Browsers in 2025: Whats up with Arc, Dia, Firefox, Chrome and Opera GX?

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we're gonna be talking about surfing the web with browsers. That's right. We're gonna be talking all about the web browser landscape in 2025, where things are at, what rendering engines exists, and who's using what, and even just a little bit of fun conversation around some niche browsers and stuff like that. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a developer from Denver. With me JS always is Wes Bos. What's up, my man? Hey. Stoked to talk about this JS it feels like the browser landscape is is kinda shifting right Node,

not towards, like like, lower level engines, although there are some new players in that space. We'll talk about that. But more towards, like, the actual using of it. I think all of this, like, AI tooling and whatnot has has made a lot of people reconsider it. And then they're also all all of this AI tooling is also making a lot of people reconsider leaving it as well when they try to stuff it down your throat in every single possible way.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, it is it's interesting, and I I think there's a lot here. And you know what? Before we get off the jump, people got a lot of strong opinions on browsers.

Just know that your your favorite browser might not just be the best browser in the entire world, no questions asked, because there's always give and takes with any of this stuff. I I always feel like anytime we talk about browsers or anybody does in the comments, it's crazy just how overwhelmingly skewed the comments warp, like, Firefox is the only browser. And then you look look at the usage statistics, and it's, like, 10 people using it. So we'll get into it a little bit but let's start with some of the rendering engine based talk. We can, start with the most used, most popular rendering engine out there, which is Blink.

These are the Chromium based browsers, typically.

And there's a handful of these things, Chrome being the most popular one. I actually have ended up being using Chrome Canary full time. Canary is like the pre release version of Chrome. So that's been my browser full time for the past couple of weeks or my default browser, even though I still have Arc setup. Then you have were you on Arc for? Oh, since it came out. And I'm Man. I'm I'm weaning. I I'm having a hard time. I'm only getting off Arc because, like, there's some crazy stuff that happens.

Yeah. It's like it's, like, gone into, like, total, like, use at your own risk Node, and people will be like, that's fine for me. And it's like, yeah. You know what? As an Yarn fanatic, I've held out so long, and I wish I could say it was it was fine to use right now, but it is it is showing its, lack of maintenance. I'll say that. So you have Edge, which is Microsoft's, Chromium, which is, you know, their successor to Internet Explorer in many ways, but, like, more or less a a version of, Chromium with a lot of Microsoft stuff. And and if I understand correctly, you use Edge full time. Is that correct? I was so I was on Firefox for probably six years. And about a year ago, I switched to Edge.

And I've been been really happy with it, both because of the dev tools, also because of of how it looks and how you can customize it. Out of the box, it's it's absolutely awful.

You have to turn off, like, games and, like, all this, like like, Microsoft Clippy and and, like, sign in with, like, Chipotle and all these, like, weird things. But you turn them all off, And it's it's actually a really nice browser Okay. Especially the the dev tools.

It's been slightly tweaked here and there.

They do have people working on the actual engine as well in the dev tools, so it's not like they're just taking Chrome and slapping a Microsoft logo on it. So I've been been pretty happy with it. Although every time I talk about it, everybody says, why not Brave? Yeah.

I I don't really have an answer there.

Yeah. Unfortunately, Brave just kind of exists. Right? And and it's one of those things where I'm like, it is just a a Chrome, you know, skin in a way with some ad blocker and some built in VPN. I I think the thing that turned me off I did use Brave for a while. The thing that turned me off from using Brave was really that it was like, we are the crypto browser.

And, you know, it's not like I'm I mean, to an extent, you know, the cryptocurrency stuff or the Wes three stuff, it it it still exists. It's not, like, gone by any means or something like that. You know, they're what Bitcoin just hit an all time high and things like it's ever been. Yeah. Right. So in that regard, great. And the hype cycle for crypto, I feel like, is that the least annoying it's ever been. You Node? You you you don't I mean, maybe not the least annoying it's ever been. I maybe, like, 2,012 was the least annoying it's ever been. But it is interesting that they have kind of moved away from that in their advertising, where it's like, Brave is the the private search, the AI assistant, the VPN browser, and then there is the the BAT, token stuff as well. But it does seem like even they have been like, well, let's turn that knob down just a little bit, in terms of how exactly we're pumping that. I I actually in prepping for this episode, I I I started to look at Brave and started to think like, yeah, maybe we should use Brave. I am using Chrome already, and it is basically Chrome with some extra stuff. So I don't know. I might give Brave a rip for a little bit. Give it a shot. And if you want to see all of the errors in your application, you'll want to check out Sentry at century.i0/syntax.

