Hi beehaw friends! Long time no C1!
Konform Browser version 140.12.0-100 was recently released and if you aren’t aware it’s time to upgrade! 2
Konform Browser is a free/libre and open-source (FLOSS) fork of Firefox ESR with the primary goals of security, privacy, and user freedom. Shows by example how these three goals don’t have to be at odds but support each other and work in harmony. Runs lean and light with lights off out of the box, while making it convenient to toggle on the features you want. All telemetry removed, none added. Fingerprinting and tracking extras with base defaults on par with (or exceeding) Tor Browser, still keeping common-sense tweaks like dark mode and installation of self-built addons available without making a fuss about it. Graceful degradation for private networks and more granular control for those who want a browser that really conforms.
“ESR” means there’s a major upgrade coming up soon with the expected jump from Firefox ESR version 140 to 153 next month. Work has already been ongoing for a while to prepare Konform Browser v153 to be the most secure Firefox build at release. Early alpha builds based on FF153beta are available for anyone who wants to do early testing or help out with any other contribution.
Current Konform Browser 140.x is production-ready and expected to keep receiving security updates and bugfixes for at least a couple of release cycles after initial v153 release so users can upgrade at their leisure.
If you try it, would love to hear your feedback on the browser - and if you like it, tell your friends!
Installation instructions provided for most Linux distros
New: Artix Linux package, Gentoo ebuild
Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@konform
1 but not without C++
2 or install 😘
Thanks for looking into it. Please see my response to other comments around here. Sure, a global toggle would be fine but at least a per-site whitelist for any websites like YouTube, Outlook, Gmail, maybe even Telegram Web (since it can schedule msgs), and any service that offers scheduling of content delivery.
Even greater would be a warning that this is one of the things that the browser does; it should fat-warn you with big, bold or highlighted text during installation that “⚠️ Any scheduled content may end up sending or publishing in a significantly different time zone than your actual. ⚠️”
Why was there literally no warning by anyone at any point? Me having to find out in the morning by just checking was really quite a needlessly rude awakening. “Here is how to turn this off”; nope, no notice at all. I had to go poking around in /r/LibreWolf to find out that the only way to do this is to already know exactly what to look for in the sprawling
about:config, where it doesn’t even fall under “time” at all.This sort of forced thing can cause a domino effect of confusion if you need to schedule a private live-stream for a personal event or something and watchers around the world are like, “Wut? Where’s the action?” We ended up not doing it for unrelated reasons, but long after I had left LibreWolf, I had a small-yet-international funeral to hold for a traveler (the stream of which was originally to be linked to specific contacts across different time zones), which I would now absolutely not dare to try under LW versus a normal browser. It felt disgusting that the browser forcibly got in the way instead of just being a passive help.
“Do you want to spoof your time zone?” could so easily be just one check box during installation or in the settings anywhere…
Sounds frustrating and I can see how that can be confusing. Had similar peeves with other imposed limitations that initially drove motivation of developing this project so can relate!
While we have to recognize that there is inherent conflict in expectations of “browser doesn’t disclose my location” and “website knows my timezone” and that Konform Browser will continue defaulting to privacy, you highlight gap in UX and user control that I agree can be improved on. Shouldn’t be too much work to add more make more discoverable selective settings UI for this too in a future release.
There’s some other aspects that often play into this particular scenario and can vary per site:
Try being a part of a team in multiple timezones, some of which follow Daylight Savings Time (from different dates) and some not. Now schedule a recurring weekly meeting for the same time and coordinate that over chat. This is just inherently messy. Communicating this properly in UI is subtle and confusion like the one you described often arise when webapp developers assumptions and user assumptions don’t align. Some even say we should do away with timezones alltogether.
1: Someone even made list of lists of falsehoods programmers believe about time
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