this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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privacy

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I'm fucking done with Chrome. Fuck this.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It was the first browser to have tabs.

Not true. I was definitely using tabs in Firefox and Opera before Chrome even existed. I've used CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+T to reopen last closed tab in all browsers for many years now so I can't remember if that existed as a menu option for people who prefer to use a mouse, but the guts of the feature itself was there before Chrome existed as well. (I avoid duplicating tabs so I can't say if that existed before.)

I remember clearly when Chrome came out, it felt like this stripped down skeleton with less built-in features than I was used to, less customizability, and less ~~features~~ privacy that promised to be "fast," yet didn't seem any faster than a fresh browser install would normally be. The one innovation I associate with Chrome is browser-based online and offline web apps, but I don't know if that started with them. (I'm guessing it probably did since they were in their heyday when that got to be a thing.)

I was so disappointed when Mozilla spent years trying to make Firefox more like Chrome (which meant stripping down features and customizability) to attract people-- which clearly wasn't working-- and it's been such a relief to see them get back to being simple on the surface but poweruser-friendly under the hood, recently.

small edit: to fix a mistake above (see strikethrough text)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I stand corrected.

But regarding tabs, according to these guys...

The glory belongs to InternetWorks by BookLink Technologies, an old-time browser from the early 1990s that you've probably never heard of.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/which-browser-invented-tabs-3-common-myths-debunked/

Edit: Added link

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Oh absolutely! I almost included more about who created tabs myself but my comment was already becoming a wall of text and I hadn't used InternetWorks myself. 😅

Since you bring it up, I've wondered for a long time if the folks who brought tabs to browsers might have also worked on TabWorks-- a very customizable (and much prettier) alternative shell/GUI for Windows 3.x.