You don't want a production application out there that, well, you have no visibility into in case something is blowing up, and you might not even know it. So head on over to century.i0/syntax.

Again, we've been using this tool for a long time, and it totally rules. Alright.

So one killer feature of using either Brave or Edge is that they still support Google manifest version two, meaning that you can use the older ad block extensions. Right? And that's great. I know Microsoft Edge has said that they will eventually deprecate v two, But the thing about Microsoft is they love enterprise.

And if there is one enterprise user using some random extension, they're they're not gonna, like, hurt them. Right? That's that's the reason why we had IE stick around for so long.

So I've if they do take away manifest v two, I'll I'll have to, like I don't know. Have you tried the, like, the the v three ad block? I'll we had Oliver on the podcast talking about how how good it is and whatnot, but I haven't haven't switched over to it yet.

Yeah. You know, I couldn't tell you. I use whatever JS baked into Yarn.

But, like, on Chrome, are you using an ad blocker?

I am. Let me check.

Node. Which is crazy, but, like, I I'm I'm mostly using Chrome right now for development just because my my browsing life has been so wrapped up into Arc. It's like I still have all my tabs and stuff in there, and I still have Arc open. So it's like Yep. Yeah. So when I say I switched over, it JS, yeah, it is my, like, development browser. I have all new links open up in Chrome.

But, yeah, I I it's crazy that I haven't been running an ad blocker on this thing.

Maybe I should just move over to Brave.

Give it a shot and let us know. But, also, there's Opera in Opera GX. What's the difference there?

Yeah. I'll tell you what, man. This is so funny. I accidentally installed Opera GX because I just googled Opera, and I was like, oh, a new Opera named Opera GX. This must be the latest one with its cool name. And, oh, man. Opera GX is a wild experience, Wes. It's like, what if we took the year 2004 Flash aesthetic and put it as the default for a browser, and the browser has interface kind of like the, systems and stuff like that? And it it honestly feels like you stepped into, Tron or Tron the Node, and you're like, all of a sudden, this is my browser.

I I I found it to be a bewildering experience, honestly.

Opera GX is a crazy place to be, it it it made me feel very old. I will tell you that. I opened up this browser, and I was like, I'm old. This thing's crazy.

And then I moved to Opera Air as Wes? Okay.

Opera Air is the world's browser with mindfulness at its core.

Experience a focus, balance, and stress free web.

Okay. It tells you to, like, do neck exercises and meditation.

What the hell?

What are what are they smoking over there at opera? Because, like, the why do we need opera air? Opera and opera GX. Opera GX. And I will tell you something Wes very funny because you think opera GX might just be a skinned version of it, and it was like a skinned version of Opera. But there was, like, several features that were missing from actual Opera that were in GX, like import like, when you do the import from browser or whatever. Opera showed, like, three browser options. And then Opera GX Wes, like, import from these eight app browser options. It's like, this is the same window just skin differently.

Why is the main Opera so much like, why does it have less options than Opera GX there? I don't know. It's crazy world. That's hilarious.

It just goes to show that the fact that they have Opera GX and Opera Air like, Wes developers are not the primary audience of any of these companies.

And as much as it kills us, to to hear that, it's they're trying to make money off of regular users trying to browse the web, and that's why they're trying to push all these features like mindfulness and AI.

Yeah. And and and in case Opera GX is like the browser for gamers, and it's like the archetype of the person who's using Opera GX is like some 18 year old wearing Crocs, like, just browsing the web.

It's like That's who they're going for. It's not me, I guess.

Oh, and what else do we have? We have vid Vidalvi, which seems to be Vivaldi. Vivaldi.

Oh my gosh. Do do you not know who Vivaldi is?

No. I don't. It's it sounds like a musician or something.

Yes. He's the red priest. He's a famous, I know who that is then. Vietnamese, I believe. But, basically, they have a another version of Chrome, which is is one of these browsers with all kinds of features built into it. Certainly, this one seems more like a power user browser, so maybe I should give this a shot.

It's existed for a long time. Vivaldi has been around for a very long time. It's probably one of the only one of these I've never installed, which is very odd because I I I feel like I have every browser installed all the time.

So Vivaldi, it's out there. It exists. If you're out there in Vivaldi, Opera, or Opera GX is your number one browser, I I want you to leave a comment below telling us why because I'm interested. Honestly, I'm interested. I think they're Node. But at the end of the day, again, they're just kind of Chrome extensions with,

various, yeah, various additions onto them. Yeah. Let's let's talk about Yarn, though. So Arc Wes like the everybody loved it. It was this, like what what would you explain? It was a kind of a new UI, and everybody was going crazy over it.

