Which browser should one use if one is after stability and support for existing features?

Official Website: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

Repo: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/downloads

Note: also you can download manually the compressed package from official website and install it, this build has automatic upgrade tool activated, if you download Waterfox from the repo, this tool is not activated and i don't recommend to use it because this build is updated from the repo when it is released a new build.

I use Firefox ESR. Works fine for now, but it will break legacy extensions at some point next year.

It is not like NPAPI, XUL and XPCOM are dropped with no reason.

NPAPI "plugins are a source of performance problems, crashes, and security incidents": https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/

WebExtensions' API does not expose Firefox's internals as much as XUL/XPCOM, eases developers' life (almost no work to port from Chrome to Firefox) and, as a consequence, will get us more add-ons.

By dropping these old technologies, which are tightly coupled with Firefox's core (unlike the codecs in video players), ground-breaking changes of that core (e.g., a multi-process Firefox) become possible: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/

Users who have tried Firefix 57 say it is the first version where those ground-breaking changes start to make a clearly visible difference in terms of performance.

As for opening files (e.g., videos) with specialized applications, you can still use the download feature or open the URL from the application in question.

It is already old-school to still be mentioning Midori, and LXQt has been in the cutting edge for the Gtk+, Xfce, KDE refugees since 2014, so LXQt related QupZilla has been also in the WebKit cutting edge.
WebKit based: Midori hasn't seen a new release since 2015 and was recently removed by Hyperbola. When I last tested it it suffered from stability issues (it sometimes unexpectedly crashed). Epiphany/Web has changed dramatically over the years: the old extensions no longer work after the browser switched to a newer WebKit engine, JavaScript can no longer be disabled in the settings or through dconf-editor (since the developers thought this was a pointless feature to offer) and add-ons are now integrated in the browser (at the moment mostly adblock). On the bright side, ALSA is still supported, the browser can be used to access LibreCMC router's web interface which does not support SSL, and since it is part of GNOME it is actively developed. The browser might still support NPAPI plugins (they appear under about:plugins), although I couldn't test my configuration, as I use ViewTube which requires Greasemonkey which is currently missing (the developers might integrate it into a future release). NPAPI plugin support might depend on whether Apple supports it in the future in their WebKit based desktop browser (they currently do).

If I recall correctly, isn't GNU IceCat constantly being updated also in
Trisquel?

I noticed this to be true because when I inspect the version of the
package in the repositories, I get the same version I'm using now from
GNU Guix. So I vote for sticking with GNU IceCat from Trisquel.

Alternativelly, you can go the longer route: after installing Trisquel,
install GNU Guix package manager, and from it install GNU IceCat.

Comparing the common advice of adding a repository/PPA to your package
manager, and the GNU Guix way suggested above: the second has the
advantage of having GNU FSDG-committed repositories and community by
default, having focus on reproducibility and a free/libre software
community.

2017-11-01T18:09:28+0100 name at domain wrote:
> As you know Trisquel's recent releases (6 and 7 and the upcoming 8)
> are long term releases.
>
> These releases tend to offer software which does not receive version
> updates for the available packages, however they do offer version
> updates for the main Mozilla browser.
>
> Many of the browsers provided by Trisquel have changed dramatically
> over the past few years, so finding a browser which one can update
> regularly without breaking exiting features (similar to a new video
> player which offers support for new codecs while retaining support for
> older codecs) is a difficult task. I'll cover the main issues with the
> popular browsers.
>
> Mozilla based (Abrowser/IceCat): Mozilla's decision to switch to web
> extensions will break many legacy add-ons. In addition, support for
> ALSA was dropped in recent versions and NPAPI based plugins which
> enabled playback of video using players such as VLC (instead of using
> HTML5) no longer work. At the moment IceCat is based on an older ESR
> (extended support release) version of Firefox which still supports
> these features, however they will probably be dropped in the next
> version. Firefox forks such as Waterfox (which currently supports
> ALSA) might rectify some of the issues (the latest version fails to
> playback video using an external player).
>
> Seamonkey based (Seamonkey/Iceape): Currently the browsers unction the
> same as in the past, but they will probably change as well as they
> base their code on newer versions of Firefox. Another Firefox fork
> called Pale Moon (which looks very similar to Seamonkey with the Sea
> Fox and GNOMErunner add-ons) promises to offer support for older
> features, but the browser is currently incompatible with many Mozilla
> add-ons (a task the developers are addressing).
>
> WebKit based: Midori hasn't seen a new release since 2015 and was
> recently removed by Hyperbola. When I last tested it it suffered from
> stability issues (it sometimes unexpectedly crashed). Epiphany/Web has
> changed dramatically over the years: the old extensions no longer work
> after the browser switched to a newer WebKit engine, JavaScript can no
> longer be disabled in the settings or through dconf-editor (since the
> developers thought this was a pointless feature to offer) and add-ons
> are now integrated in the browser (at the moment mostly adblock). On
> the bright side, ALSA is still supported, the browser can be used to
> access LibreCMC router's web interface which does not support SSL, and
> since it is part of GNOME it is actively developed. The browser might
> still support NPAPI plugins (they appear under about:plugins),
> although I couldn't test my configuration, as I use ViewTube which
> requires Greasemonkey which is currently missing (the developers might
> integrate it into a future release). NPAPI plugin support might depend
> on whether Apple supports it in the future in their WebKit based
> desktop browser (they currently do).
>
> Others: I haven't tested anything else. Other browsers might be worth
> checking out, however note that several are blacklisted by libre
> distributions due to severe issues (not just recommending non-free
> add-ons), such as Konquerer due to qt5-webengine being non-free. I'm
> not sure Iridium (Chromium based) is considered free at the moment.
>

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