I need to be really honest with you guys; I've had a rough time with browsers over the last year. Arc was great, and I think

it's fair to say that was because I'm far from the only person having massive problems with it, in particular,

performance issues. My wonderful M2 MacBook Pro Max—whatever the heck the specs are on it—that used to get 8 to 10 hours

of battery, gets less than two if I have Arc open. When I complained about it publicly, I was far from the only one

having these issues. I need to emphasize how absurd the battery drain is, though. We're talking six times more being used,

less than Chrome was doing. I was going mad! I was trying to get work done in Uber, and my laptop's fans had spun up

and it was falling apart. And when I went and checked what the browser company and Arc were up to, they hadn't posted anything

other than icons in, like, a year. Even the icon posts were November. It's clear that this browser is actually dead, and

everybody who was mad at me for saying this earlier was wrong. Arc is dead, and I am genuinely sorry to anybody who

started using it based on my recommendations. I will say I have lost a lot of credibility in recommending

browsers, which means you shouldn't use this as an end-all, be-all; the right place to go if you want the best possible

browser. But I need to write some of my wrongs here: recommending a VC-funded browser that hates its users, that has no

interest in fixing the problems that they caused. It is specifically continuously dodging the opportunities to own it, fix it, or just open-source it.

So I am frustrated. I have done everything from trying browsers that are ancient that were customizable to

building my own, and I think I finally landed somewhere good. But before we can get there, a quick word from today's

Today's sponsor is for those of us tired of making backend decisions. Even I'm starting to get to that point.

Convex is the all-in-one platform to solve most of your backend problems, and it's open source.

Everything from server functions to vector search, cron jobs, file storage, type safety, and more. It's just a good experience to work with.

I've been really impressed. I'll show you with a quick demo. This is an app I'm running on localhost; it's one of their templates, and it's really cool.

I'm going to send a message: "Please subscribe." It basically instantly appeared in the other browser. It's a different browser; I wanted to show you this isn't doing some weird stuff locally.

This is actually server-side sync. So what does the code look like? It's got to be really complex, right?

Well, here in our real codebase, it's just inside our Next.js application. We have a folder named `convex`. In this folder, we have our list query.

It has no arguments, has a handler which will hit `context.db.query` for messages, order by send, take 100. Then you just return a promise. It's written in traditional TypeScript.

The mutation looks pretty much the same. If you're curious about the database definitions, here's the schema. That's the whole thing.

Yes, it is actually that easy. You've now seen pretty much all the backend code. Where is the complexity? Is it hidden in the app?

Let's look. We have `messages = useQuery(api.messages.list)`. That looks familiar; it's kind of like tRPC.

And sure as hell, if you command-click it, it brings you right to the backend code. Best DX ever! And it makes sure that if you make a change somewhere, it hydrates throughout your whole app, and you'll see type errors where they are.

actually happen, and now you get free sync. You literally just call the query, and now it will automatically

update; you're done. How cool is that? If you want the best TypeScript-first solution for your backend, it's pretty

hard to beat Convex. Check them out today. So, dling SLC Convex...

As I saw how many people were having problems and how little work was being done fixing them, I started once again investigating all my

alternatives. I made a quick list of the ones that people recommend the most and why they are not what I'm looking for.

Obviously, the gold standard is Chrome. It's stable, well-supported, and has a good ecosystem, but it has none of the

customizability that I'm looking for. Now, not that I customized Arc a ton—hell, I barely even used half the features—but I

have fallen in love with a couple of key things: like the sidebar, like not having the top of the browser have this giant

bar on it that takes up a third of my vertical space on my small screen; like having hotkeys that actually make sense

for a bunch of things. I missed all of that so much that I just couldn't do Chrome. I tried; I couldn't. I'll be honest,

I still think most people should probably just use Chrome. And if you haven't gotten addicted to these custom

UI's and workflows yet, don't. It's like getting an SSD where you don't realize how slow hard drives were until you have

one, and now you can't live without it anymore. So, honestly, don't dive down this rabbit hole if you could avoid it

because it will make you unhappy for the rest of your life. Speaking of unhappy, we need to talk about Brave,

because I do not genuinely understand how anyone recommends this browser. It runs like—it looks like—it's full of web; it doesn't

