Web Browser Notes

Contents

• Working with Chromium based browsers
• Working with Google Chrome
• Working with Brave Browser
  • Settings / Preferences Brave Browser
• Working with Firefox
• Useful Links
• TODOs

Working with Chromium based browsers

Chromium.app proper does not force strict HSTS, ie. does not force HTTPS for local .foo TLD however Vivaldi and Google Chrome force HTTPS for .dev and .foo, so a quick hack can be to use a different TLD, ie. .exp for local dev work.

To access the HSTS settings in Vivaldi or Chrome

vivaldi://net-internals/#hsts
chrome://net-internals/#hsts

Chromium based browsers, ie. Brave-Browser-Dev.app, Google Chrome.app, and Chromium.app have a plethora of settings accessible by going to

chrome://settings

and

chrome://components

To get verbose settings, ie. version of browser, command line flags to start the browser, the version of V8, and flash version used by the browser, etc, etc

chrome://version

To find the Profile Path for a Chromium based browser

chrome://version

search for Profile Path

Working with Google Chrome

A good starting point for customizing Chromium based browsers is to put the below location in the URL bar

chrome://about

To launch Google Chrome with the Developer Tools persistentaly open through windows and tabs and on startup.

open -a "Google Chrome" --args --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs

To enable an extension while using incognito mode

1. Right click near the three circles on the upper right of the browser and select Manage Extension then select the extension you'd like to use in incognito mode by selecting the extension and toggling Allow in incognito.

Working with Brave Browser

Settings / Preferences

Brave stores its settings on macOS in the below location

~/Library/Application\ Support/brave/

Working with Firefox

To print or list the total number of bookmarks in Firefox

1. Select Show All Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu.
2. Click on All Bookmarks on the left hand side of the window.
3. In the search input, put a / forward slash and then Firefox should list all bookmarks.
4. Within the main pane of the Bookmarks window, select all bookmarks, ⌘+A, and at the bottom of the window, ie. something like 1100 items should be displayed if all bookmarks have been selected in the Bookmarks window.

Working with settings in Firefox

The Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar can be customized by editing userChrome.css in

$HOME/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[HASH.default]/chrome/userChrome.css

For my particular use case I remove the bookmark folders icon associated with folders, and use different emojis to represent content stored within the folder to save space on the Bookmarks Toolbar. The settings I use to do this can be found here

Useful Links

• firefox | allow non standard ports

TODOs