The most important part of this is toward the end, and whether you consider it a limitation or a feature is a matter of perspective: the modern commercial web does not play nice with this. So static HTML and blogs yes, Reddit and most anything commercial no.

You can actually get other close-to-browser experiences with stuff like xwidget and embedded WebKit (https://emacsdocs.org/docs/emacs/Embedded-WebKit-Widgets) but generally it’s not worth the fight for commercial sites these days; everything is vibed and only tested against Chrome, so if you’re lucky they’ll load in other Chromium browsers and _maybe_ Firefox.

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graemep 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I use Firefox and cannot remember the last time I had to switch to Chrome. Most site work with JS off too (especially if you use reader view).

Quite a lot of sites work well with other browser engines too. I have tried PaleMoon, Netsurf. Users of Apple mobile devices seem to be fine with Safari.

Really light or unusual browsers might be a problem. Dillo, for example (its very fast though).

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dunham 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The two things that I'm missing in Safari are auto dark mode (re-coloring pages) and toggling javascript per-site. Currently I'm using the "Quiche" browser (paid) for that, but github is suddenly hating it (requiring a login). I like that desktop chrome lets me toggle javascript per site out of the box.

It sounds like the dark mode thing is coming in the next Safari release.

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brabel an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It really, really depends on what sort of websites you visit. I use FireFox as my main browser, but at least once a week I have trouble trying to do something on some website that only works on Chrome and its descendants. I'm sure you're not lying, but given you also say "most sites work with JS off too" I can absolutely tell you're not the average internet user. But yeah, we're discussing using eww here, so I'll accept none of us are.

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BeetleB 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even before I had much of the Internet ban me because I was playing with a bot, my FF profile on Linux was giving me a lot of trouble. About 6 months ago a lot of web sites barely functioned for me. I can't log in to E-trade. Home Depot and Lowes search doesn't work for me.

If I open a brand new FF profile, some of these sites do work. But I guess the combination of FF, on Linux, with my addons is triggering something.

	▲	fancyfredbot 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		These days, when I think I've got a Firefox issue and try switching to chrome the usual outcome is that I discover the website was broken and Chrome doesn't work either.
	▲	lta 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I can't remember the last time I had to open chromium. Everything works fine with FF for me. Couldn't be happier about it
	▲	graemep 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Possibly, I use Firefox on Linux. I am in the UK so maybe British sites are better? Maybe just luck or usage patterns. Very likely the addons.

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kkylin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that's absolutely right: whether this works or not depends on what you do.

I tried xwidget-webkit as main browser briefly, but very quickly gave up. When a collaborator sends me a Google Doc, for example, I really still need a browser to work on it. I still use xwidget-webkit daily -- it's a great PDF viewer, and really nice to be able to have Jupyter notebooks open side by side with code buffers -- but for most tasks involving the web I'll switch to a browser.

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shevy-java an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Reddit and most anything commercial no.

Not long ago reddit killed old.reddit.com effectively by forcing log ins to it. That totally defeated the point of it so I stopped using reddit. I also no longer read it since the platform is so censorship-heavy.