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ZEN BROWSER SITUATION IS CRAZY!!!
(hexbear.net)
It's an Arc-Browser clone WIP which uses Firefox as base. It's everything I would want from a browser.
Pros:
- Open Source
- UI-First Approach means it's working towards a modern browsing experience like Arc
- Firefox as base so all Firefox Extensions like Adnauseum/Ublock work on it
- No threat of MV3. Arc has stopped blocking ads for me hence I will no longer be using Chromium at all. Adblocking works like a charm on Zen.
- Highly customizable with a very fast development cycle.
Cons:
- It's in Alpha so expect Bugs and less features
- Still missing some features from Arc like Peek and Command Bar
I would recommend trying out this browser @ https://zen-browser.app/
I dont get the appeal of the big chonky bar on the left. Whats the point of it? Genuine question because when i look at it it just seems like a lot of redundancy with stuff you can already have in the top bar of mosts modern browsers like firefox/librefox
When I saw that and "container tabs", I thought it was going to have a good implementation of vertical tabs, but it really doesn't. No easy folders, no organizational features...If they add some stuff that makes it meaningfully different from Firefox, I might give it some thought, but right now, there's really no point. Better keyboard shortcuts or something would even make me switch, but that bar seems useless now.
In the screenshot, it's in a sort of "mini mode" and the side bar is the tab manager/etc. You can set both that and the url bar to hide and then show on mouse hover. It looks nice but when I was messing with it it feels like it adds more time in your workflow. You have to hover right at the edge too which is annoying to hit if you have your OS bar at top of screen and/or if you have multi monitors with one on the left, since the pressure point is right on the edge. I can see it working on maybe a laptop where screen real estate is a bigger deal though.