Everybody loved it. And then, I don't know, probably six months, a year ago, they announced that they are no longer going to be working on Yarn, and they're they're launching a new one called DIA.

DIA? I would say DIA. I would say DIA.

Yeah. It it's I found the announcement to be kind of bewildering, like, Yarn is Deno. Now we're making a new browser.

Yeah. But they just released a blog post, explaining kind of, like, you know, why they chose to release a new browser.

I do find it, like you know, the the explanation it largely comes down to, they built too much too quickly in the bloated arc, which, yes, they did. And the iOS app is bewildering.

They had one iOS app, and then they released a one that was, like, a kind of less featured version. And if you if you move the phone the wrong way, then, like, a fake phone dialer pops up, and I'm just like, what is going on here? So I get it. But, like, I do feel like you could have still built on a new foundation and just called it Yarn two. You know? Like, it's it's arc even though because they're both chromium Bos. They both look similar in some ways. But, like, just to be like, you know what? We're done, and we're picking a new one. It's still weird to me. That said, Dia is kind of the AI browser, and it's going to be a not a next generation version of Yarn because if you look at the two, d s doesn't have, like, the whole side tab layout and stuff like that. It it JS, like, normal tabs, but it is more like using the web via a cursor.

So they were basically like, well, let's rethink the browser with Yarn. And Arc had a number of features like it had one, you don't see the URL bar Bos by default, which I don't know why that wigs some people out. I know what website I'm on. I have object permanence. I'm not gonna, like, be like, oh, where'd I go? You know? Or you when you hit command t, it brings up a a like, a ray Scott type Deno. When you start typing, it'll auto complete. It'll open bookmarks.

It will open the tab already if you have the tab already open and has all kinds of built in pinning and workspaces.

So, like, when you're in your default workspace, you just do a two finger swipe over. Next thing you know, you're in a new workspace with new logins, new container, whatever.

And that feels so good. The UI on Arc from day one was, like, the Wes. And it took a little bit of getting used to, but once you did, you're like, this is a new experience for a web browser, and they nailed it.

So that's why I think people were a little like, yeah. What's going on here? Why why did they abandon this? But at the end of the day, it does seem like Arc had some challenges.

It wasn't necessarily getting the adoption they wanted it to get, and we're like, you know what? Let's just start fresh.

And I do think it's pissing off a lot of the Arc power users.

I don't think that they necessarily care. I don't think they care. No.

Yeah.

My Yeah. My hottest take is that you cannot make money on software power users, And it honestly makes me worried for apps like Raycast or Warp or a lot of these apps where you see them starting to push a little harder on the AI subscriptions because people absolutely love the apps. But when you've raised so much money, like, something like Alfred was run by a person or two, like, that's a good business. Right? But when you're trying to make billions of dollars or or many millions of dollars with these things Yes. It becomes very hard to squeeze money out of us obnoxious software developers who consider ourselves power users. You know? So that's that's a little worrisome. And and, certainly, I think that's why ARC is is no longer around.

Yeah. And and, basically, it has not seen updates in a while. It, like, hardly hardly works. They just released, as of the day we're recording this, a an article or a a post explaining the the whole transition and everything like that. And this quote, I thought, really resonated with your point, which was d one retention was strong. Those who stuck around after a few days were fanatics.

That's me. But our metrics were more like a highly specialized professional tool, like a video editor, than a mass market consumer product, which we aspire to be closer to. And I I do think that comes down to, you know, dollar dollar bills, y'all. I think that's what that comes down to. They aspire to be closer to a mass market computer product because, like, to make any kind of real money off of a specialized professional tool, video editors cost $500, $400 for good ones, whatever. Even more than that if you're talking, like, Avid or something like that. Yeah.

They're not making any cash on this if they release it with a, you know, $9 a month subscription, which who knows if people will even wanna do that. So I don't know if Dia is a play to make money, but I think it's a play to get more adoption.

It feels weird, but I hope to get access to it anyways. I talked to Yeah. Josh, the CEO of Browser Company, and and they're hoping to come on the show or we're hoping to have them on the show. So would be great.

We Wes could,

talk about it. I also think that, like, what, what browser somebody uses in the next two years is going to be very heavily pushed. These like, I think OpenAI is gonna release a browser. That was my that was my prediction for this year.

Just like like, the browser is going to be the entry point for a lot of these things. The OS is the entry point, which is why Apple has such a a leg up, and I think Google will have such a leg up as well. But if they can get you into their browser, like, that's your entry ESLint.