Have any customization whatsoever; you have no control over the hotkeys. You can't even set a hotkey for opening and

closing the sidebar. I don't. All Brave is, is a web3-skinned, worse Chrome with a

sidebar, and at least you can get it without the web3 skin if you use Edge. So I guess the most reasonable

recommendation to get some of this functionality is probably Edge, but there is zero customization of hotkeys in it

at all. I was blown away by how little control you have in Edge, considering how much different it is. I couldn't get it

to do any of the things I wanted it to do. Cool that it had vertical tabs, like if I open it quick, uh,

Edge. Certainly you can tell it's a Chromium/Electron base with the speed of opening. Like, it looks fine; this

animation when you hover is the worst thing ever. It's super—that's not just the compression or my video; it

is that janky. It just looks awful, especially on high refresh rate screens. You can't really hide; you can't

make this top bar go away, and we're losing so much real estate from that. It's sad, but it's better than Brave's low

bar. But honestly, personally, I would just use Chrome. Like, this isn't a big enough win, especially with how ugly that

sliding is and the fact that you can't hotkey to pin/unpin it, which is all I

want. If I could have a hotkey that hit that button, I probably would have given Edge a real shot. But after seeing how

much the team downplayed the needs of people in their forums, I just stopped caring. Next, we have Zen, which is very

customizable and very close to what I want, but it's Firefox-based, which is probably the biggest flaw. It's still

early and has problems, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a bit. And as far as I understood at the time, the battery

life and the performance weren't great. We'll come back to Zen. Speaking of Zen, Firefox—we're going to move on. I wrote

down this list of the specific things I wanted: a vertical tab bar, the ability to hide everything for a simple UI like

what I have on the screen now, where all I have open is the website, and I have the little, like, border around, which is

fine. A command-shift-C to copy the current URL. I cannot tell you how much this is important to me; the regularity in which

I am copying a URL to put it in my notes, to send it to somebody, to put it somewhere else—it is a constant thing. I

am doing this at least 20 times a day, probably more. And multiple hotkeys to select the thing and then copy from it—

not acceptable. I could not tolerate that, especially because of how slow that flow was in all the browsers I tried it with.

I also need a hotkey to toggle the sidebar. I would like it to be Chrome-based, and I want the performance to not

suck. There is a browser that hit all of these things, and it has the world's most ugly browser icon: Vivaldi. And I was

surprised. It genuinely seemed like Vivaldi was going to be the right browser for me. I had no way to hide the

top bar, which was sad but tolerable. I could set my hotkey for the sidebar and disable the animation on it. I could put

it on the right, which was a nice benefit—couldn't do that with Arc. I was feeling pretty good. It was ugly as sin, but with

a little bit of customization, I could make it tolerable-looking. I was still sad I couldn't get rid of the top bar,

but, like, whatever. But there were a couple things I couldn't deal with. The first was the quick copy, which I got

working, and I'm actually really impressed with the level of customization you can do in here. The

quick commands in Vivaldi are incredible, and I created one: copy current URL. It focuses the address bar, it has a 10

millisecond delay, it copies the content, it has another 10-millisecond delay, and then it focuses the page. And then I

bound this in the keyboard layer to be a hotkey: copy current URL, command-shift-C. And this works great. You'll see that

little flicker up there; that's because I copied the URL, and it's there. Awesome! I was reviewing a PR a few days ago; I'll

find a random upload thing—one—and I was in the pull request; I was looking through files and I wanted to send them to

somebody on my team, so I command-shift-C, and I guess it's working now. I don't know why, because when I tried this

yesterday, I couldn't, because the hotkey conflicted with the page. And Vivaldi will prioritize the page's hotkeys over

yours, always—even the ones built into the browser. So if you happen to have a hotkey that some random website has as

one that you use regularly, you will not be able to use that hotkey on that website. One of the killers for me was

Excalidraw, because I bind command-shift-E as my open/close, and command-shift-E is export in Excalidraw, so I cannot close

my sidebar with a hotkey when I have Excalidraw open. And there is no option anywhere in Vivaldi to change this, and

this is when I learned something very valuable about Vivaldi: they don't really care about what their users want. I have

read enough of the forums now to be very confident and very certain of that statement: they don't give a damn. And

that goes one layer deeper, because one of the things that they *do* care about is laptop users. I don't know what

Went wrong. I feel like I just went down the craziest rabbit hole, which is what happens whenever I screw with Vivaldi.

