Brave browser vs Firefox behavior

Carey Brown · May 10, 2025

I installed Brave yesterday because I read somewhere it had less privacy leaks than Firefox, which I've been using for decades. On Firefox I've been running a hand built home page for a decade, all my links in the home page have target="_blank" in them to cause Firefox to open them in a new tab when clicked. The tab running the home page I have pinned. Everything works as (I think it) should work. The pinned home page tab never gets overwritten by another tab.

I've tried to get Brave to exhibit the same behavior with the same home page but clicking on a link results in the pinned home page tab being overwritten instead of a new tab being opened. All I could find when I googled this is that this behavior is "by design" and is shared with Chrome. Even clicking on the middle button overwrites the tab. Only right-clicking and selecting "open in new tab" works-ish, but doesn't change the focus to the new tab -- less than useful.

So, is there something I'm missing or do I uninstall Brave?

antspants · May 10, 2025

Carey Brown said:
All I could find when I googled this is that this behavior is "by design"

It is, by design
I haven’t looked at Brave for a while but the minute I installed it and discovered that I couldn’t manipulate the new tab (and the ugly colours/images/whatever) I uninstalled it.
Firefox is fine.

antspants · May 10, 2025

Carey Brown said:
I installed Brave yesterday because I read somewhere it had less privacy leaks than Firefox

What leaks?

Carey Brown · May 10, 2025

Went back and found the ARTICLE and it was talking about "mobile" browsers, so, my mistake. But nun the less, here I am.

antspants · May 10, 2025

OK. Well I am probably the worst person to chime in, because I don’t believe there is data privacy in Windows. I know people argue this but it’s just my opinion. Sure, there are methods that people recommend, but it’s all a placebo, again, in my opinion.

Client Challenge

It’s possibly true, Brave is possibly more secure environment to use when browsing the internet (but I doubt that also)

You could always use Private mode in Firefox?

glasskuter · May 10, 2025

I totally agree with @antspants. The only way to keep all your data private is to not go online....or not use a computer at all. I'm not saying that to be facetious. It's just a fact of the world we live in. Find a browser you like the best, tighten its security settings as much as you can (and still have a usable browser), and use it.

The best protection on the web today is the user and how he computes, what links he clicks on, and who he gives information to. Use a throwaway email if you are one who signs up at every site he goes to. Use a password manager. Clear you web cache regularly. Don't click on the first site you see in a web search results. Most times those are the ones who have paid your search engine to show up first. Only go to official sites of reputable companies.
And for goodness sake, learn to use social media responsibility(or if you are like me, not at all). Off the wall links in social media are dangerous.
Same goes for links in emails.

So yes, the best protection in this modern world is YOU and common sense..

abactuon · May 10, 2025

LCtrl + click ?

In Chromium, it just works

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<h2>Test</h2>
<br><br><br>
<a href="https://google.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Site 1</a>
<br><br>
<a href="Gilded glory" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Site 2</a>

</body>
</html>

Carey Brown · May 11, 2025

Thanks everybody. I'm going to uninstall Brave now. Too bad they can't get some basic user interface stuff right.

antspants · May 11, 2025

Carey Brown said:
Too bad they can't get some basic user interface stuff right.

I totally agree. I thought it had promise until I got to trying to achieve what I thought was a simple task. And then to be faced with what seemed like a stubbornness in support forum that felt a little cultish and dictatived.
Where’s my bloody pitchfork!!!

Edwin · May 11, 2025

I installed Brave yesterday, on my test machine..., that is one weird, glitchy browser!!! It's gone!!!

krism · May 11, 2025

I use FF. Been using it for years. No problems.

Levitate11 · May 11, 2025

They all see to have their quirks. I find that every time someone tells me "use this browser, it's fantastic" that it's just another browser with features dumbed down - features that I need.

So, for the most part, I like Firefox in that it's fairly easily to customize. If there isn't an option to do what you want, there's probably a .css tweak that you can find out about at the Mozilla.org site. There are also plug-ins for some popular changes... use at your own risk, of course.

Like Windows, I usually spend some time making FFox work "like it used to" when they do a new release and "improve" it. But you can generally get there. Surprisingly, some improvements actually are!

gunrunnerjohn · May 11, 2025

I've been using Firefox for around 15 years or more;. Does anyone remember NetScape?

Levitate11 · May 11, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
I've been using Firefox for around 15 years or more;. Does anyone remember NetScape?

Used to carry it on a single 1.4mb floppy and install it on classroom systems with a bat file. LOL.

Stigg · May 11, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
I've been using Firefox for around 15 years or more;. Does anyone remember NetScape?

I started using Firefox when it was still called Firebird. It didn't even have an installer back then.

Mozilla Firebird 0.6 Release Notes and FAQ

antspants · May 11, 2025

I remember as far back where the closest thing to getting information from the cloud was a Pigeon with a note attached to its leg. Occasionally, if lucky and you were at the ocean, you’d find a bottle with a note in it with something interesting.

antspants · May 11, 2025

…and there was this one time, at band camp…

Edwin · May 11, 2025

All browsers are the same great pile of

!!!

hdmi · May 11, 2025

Carey Brown said:
I installed Brave yesterday because I read somewhere it had less privacy leaks than Firefox,

I don't know who gave you that idea. Maybe someone who wants to steal your privacy? A common misconception about Firefox is that it will give you the best privacy out-of-the-box. It most certainly will not, but you can use it with Narsil or similar. Even without Narsil, Firefox settings can still easily be tuned to give better privacy than what's possible with any Chromium-based browser.

Don't use a VPN. To find out why, see my posts in another recent thread about what are "good" VPN choices. I guess I could just tell you that Mullvad is less terrible than NordVPN, which would probably be true, but.. in the end the only thing that matters is that neither "solution" will give you more privacy—contrary to popular belief.

Secure DNS (DoT/DoH) is recommended, as all DNS traffic will be encrypted. However, also be aware that the traffic that is responsible for establishing a connection with the secure DNS server from Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or similar will not be encypted by this. For this and various other reasons, you could always consider setting up your own VPS (VPS, not VPN).

P.S., here are the links I posted in that other recent thread that I was referring to:
https://youtu.be/Qqd9KzPVBb8
https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29#but-i-want-more-privacy

Levitate11 · May 11, 2025

hdmi said:
I don't know who gave you that idea. Maybe someone who wants to steal your privacy? A common misconception about Firefox is that it will give you the best privacy out-of-the-box. It most certainly will not, but you can use it with Narsil or similar. Even without Narsil, Firefox settings can still easily be tuned to give better privacy than what's possible with any Chromium-based browser.

The general privacy settings of most browsers, as of late, share lots of information with the manufacturer. Likewise Win 11. Your hardware manufacturer. Etc.

Note that I'm not talking about security, which is a completely different issue. But just the amount of data companies are collecting by default if you don't shut off all those options is astounding.

Brave browser vs Firefox behavior

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