So you Scott think they're like, well, someone's gonna wanna buy a browser that doesn't have one yet. And, you know, like, when's Claude gonna gonna does Claude even Claude even even has their own browsers yet?

They have an app, but, you know, that app could probably become a browser.

I I think you're totally right. The moment that you said, like, that I'm just thinking, like, yes. The the open a brow OpenAI browser is going to exist at some point, and the way that we browse the web is going to change. And the and the browser company folks are betting on that. And I do think they will probably be to market with what is this agentic type of actual browser. Now there's other people who are doing this type of thing, but it is built into the the core of that. I mean, it is like they're not strapping something on the side of it and calling it a day. So it it'll be interesting, you know, whatever perplexity type of deal ends up being how we browse the web and navigate it for you. I would look forward to it when it can do things like I mean, you can probably do this right Node. But I just wanna be like, hey. Collect all my expense receipts and submit them, please. I don't wanna do that right now.

Yeah. Or watch me. I've I've done this 37 times in the past. Now do that for me. I Node. It's it's a race for those features and the bad people using those features to absolutely ruin the web, which is Yes. Which is kind of already happening. Right? Like, look at my email. Look at the replies to all of my tweets.

It's half of them are just, like, AI bots that are are sending this garbage over. You know? Imagine what's gonna happen when you give that functionality to, like, a landscaper who wants to make a little bit more money and and needs to email a bunch of people. You know? It's it's gonna be bad.

Those those landscapers, you gotta watch them. Well, like, I'm I'm just thinking, like, like, the bad people are using the AI for bad stuff right Node, but, like, what happens when you give those tools to just regular people? You Node? It's gonna it's gonna get out of control.

Warp.

Let's talk about Gecko.

Gecko.

That's the engine behind Firefox.

Firefox's last couple Yarn has been rather sluggish with their development, which is really frustrating. It's just Firefox received most of its money from Google by people using Firefox, searching on Google, clicking on ads.

And now people doing less of that using Firefox less means that they have less money to actually put towards the development, which absolutely kills me because Firefox has always been that, like, sort of holdout, which is not a mega corporation developing a browser.

Mhmm. And, it they're still chugging along. They just they just ship temporal, which is the very browser to ship support for it, which is huge.

I really hope somebody comes along and, like, uses Firefox. Like, maybe OpenAI.

Imagine they choose to use Firefox.

That would be amazing for the development of it. Yeah. It would be. And,

I'd yeah. I don't know. You know, to me, Firefox has a number of of issues or at least the rendering ESLint, one of which is it is, like, relatively slow compared to all of them. Granted, it uses less RAM, so you you you know, it's slower but uses less resources. Okay? And, honestly, are you gonna notice that slowness in in action? I don't know.

There's also another browser that has been getting, I don't know, you could say Node nerd kind of, press lately.

And I would say people act like this again. Like, this is like Firefox, people act like everybody uses this browser, but, I would say not many people do. It's called Zen. And Zen is a fire Bos Firefox Bos, like, Yarn alternative.

And the thing that I don't understand about the people who like Zen as an alternative to Arc is that to me, Arc is like, what if we just slapped the Arc theme on Firefox? And that's fine, but it's not Arc, and it doesn't replicate the features of Arc. So for me, it's like, if I if I just want that coat of ESLint paint, then I I don't know how you know, I I don't need the coat of paint. I I want the full feature set. So maybe, eventually, it'll get there. But, yeah, Zen is is kind of like, what if we took Yarn look and, put it on to Firefox?

Oh, yeah. And there's no there's no mobile app either. Like, I can't use a browser that doesn't sync my history to my phone because then you're like, oh, what was that? Or if you need to open something quickly on your phone, you should be able to just

go there immediately. So Yeah. Yeah. That's where it's at. I I haven't used Firefox in a number of years, but I do keep it open for testing. I it exists on my computer for testing.

So There you go. WebKit, next Node, very well used. Anytime I talk about Safari, everyone's like, who uses Safari? Like, literally half the world. It it's the only browser that runs on iOS. Although, I guess like, whatever happened to that? The in the Europe, they mandated that you they can run multiple browsers, not just and a lot of people don't seem to know this, but if you install Chrome or Edge or whatever on iOS, it uses the Safari engine. Right? It it's still it's not actually rendering it with the Chrome engine or the the Edge engine. It it's literally using Safari web views inside of it. Except in Europe, they've ruled maybe six months ago that you must be able to to use it. And there Wes a huge list of different browsers that have it was, like, 40 or 50 browsers, which blew my mind. A lot of them are just like like, corporate VPN browsers that you must use because of your job. But I was kinda hoping that we would start to see newer browsers pop up with different rendering engines on Safari.