The quick form of what I want to say is that swipe gestures did not work in Vivaldi, and it was my understanding that

nobody who contributes to Vivaldi uses a laptop with a trackpad, so they were not

interested at all. What they prefer are their very strange mouse gestures, which, as far as I know, cannot work on Mac

because the way their mouse gestures work is you hold down right-click and you move the mouse some way to trigger

something. So they have: you can go back by holding that right-click and moving to the left. I hate this, and honestly, if

I do come back, I don't want this on; I'm turning it off. The more painful thing

here is that they don't really support trackpad gestures. I know that because yesterday I went insane trying to get my

swipe back and forward working, and I couldn't. And when I read through their forums, it seemed like it just doesn't

support gestures for backward swiping.  Just starting to use Vivaldi on my laptop. Really like it, but my laptop's touchpad gesture

swiping with two fingers doesn't seem to work. Reading other posts, it's not implemented in Vivaldi. Is this real? It's a crucial

feature on a laptop. It's always been a strange oversight. Yeah, it's strange. So for these people, it didn't

work. What you have to do, and what I had done—and I don't know why it's behaving

I'm Finally Moving On (I have a new browser)

Hi, I'm a software dev nerd mostly known for full stack TypeScript stuff. Check out me and my stack at t3.gg


Theo - t3․gg

Arc 브라우저 사용 경험과 문제점

지난 1년간 Arc 브라우저 사용 중 심각한 성능 저하 및 배터리 소모 문제 발생

M2 MacBook Pro 사용 시 Arc 브라우저 실행 시 배터리 소모가 Chrome보다 6배 이상 증가

많은 사용자가 동일한 문제를 경험

Arc 브라우저 개발사의 미흡한 대응 및 업데이트 부재

Arc 브라우저의 사실상 서비스 종료 선언 및 사용자에게 사과

다른 브라우저 사용 경험 및 비교

Chrome, Brave, Edge, Zen 등 다양한 브라우저 사용 경험 공유

Chrome: 안정적이고 지원이 좋지만 사용자 정의 기능 부족

Brave: 성능 저하 및 사용자 정의 기능 부족

Edge: 일부 기능은 좋지만 사용자 정의 기능 부족, 특히 단축키 설정 제한적

Zen: 사용자 정의 기능은 좋지만 Firefox 기반이라는 단점 존재

Vivaldi 브라우저 사용 경험 및 문제점

Vivaldi: 사용자 정의 기능이 우수하지만 상단 바 제거 불가능

Vivaldi의 강력한 사용자 정의 기능 (빠른 명령어)을 이용한 URL 복사 단축키 설정

웹 페이지 단축키가 브라우저 단축키보다 우선순위를 가지는 문제점 발생

트랙패드 제스처 미지원 및 사용자 의견에 대한 무관심

트랙패드 제스처 문제 해결을 위한 확장 프로그램 사용 경험

직접 브라우저 개발 시도 및 어려움

직접 브라우저 개발 시도: Electron 사용, 탭 격리 문제 등의 어려움 직면

보안 및 성능 문제 해결의 어려움으로 인한 개발 중단

Zen 브라우저 선택 이유: 사용자 중심의 개발 방식, 뛰어난 커스터마이징 기능

Vivaldi보다 모든 면에서 개선된 성능 및 사용 경험 제공

활발한 커뮤니티 활동 및 개발팀의 적극적인 소통

URL 복사 단축키 추가 및 기타 개선 사항

Zen Mods를 통한 브라우저 자체 커스터마이징 기능 강조

지난 1년간 브라우저 사용에 어려움을 겪은 끝에 Arc 브라우저의 성능 문제와 배터리 소모 문제로 인해 사용을 중단하고 새로운 브라우저를 찾게 되었다.

여러 브라우저를 사용해 본 결과, 사용자 맞춤 설정이 가능하고 사용자 의견을 적극적으로 반영하는 오픈 소스 브라우저인 Zen 브라우저에 정착하게 되었다.

Zen 브라우저는 파이어폭스 기반이지만, 사용자 중심의 개발과 뛰어난 사용자 경험을 제공하여 기존 브라우저들의 단점을 보완하고 있다.

지난 한 해 동안 브라우저 문제로 어려움을 겪었던 점을 솔직하게 이야기하며 시작합니다. Arc 브라우저의 성능 문제, 특히 **심각한 배터리 소모**가 주요 원인이었습니다. M2 MacBook Pro Max에서 Arc를 사용할 때 배터리 사용 시간이 6배나 늘어나는 문제를 겪었습니다.

