well with IE. There, I use Edge.

The adblocker presumably does its stuff as I see no ads.

Brave new world.

V8

[Itsallaguess]

The [Firefox] Bookmarks are slightly annoying, as one can only scroll through them from the top down whereas with IE one can also scroll from the bottom up but that's a minor point.

I've used Firefox for years, and use Bookmarks extensively, and I can't remember the last time I ever accessed my bookmarks via the large scrollable lists...

If you appropriately use the 'Tags' field of the bookmarks functions, you can then just clear the URL bar and start typing any word that appears in either the underlying URL or the associated 'Tags' field of any of your bookmarks, and Firefox will present a small list of saved bookmarks under the URL bar that comply with the word or words that you've typed, at which point you can then use the mouse to select the actual bookmark that you're looking for...

All you need to do then is to remember any relevant word or words for the bookmark that you're looking for (in the underlying bookmark URL or the user-generated 'Tags' field), and Firefox will help you find it, rather than you looking for it in a complete list of your bookmarks....

As an example on how this works - I've got a number of different 'BBC' site pages saved in my bookmarks, and if I clear my URL bar and type 'BBC' in it, then Firefox will list all my bookmarked BBC pages underneath the URL bar, where I can click one if I want to. If I put the additional word 'Football' after the initial 'BBC' in the URL bar, it will then filter that original 'BBC' bookmark like down again, into just those containing both the word 'BBC' and 'Football'....

It's worth having a play with this, as it really does change the way you can quickly access Firefox bookmarks, and I suspect people never go back to searching through full lists ever again....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[88V8]

The [Firefox] Bookmarks are slightly annoying, as one can only scroll through them from the top down whereas with IE one can also scroll from the bottom up ....

If you appropriately use the 'Tags' field of the bookmarks functions, you can then just clear the URL bar and start typing any word that appears in either the underlying URL or the associated 'Tags' field of any of your bookmarks, and Firefox will present a small list of saved bookmarks under the URL bar that comply with the word or words that you've typed...

Never used Tags.
But now I've gone back and added Tags to my already burgeoning list of Bookmarks, or at least those that are likely to form its landscape rather than passing clouds.
And as you say, up they pop at or near the top of The Duck's suggestion list.

I'm sure I shall still use the scroll list as it's a means of finding pages I've recently Bookmarked when I can't remember what they were or why I saved them.
But one way in which FF scores over IE is that one can arrange and rearrange the scrollable list using Views/Sort, unlike IE where Organise, only used by accident, was an irreversible alpha sort which made things vanish into a soup that eventually numbered a hundred and more.
Whereas in FF, I could rearrange into a Recently Added sort to find those mystery pages.

Well, thankyou.

V8

[Breelander]

I hardly ever need to refer to my bookmarks these days. In Firefox on the about:preferences#home settings page I have my Home and New Tab pages set to 'Firefox Home (default)'. Then under 'Firefox Home Content' I untick everything except 'Top Sites', which I set for 4 rows.

The result is that I have 32 tiles on my home page, where I can pin my most important sites. I can open Firefox and with just one click go to any of them - no more opening Bookmarks and searching a long list for me

It is a habit I first adopted in IE with its 'Frequent Sites' page of tiles.

[kiloran]

I hardly ever need to refer to my bookmarks these days. In Firefox on the about:preferences#home settings page I have my Home and New Tab pages set to 'Firefox Home (default)'. Then under 'Firefox Home Content' I untick everything except 'Top Sites', which I set for 4 rows.

The result is that I have 32 tiles on my home page, where I can pin my most important sites. I can open Firefox and with just one click go to any of them - no more opening Bookmarks and searching a long list for me

It is a habit I first adopted in IE with its 'Frequent Sites' page of tiles.

With Chrome and Edge, I use the Simple SpeedDial extension to create tiled bookmarks on Home and New Tab pages. Really useful.

--kiloran.

[Infrasonic]

Chrome://flags
There's a 'reading list' option now in addition to standard bookmarks/homepage tiles (which I also use).
Click the star as normal and bookmark or reading list come up as options. Not shareable unfortunately (yet) but you can use Google Keep that way if so inclined (great for shopping lists...) with right click 'save selection to Keep'.