I haven't seen too much yet. Let us Node, European users, if you can close all those cookie banners, if you can, find out if if that's if that's been shipped yet. But Safari see an article from October saying

there are still no custom engines other than WebKit on iOS, but, like Yeah. Like, in existence. Not that they can't do it. I don't know what the status is there. I think it's a big a big lift,

to be able to do that. And, again, at the end of the day, most users don't necessarily care what engine is actually running. We care as web developers because we care a lot about the feature set and the performance and things like that, but most people just wanna know that my password is saved in there or or something similar to that.

But anytime we talk about Safari, people give us all kinds of crap because it's it's Apple, and and they love to, love to hold back features from you. Apple's been cranking on they've been to a lot of the new CSS features.

They've been cranking on a lot of the JavaScript features.

They do approach a lot of specifically, a lot of their APIs around progressive web apps. They they approach it in an alternative way, which is very frustrating.

Yes.

But what Wes warp some of the other APIs that were frustrating?

Yeah. It's mostly PWA stuff, but, like, you know, the WebMidi API, they don't support that for, absolutely no good reason. They they would say it's a good reason, but it's not a good reason, which is like many of the the Apple things is that they either just don't talk about it or they give you a bad reason and say that this is this is a reasonable argument for this, why we we can't have this. So we can't simply vet all of the devices you could possibly plug into your computer, so, therefore, no midi for you. I don't I it's it's dumb. It's weird. I will say there's one like, I Safari is the fastest browser.

Hands down. It's wonderful in many ways. I've tried moving to Safari so many times, but there's one massive bug in Safari that I don't understand how nobody else experiences. The longer that you use Safari, you end up getting, like, a latency from when you can start typing in the search bar. So if you use it for the time, time, whatever, it's fine. But if you use it for a few months, when you start typing into the search bar, there is an inherent latency that pops up, and it is enough to drive me absolutely nuts. But other than that, once you're using the browser, it's very fast. And, I think Safari gets more, shit than it deserves, but at the same time, like, Safari to me is a better experience than Firefox. I'm sorry, folks. But at the same time, there's a number of things holding it back for me wanting to use it full time. The biggest one for me in Safari, the reason why I can't use it full time JS the developer tools are bad.

And Yeah. I they've never gotten any better. They're they're just kind of where they're at, and they've been the same. I I think everything's kind of wonky and weird in them.

Finding things JS odd. Cookie storage is weird. They've, like, locked down cookie storage, so it has to be on a secure port. So you can't you can't do, like, HTTP only cookies the same way that you can using local host on Safari. It's like

why That's that's really frustrating. Like, I have a local setup for using Caddy Vercel, which gives me, like, a local HTTPS, and it works in all the browsers except Safari. And and Wes in order to make it work on Safari, I have to, like, set up some custom host names in my ETC host file.

Yes. But that's just just a weird thing. The dev tools really frustrate me in Safari. I don't know how any anyone can use that full time.

They feel, like, dated, and they just don't feel as, like, smooth, to use, and I can find exactly what I'm looking for. Like, I can jump between the dev tools of Edge and Chrome. Obviously, they're similar.

Not exactly similar, though. And and Firefox, no problem. But, like, whenever I'm looking for something in Safari, it's very, very frustrating, and I can't exactly find what I want. Like, autocomplete is not as good. But the remote debugging, if you've, like, had a issue on iOS and you wanna, like, debug it, it's very good. Once you plug in a cord once, it's wireless, and that that is a really good experience. I've been happy with that.

Yes. I just wish I could use Chromes instead

when I'm debugging apps. You can now. You can. If you go in if you go into Chrome yeah. As of Chrome one fifteen, you can enable Safari Wes inspector for oh, no. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. Sorry. This is you can use the Safari dev tools to debug things that are running on Chrome on iOS. You what you want is you wanna be able to use the Chrome dev tools for a website that's running on Chrome on iOS. Right? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's so you can you can if you have an app, like, an app open in Chrome on iOS, you can debug them remotely.

But, like, that's as good as just opening it in Safari and and debugging it. You don't actually get to use the Chrome dev tools, which would be nice. But I I think the the protocol between Safari dev tools and Chrome dev tools is not the same protocol, so it's kinda hard hard to do that. We need Firebug again.

Yep. Firebug.

