Alternative browser to Opera. Not interested in Pale Moon.

[TheLurker]

Here we go again....

Opera's an OK browser, but I'm getting am pissed off with it pushing changes without asking permission.

Suggest an alternative.

Neither Chrome nor Pale Moon will be considered. Anyone suggesting IE will get kicked.

It _must_ be possible to have JavaScript disabled by default with a whitelist of sites allowed to use it.

It must _not_ push updates unasked.

It'll have to be able to run on on Win7 32 bit and 64 bit.

Simples?
And I'd prefer something that's not too bloated.

[woollypigs]

https://brave.com/ ?

[drgannet]

https://www.puffinbrowser.com/ ?

[Afasoas]

firefox with noscript plugin?

** ducks **

[interested]

If you want something stable, why not Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release)?
 
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ 
 
That would mean at least one year of usage with only security updates, no enhancements or new features. And a predictable upgrade path with a 3 month time window, so no sudden changes to a new version in order to get security updates, and lots of time to check for problems or make roll-backs in case the new version have a showstopper bug.   
 
The new Firefox 60 series is superb, so I assume the Firefox ESR 60 version is too.

"Noscript" takes cares of all you JS worries: whitelisting, temporary permissions etc.   
 

[Ham]

K-Meleon fits the bill http://kmeleonbrowser.org/

[mike]

as a non-techie, I'd love to know why people use other browsers.  I can understand something like duckduckgo and it's non-tracking but what are you doing (or *not* doing) that means you need a different browser, which I'm completely oblivious to?

[Ham]

The most frequent reason I use k-meleon is to read ad-blocker restricted sites, or I want to copy an image/url that is obfuscated by java, another reason is when I need to venture into potential murky corners of t'internets and potential browser vulnerabilities are a concern. The original reasons for Opera - lightweight, fast and lack of memory bloat are largely overcome by modern day CPU power.

[Mr Larrington]

https://www.puffinbrowser.com/ ?

Puffin is my browser of choice on the iPad these days.  Chrome got slow.

[ian]

I confess I just use Safari these days – blindingly fast and doesn't seem to break something with every release like Chrome. If a site is that annoying, I just don't bother visiting. I'm happy with basic adverts. I, of course, don't visit murky sites on the internet, perish the thought.

[TheLurker]

...what are you doing (or *not* doing) that means you need a different browser, which I'm completely oblivious to?

I don't like stuff that 'phones home.  I particularly don't like stuff that 'phones home, reverses the charges and then installs stuff on my machine that I haven't asked for; which is why Opera is getting the boot.

As for the JavaScript thing.  A small handful of reasons, my cranky old grid displays pages much quicker if it isn't forced to download/upload/record/turn around and shake it all about by dozens of scripts on a page.  The New Statesman's site is particularly _awful_ with JS on.  The day job means I come into contact with a lot of JS written by other people and there is no bloody way I'm going to allow crappy code like that anywhere near my machine.  Finally, and it is less of a problem these days, but JS scripts can be used maliciously; as if the general crappiness of JS wasn't already sufficiently malicious.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'm probably not going for Puffin.  If they can't keep their certificates up to date....