Arc 브라우저 개발팀이 사용자 피드백을 무시하고 문제 해결에 소극적인 태도를 보이는 것에 실망했습니다. **결국 Arc 브라우저가 사실상 "죽었다"고 판단**하며, 과거 Arc를 추천했던 것에 대해 사과했습니다.

✨ Convex: 백엔드 개발의 새로운 희망

백엔드 문제 해결을 위한 올인원 플랫폼인 Convex를 소개합니다. 서버 기능, 벡터 검색, cron 작업, 파일 저장, 타입 안전성 등 **다양한 기능을 제공하며 오픈 소스**입니다.

Convex를 사용한 간단한 데모를 통해 실시간 서버 동기화 기능을 보여줍니다. Next.js 애플리케이션 내에서 Convex 폴더를 생성하여 데이터베이스 쿼리 및 변경을 쉽게 처리할 수 있습니다. **단 몇 줄의 코드로 백엔드 기능을 구현**할 수 있다는 점을 강조합니다.

🤔 브라우저 탐색 여정: 대안 검토

Arc 브라우저 문제 이후 여러 대안 브라우저를 검토했습니다. Chrome은 안정적이지만 **커스터마이징 기능이 부족**하여 고려 대상에서 제외했습니다.

Brave 브라우저는 웹3 기능이 추가된 Chrome과 유사하며, **커스터마이징 옵션이 거의 없어** 실망스러웠습니다. Edge 브라우저는 일부 유용한 기능이 있지만, **핫키 설정 등 커스터마이징 제약**이 있었습니다.

🤯 Vivaldi: 커스터마이징의 딜레마

Vivaldi 브라우저는 높은 수준의 커스터마이징을 제공했지만, **웹 페이지 핫키가 브라우저 핫키보다 우선시되는 문제**가 있었습니다. 특히 Excalidraw와 같은 특정 웹사이트에서 핫키 충돌이 발생하여 사용에 어려움을 겪었습니다.

Vivaldi 개발팀이 사용자 피드백에 무관심하며, 특히 **랩톱 사용자를 위한 트랙패드 제스처 지원에 소극적인 점**에 실망했습니다. 사용자들이 확장 프로그램을 통해 제스처 기능을 해결해야 하는 상황에 대해 비판했습니다.

🛠️ 나만의 브라우저 만들기 (실패!)

Vivaldi의 문제점을 해결하기 위해 **직접 브라우저를 만들려는 시도**를 했습니다. Electron을 사용하여 간단한 브라우저를 구현했지만, 보안 및 기능 구현의 어려움을 깨닫고 포기했습니다.

브라우저를 만드는 것이 얼마나 어려운 일인지 깨달았으며, **안전하지 않거나 불완전한 브라우저를 만들 바에는 포기하는 것이 낫다고 판단**했습니다.

🏆 Zen 브라우저: 새로운 정착지

여러 시행착오 끝에 Zen 브라우저에 정착하게 되었습니다. Zen 브라우저는 **오픈 소스이며, Arc 브라우저의 좋은 대안**이 될 수 있다고 판단했습니다.

Zen 브라우저 개발팀은 사용자 피드백을 적극적으로 수용하고 문제를 빠르게 해결하는 모습을 보여주었습니다. **커뮤니티 중심의 개발**이 Zen 브라우저의 강점이라고 강조합니다.

⚙️ Zen 브라우저의 강력한 커스터마이징

Zen 브라우저는 다양한 커스터마이징 옵션을 제공하며, **Zen Mods를 통해 브라우저 자체를 수정**할 수 있습니다. 이를 통해 사용자들은 자신에게 맞는 브라우저 환경을 구축할 수 있습니다.

Zen 브라우저의 CSS 커스터마이징 기능을 통해 브라우저의 외관 및 동작을 변경할 수 있습니다. **사용자들은 CSS를 사용하여 브라우저의 불편한 부분을 직접 수정**할 수 있습니다.

🙏 Zen 브라우저에 대한 지지와 기대

Zen 브라우저 개발팀에 대한 지지를 표명하며, **소규모 커뮤니티가 자본과 시간의 제약을 극복하고 사용자 중심의 브라우저를 만들 수 있다는 것을 증명**해주기를 기대합니다.

Zen 브라우저 개발팀이 사용자 피드백을 경청하고, 사용자들이 원하는 기능을 구현하는 데 집중함으로써 **최고의 브라우저를 만들 수 있을 것이라고 믿습니다.**