Alright. Last of the rendering engines is one that is not out yet, but it has gotten a lot of attention for good reason. It's called Lady Bird. It started JS, like, a project. It's a part of Serenity OS, which is like this weird kind of UNIX core looking OS. It's it's a I don't I don't I don't know too much about that project, to be honest, but the Lady Bird the the whole Lady Bird project is this open source, nonprofit of a new rendering engine from literal scratch. They are starting from fresh, building a rendering engine in the year of 2020, whatever they started. Would be possible.

Possible. Yes. Yes. Unbelievable.

Yes. And and and if you wanna get an idea about just how what like, you wonder how to how to you know, why haven't we done this before? Well, it's like they've been working on this for years now, and they have a 2026 alpha release target. So it is a big old undertaking to do something like this. And I'm cautiously optimistic, but at the same time, it's like, alright. You release this browser rendering engine that finally catches up in 2026.

And then what? You're gonna be constantly adding features at a breakneck speed like the big boys are, and Wes. You're doing so as a nonprofit? Like, I mean, good luck good luck. I I am, like as a Node, ladybird for me, that sounds like a great time. That sounds like a great, great time, but I'm skeptical, I think. But

for me, this feels like rebuilding something in Rust, you know, where it's it's not it's not written in Rust, but, like, my point is that somebody is building a new underlying they're they're building a JavaScript engine, a CSS rendering engine, HTML parser.

They're they're building it all. And, like, how much better would that be? Like, it doesn't it seems like a huge job given that, like, these other browsers have been around for twenty plus years. You have to support the entirety of HTML up to this point.

It feels like that feels very hard, but it seems like they're doing it. Like, I follow the Oh, yeah. Andreas Kling on Twitter, and he's just posting like, oh, now we can render Google Maps. And it's like, what? That's that's nuts that you can do it. And they're just reimplementing.

They take the spec. Like, there's these web platform tests, and they just take the spec and and try to implement all of the the APIs.

And that's huge. Like, what happens if they actually finish it? Can they move? Well, maybe we should have them on because Yeah. I do wanna talk about Absolutely. Can you move so much faster when you don't have twenty years of baggage around how the rendering engine works? And, like, it probably doesn't have code to support the marquee tag.

The nice thing about HTML is that it's HTML you wrote forty years ago or thirty years ago still renders today. But what if you didn't have to support thirty year old HTML? Would that would you is it faster? It's it's kind of exciting to me that that this guy JS building this. I'd Is it there's seven people working on it right now according to their

website. I I we gotta get somebody from Lady Bird on because I'm so curious about this thing. You can build it yourself.

So you can't download it currently, but you can build it. So if you can build it, you can try it out.

It says it's, you know, pre alpha primarily for use in developers. I would imagine it's a not like a I I don't know. I I don't wanna say it'd be a rough experience right now, but I'm sure it's not like you're not setting up Chrome here. You know? This is No. A a true, raw project. I I'm interested in I'm very hopeful but, like, cautious that this actually succeeds because that's cool. Yeah.

Some smart people building it. You know? Like, there's some crazy projects out there. Like, I always think about FFmpeg about, like, how much of the world runs on FFMPEG, like, you know, this low level library that has just made so much of the world possible.

Yes. And and Chrome Chrome has also done that. You Node? Firefox has has done that. WebKit has done that. So, like, what does this do to the world when they have a theoretically faster, more lightweight browser engine? You know? Like, it's there's lib Wes rendering ESLint. Lib. Js is JavaScript engine. They have a Wasm engine,

a whole media engine core. Like, there's there's quite a bit here. There's a there's a bit here, and I I'm stoked. Like I said, I'm hopeful. Cautiously

stoked.

Cautiously stoked. That's the best way. This is this is me about to drop in on a quarter pipe at the age of 40.

Cautiously stoked.

Yes.

Usage statistics.

Let's figure out what what are what are people actually using both? I I I know that the in the real world, but, like, what are people actually using visiting our sites and stuff like that? Do do we have some stats ready for that? Do you want me to guess? Do you do you have that available? Yeah. Let's let's start by by taking a look at just, like, the world,

So you guess. If you're taking a look at I'm using statcounter.com.

The browser market share for April 2025 worldwide, what do you think

the usage is? Time has come to push that button up. Wise.

2.2 for Firefox.

Oh, that was pretty close. Wow. 2.5%

for Firefox. Good. Wow. Okay. I have I have a good reason why I know that. But because people are always like, fan fan fan fan. I'm like, it's 2.5 whatever percentage usage.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. But hold on. If you go if you were to filter for US, how much do you think Firefox is?

For US? Oh, that's a tougher question.

You think it would be higher or lower?

I would say higher.

I don't know. Percent. Okay. Yeah. 4.17%.

