browser that goes through a proxy on phone and desktop

[holden j caufield]

I started using Puffin browser on my Android phone for flash and it's so much faster than the default browser on my phone or chrome.

I'd like to find a good desktop browser that goes through a proxy or if you guys know of any good fast free ones.

 

[jagec]

Uh, any of them them?

In Firefox it's under Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->Settings

 

[lxskllr]

What do you mean by "proxy"? All browsers AFAIK can use a proxy. If you mean a compressing proxy that reduces quality to speed up browsing, I think Opera has that; they used to anyway. That comes with privacy concerns since you're doing your browsing through a central location that is operated by a company, and not you.

 

[holden j caufield]

Not sure what puffin's proxy does but it's magnitudes faster on my phone than any browser, the exception is when I go from inside wifi to my 4g lte outside it needs to re establish a connection. I tried another proxy manually in IE and it was excruciatingly slow.

Has anyone pointed their ie or firefox to use puffin's server. I'm ok with it, since I won't be using any pw through these sites.

 

[lxskllr]

I just looked at Puffin's page, and they say this...

Speed is one of the most crucial aspects of mobile browsers. Puffin Browser, with its revolutionary JavaScript engine and cloud computing technology, utilizes servers to preprocess and compress web pages, achieving loading times others can only dream of. Puffin Browser's compression technology will give you speeds far greater than built-in browsers, even on slow mobile networks.

http://www.puffinbrowser.com/index.php

So they're compressing pages to speed loading. It looks like Opera still has the turbo feature...

On slow internet connections Opera Turbo will compress pages for faster, all-conditions browsing.

http://www.opera.com/computer

Keep in mind images will be degraded as well as the mentioned privacy concerns, with the option for the companies to inject ads into your browser session. I speed up my connection by blocking ads, and js. It probably isn't as good as compression, but I prefer retaining control.

 

[jagec]

Keep in mind images will be degraded as well as the mentioned privacy concerns, with the option for the companies to inject ads into your browser session.

If the browser's free and uses that much server-side processing, it's safe to assume that they're selling all of your data and injecting ads to pay the server bill.

 

[holden j caufield]

Firefox with noscript is pretty fast but of course I lose a lot of functionality. I use opera mini on my phone which I think goes through another proxy and for some reason puffin is probably 3x+ faster.

 

[lxskllr]

If you want to play with it, I found this on Puffin's site...

1. Q: How can I block 'Puffin Web Browser'?

There are 2 methods. The first method is through access control of IP addresses, and the second method is by checking SSL certificate. Choice can be made by the capability of your firewall and content filtering system.

For the first method, you can simply block these IP addresses (CIDR) used by Puffin Web Browser:

107.178.33.0/24
107.178.34.0/24
107.178.35.0/24
107.178.37.0/24
107.178.38.0/24
107.178.39.0/24
107.178.41.0/24
107.178.42.0/24
107.178.43.0/24
107.178.45.0/24
107.178.46.0/24
107.178.47.0/24
206.173.221.0/24 (New. Added at 2014/03)

http://www.puffinbrowser.com/faq/

Those would be the addresses they use. Whether or not it'll work with Firefox, I don't know, but I suspect it won't work as expected, or will require further hacking.

 

[Mushkins]

Keep in mind images will be degraded as well as the mentioned privacy concerns, with the option for the companies to inject ads into your browser session. I speed up my connection by blocking ads, and js. It probably isn't as good as compression, but I prefer retaining control.

It's amazing how often you'll find that a page will load 99%, but the CSS is all jacked up because some ad network is being slow in filling in their junk. Noscript and Adblock make a world of difference for page load times.

 

[Ichinisan]

It's amazing how often you'll find that a page will load 99%, but the CSS is all jacked up because some ad network is being slow in filling in their junk. Noscript and Adblock make a world of difference for page load times.

I'm pretty sure Anandtech or their ad network recently changed something that made the experience intolerable from my iDevices.

I'm ripping my hair out here.

 

[John Connor]

I'm pretty sure Anandtech or their ad network recently changed something that made the experience intolerable from my iDevices.

I'm ripping my hair out here.

It looks like Anandtech added Purch and score card research. I have never seen those before. They are blocked with Ghostery. I also use Noscript and a bunch of other addons in Pale Moon.