My Tech Stack - The Tools and Services that I use (pt. 2)

Web Browser

This is probably the most mainstream of my non-mainstream applications. While it isn’t nearly as popular as it was in its heyday, it is still well-known, even if it isn’t widely used.

Why do I use it?

Open-source - This will probably be a recurring theme in future posts. Wherever possible, I tend to prefer open-source tools to equivalent proprietary ones. This is mostly because of reasons I covered in Part 1. Open-source implies a certain level of trust, transparency and privacy. I also like the community aspect of it. I usually find an active and tech-savvy community of users for most open-source software, making it easier to ask for help.
It isn’t chrome - Seriously, though, it’s getting harder and harder to find web browsers that aren’t just Chrome reskins. You may not care about this (and the statistics would back you up), but I think it’s important that we have an ‘alternative’ browser, that acts as a stopgap to Google Chrome becoming a monopoly. There are many practical benefits to this as well. Competition in the browser engine space (Firefox uses Gecko, while Chrome uses Blink) keeps (or should keep) Google competitive and in the pursuit of innovation, rather than resting on their laurels. This is also the reason why I prefer not to use Chromium, which is also open-source. I like the idea that my usage of a browser is passively preventing Google, an infamous data-hoarder, from becoming a monopoly in the browser field.

Firefox has also been very customizable, at least in my experience. It has a few neat little features that I really like: the eyedropper utility, easy-to-use Developer Tools, and Reader Mode are all features I use on a near-daily basis.

Keep in mind, though, that I consume more content than I create on the web. Therefore, there is a good chance that I may be missing out on certain developer-oriented features offered by Google Chrome, which make it a better choice. If so, please leave a comment, letting me know what I’ve left out. For my use cases (which primarily include basic web browsing, and maybe a bit of testing for this website), Firefox is more than enough. It suits my needs, and delivers a smooth browsing experience.