Alright. But Yeah. Tell me. What do you think Edge, Safari, and Chrome split is?

I don't know. Edge might be like Edge might be like 12% or something.

Edge is five. 5%?

Okay. That's extremely low to me given that it comes Not surprising to me. By default on Windows machines. You know? Like Yeah. Most computers in the world is that is that fair to say? Most computers in the world are, I don't yeah. I I would assume so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I it does feel low, but then you have mobile users. Right? Is there an Edge mobile?

I mean

Yes. Actually, if you filter for desktop, Edge goes up to 13%.

Yeah. That makes sense. Shows that most people are not viewing the Internet on a desktop computer. You know? Most people are consuming stuff through a mobile browser.

I I would say Safari JS at, like, 40%, maybe even higher.

This is very surprising. Safari's at 17% Okay. Globally on all platforms. But if you were to go mobile, Safari only jumps up to 22%, which, again, you think, like Yeah. I'll be Bos users. If I were to think of of people I know, I would say 90% of them have an iPhone. Maybe 95% of them. Yes. And that's and use Safari. But, like, that's not the case for the world.

Yeah. I mean, and the rest is is is Chrome mostly. I mean, you have, obviously, like, Samsung and and those which are scraping it. The reason why I knew Firefox is because I did this talk on, like, can you use it today? And if if Firefox supported it, it would always jump up the percentage by, like, 2% global usage, but, like, not more than that. So you'd be like, oh, it's at it's at, like, 95%, but you can't use it on Firefox. So you know? Yeah. That's a bummer. Hey? Like,

Firefox has been, like, lagging on, like, some of the container query stuff. You know? And, like, you're almost at a point now where it's like I I'm not saying don't support it, but that sucks. That's for such a small percentage of your users.

You have to do it. But Chrome, 66% worldwide usage, which is absolutely massive still.

Makes me feel good because, like, as as much as people don't want the big Google to to control everything, they're they're one of the the biggest engines. They are the biggest engine right now. And if Chrome's market share starts to slip, that would really bum me out what that would mean for some of the resources behind Chrome. Even even already, we've heard it. Like, Adam Argyle got laid off of Chrome for seemingly no good reason other than just random reasons, which is such a bummer. You know? Some of the top talent in web development right now Node longer working there, and that makes me kinda scared for for a future of one of the biggest Yeah. Browsers.

Browsers in general. Yeah. I know. And as much as people like to rag on on Google, Chrome is the the best Wes browser in many ways. Yes. It is a it is a RAM hog if you have a lot of tabs open. Just buy more RAM. Just buy more RAM. Yes. Go to the Node RAM. Go to the App Store and download more RAM. Yes.

A funny story.

My my one of one of my good friends, he it was like and his girlfriend's birthday, they'd been together for, like, three years or something. You know? You're thinking, like, maybe a romantic gesture for a birthday present. He got a Ram for her computer. Oh my gosh. And she's, like, not techie at all. I just remember being like, what a move, man. And he was just like, she needed it. She needed the Ram.

That's hilarious. She's like, great. Thank you for the Ram.

Yeah. That is not something you buy by your wife.

Yeah. That's super funny.

Dev tools experience, we've already kind of, we've already kinda gone over this, but give me your dev tools experience rank. Yeah. It goes

Edge, Firefox, Chrome.

I might even put Firefox The dev tools are very good, and I think they look the best. I'm gonna say again.

Firefox, definitely the best dev tools, then Edge, then Chrome, then Safari at the end.

Edge does a lot with the tabs, and they basically just, like, reskinned the the tabs. You and and when you have multiple tabs at the top, they'll just show you the icon, which I really like. Oh. You can put the tabs on the side if you want.

It just feels a little bit better. Every now and then, they freeze, though, and I have to, like, delete my profile or something. There's so there's something weird going on there, but I did I did I was asking on Twitter how to, like, fix it, and somebody had a similar issue with Chrome.

So, it's I I think it's a lower level issue. But I've been been a big fan of, the Chrome dev tools. And they also added some, like, selector performance stuff to the dev tools. It's now been upstreamed, and it exists in, in Chrome as well. But at the time, if you wanted to see, is this a slow selector? Because every time I use CSS has or, like, any sort of weird where is checkbox selector, you get a million people being like, that's slow. Shouldn't use that.

And my big thing is always tools over rules. You know? Measure it. Is it actually slow? Maybe.

Let's let's take a look at the the stats there, Jonathan.

Yes.

Or what JS your JavaScript implementation faster? I don't think so, buddy. Oh, yeah. Maybe it is, but just ESLint.

Yeah. For me, it's it's Chrome, Firefox or Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for me if I'm ranking them. I've never used Edge's dev tools. I don't know. You Scott.

Yeah. Every once in a while, you gotta smack it with a mallet, but they're wonderful.

Yes. No. Get get off of Chrome. You've used Chrome many times. You know what it's like. You gotta either go full Brave or full Edge or Vivaldi,

something else, or Opera Air. Can you please use Opera Air for a week and report back? I tried using Opera for a week, and I couldn't get through the week. So I I it's not that Opera's bad. It's just like, oh, there's just like I don't know. There's nothing there.

Sorry, Opera people. It's fine. It's just, like, nothing to make me wanna switch. Maybe Opera Air. Maybe I need some mindfulness. You know? Tab experience.

For me, I think that Yarn has the best tab experience.

Specifically, you command t, it opens a command palette. I start typing something, it opens the tab I already have opened. So, therefore, you're never, like, wondering what position the tab is at. You don't even have to see the tabs to know that you have one open. I start typing, you know, s y, and it opens up syntax. If I already have it open, it prevents you from opening a thousand tabs at once. It automatically closes them after a certain amount of days so you don't end up with 10,000 tabs.

So for me, that experience is the best, and I do hope that Dia emulates that to some extent. It doesn't look like they are right now, but I hope it does to some extent.

Yeah. I've never been a big, like, tab monster or whatever, you know, switching between them. I just just use them. I I aggressively close tabs. You know there's some people that, like, are, like, saving tabs as, like, bookmarks. My wife is like that. She'll have 300 tabs open, and she uses like, she opens a tab for every single tracking number that she has, and, like, she'll just go back to that tab to see them. Like, there's apps that will, like, send you a notification when it's about to be delivered, but she's a tab monster. And I just Tab monster. I just close them all the time. Every now and then, if it's if I'm too overwhelmed, close it all. You know? I'll find it again if I need it.

Yeah. Yarn does that, but in a graceful way. And, like Yeah. Yeah. It feels it feels a little bit different, which is why I like that. Containers and profiles, I do still think that Arc takes this one because this little interface of just swiping between them is just such a good experience.

And what do you explain what you use containers and profiles for.

So, like, here's a good one. I have my personal stuff, which is all my own Google logins, all my own stuff, whether that is my own personal, like Reddit or Twitter or Blue Sky or whatever. It's all in this one profile. And then I swipe, and then all of a sudden, it's not only my bookmarks for all of these syntax related and Sanity things, but everything is logged into, you know, my Sentry email address for all of my Google stuff or even the syntax Twitter social account. So just with that, like, little swipe, I'm now able to be in an environment that is all logged ESLint to all of my work stuff or swipe and all of my personal stuff or swipe and, you know, whatever. I I have different ones set up. So I have one for Sanity specific stuff, one for Syntax specific stuff, and one for personal specific stuff. And before in the past, I had them for level up tutorials or whatever. Oh, yeah. I

used to love the profiles in Firefox because you could have multiple tabs, open. So I could have, like, the syntax stuff open, and then I could in the next tab, I could have my own personal stuff open.

And it was all in a single tab, and they were color Node, and you could group them together.

Now on Edge, you have to use their, like, their profiles. And I basically have a syntax profile, and I have my own personal profile, and then I have, like, a couple others for development and whatnot. Especially, like, whenever I do, like, the saved credit card testing and whatnot, I like having a separate profile for that so it's not actually messing with my actual stuff. But it's it sucks because you have to, like, reinstall all the same extensions for every single profile, and, like, you gotta turn off all the, like, Microsoft Edge stuff that I talked about earlier again for the same profile.

And, like, it's another window that you have to have open. So I do not like the the Edge profiles. I really wish I could go back to maybe I'll go back to Firefox.

It's so hard because I I do so many videos on, like, the, like, next gen stuff, like Yes. And whatever. And the reason why I initially left Firefox is I was just getting weird slowness and blank white screens, and I was just fed up with it. But I also like to be able to try out new APIs without switching my browser.

Cool. Do you have anything else on these browsers here? There's a lot of browsers. What's your favorite browser folks? Do you believe that, that the statistics are wrong and more people are actually using Firefox? Just let us know. What do you think? What do you think? What what's the browser of the future? Do you think that AI browsing experiences and agentic flows for browsers will, in fact, take over? What will that look like? Which browser will show up and kick everybody's ass? Is Lady Bird going Lady Bird? Lady Bird going to succeed in all of that stuff. I wanna know what you think about the browser landscape.

What do you use? What do you hate? All that good stuff. As always, catch you in the next one.

Peace.