Thoughts on Web Browsers and Request for Comment

I'd like advice, if you can offer any. Please scroll down to the RFQ section or read the whole article if you can stand my blather. Thanks!

I doubt most of you have noticed, but a little while ago, Google dropped support for third-party access to its APIs. Apparently they misplaced the keys or something, but suddenly bookmark sync in Chromium (the non-branded, open-source edition of Chrome) stopped working.

Now, if I were a normal person, I'd install actual Chrome, but the key word is "open source." I use a lot of Google products, but that's mostly because there aren't really alternatives. For browsers, there are some options, and up until this happened, Chromium was one of the best. All of the features of Chrome, but without the extra Google trackers (I know, some argue that analytics are needed for product improvement, but you really have to work at those to get useful data and in the meantime it's hard to tell if it's being creepy instead) and fully open (Plus, I run Linux, so having stuff right in the package manager that's been built to work for your install is nice too, and has less bloat/issues than some random package you download, even if Google made it).

I recall for the longest time the devs refused to install Widevine support, for one thing. Sure, it sucked not being able to watch Netflix on PC, but as it turned out I never really watched much Netflix at all, ever (so it basically was a wash), and I quite respect the dedication to not add a blackboxed plugin, much less one that's as dedicatedly anti-user as DRM. There are a billion arguments on why region-locking and DRM are antiproductive, so I'll skip those.

TL;DR: I follow the philosophy that software should be open. In most cases I admittedly don't understand or sometimes even bother with the source code, but having the option and ability to build, improve, or update it in general is invaluable. On the other hand, if it's an embedded software development platform or library, I very much do access the source code, so it varies. There's certainly nothing better for figuring out features and APIs.

Anyway, so one would suppose that if you want an open-source alternative to Chrome that isn't Chromium, you'd use Firefox. Which is what I did.

Here's where things get "fun":

Did you know that for over a decade, a number of very common and annoying bugs have been left unfixed? It's true. I've found any number of incredibly aggravating antifeatures or missing options that have been part of Chrome and, I am given to understand, many other browsers as well.

• Searching for a bookmark will find it, but will not actually show its location in your bookmarks folder(s). Firefox ships with three or four different folders. Most users, including me, add many more. I want to say that other browsers even let you go to the bookmark itself in that folder. Firefox doesn't even say what the containing folder's name is. (One of the stated reasons is that the user might have multiple folders with the same name, alongside the fact that the backend somehow would need a redesign. For the former, other browsers ignore this problem. The user can hopefully be trusted to actually name their folders differently and if not, there's always the "locate" button (it amuses me that even part of the reason for supporting a really annoying problem is that it's not user-friendly to change). For the second, I regret the difficulty, but there were any number of plugins that somehow managed this with add-on features (most don't work now thanks to NPAPI being removed, and there are always security concerns with these, admittedly) and it alone is nearly enough to make me quit using Firefox again.
• You can't actually change the URL when saving a bookmark. Want to remove the tracking bits from a querystring? Save a YT video but without the playlist? Any number of things you can name? Nope. Here's the officially-sanctioned process: Save the bookmark. Find it in folder or search for it. Select it and choose "properties." Set or edit the proper URL. Close the bookmark manager or sidebar. Return to your previously scheduled browsing. SIGH. The really sad part is that this one was closed for comments entirely (because upset users kept reopening it -- anyone would ordinarily consider this a sign) and attempting to post about it is a good way to get your account banned.
• Remember the above? You can't set the URL from the "save bookmark" button? Turns out that if you select any bookmark for editing anywhere else you can't set the folder. You can drag it around and through your folder structure, but you can't just set it directly. Worse, if you're using the bookmarks toolbar, you can't even do that properly. It's not possible to multi-select outside the sidebar or manager, so if you thoughtlessly browsed to it in the toolbar (or noticed it while there for something else), you're stuck physically dragging them... one-by-one. The best option is to give it up as wasted time and open it in the manager instead (which requires finding it again...). Admittedly, you could also enable the fourth list item here and then open all the bookmarks in a new tab, then use the "save bookmark" button to change the folder, but this has RAM limits and will waste bandwidth on your and the sites' part.
• All of the edit and save menus let you "tag" your bookmarks instead (and one of the issues to adding the URL box was that the menu was too crowded, not even to add a "more options" button. So why is "tag" a default feature when everything else puts the URL box/folder here?!). As far as I can tell, this feature is unique to Firefox. Does anyone actually use this, and why, when you have folders already? This sounds messier!
• Want to open multiple bookmarks from the toolbar at once? You can't multi-select, and if you click one, all your folders instantly close, meaning you have to repeat all your steps to find them. There is actually an option for this, but it's hidden and off by default. Go to about:config, search "browser.bookmarks.openInTabClosesMenu," and turn it off. I give partial credit for having this one, but how do you even find that in the first place?
• History is really weird and doesn't always seem to have things I know I've searched. Additionally, it's grouped by folders rather than being all onscreen at once. Up to the last month things are "fine" if you make sure to set the view to "unsorted" (sorting by time actually disrupts the order by applying an alphabetical sort on top). Don't bother looking at "today" or "yesterday" since those hide stuff like the by-month/year folders will. After that things start disappearing into their own folders never to be seen again.
• Synced bookmarks don't have a favicon, and short of clicking each one there's no way to reload them. I really wish there were a command, context menu option, etc that would slowly make get requests for those icons if they don't exist. Obviously this is a potential privacy issue, but letting the user run it or making it per-bookmark (still not having to physically visit the site) would be nice. Alternately, other browsers (at least Chrome/ium anyway) embed the favicon in the sync data.
• The UI is a bit weird - bookmarks and history managers open in a new window, not a tab. Also, they have their own special button for opening them rather than being under the main menu dropdown button. I know Firefox lets you customize layouts - can this be changed?

All of the listed issues have a middling amount of upvotes for importance, but if you were to read how many duplicate entries were filed, voted, and then deleted as duplicates, I suspect that the number of votes is off by an order of magnitude. This on top of just how hard it is to find the Firefox bug report/feature suggestion page (and then make an account just for this) tells me that most people probably have either given up or can't figure out how to complain about it.

RFQ:
Do these sound annoying to you, or am I just being buggy?

Also, do you know of other browsers with the approximate set of following features:

• Bookmark sync between computers
• Android support (I hate the OS, and so far I've hated all the browsers, but since I need something mobile... This is a somewhat optional feature)
• Fully open source, ideally possible to build a full "package" from source (as opposed to a "here's the source, we apply magic and get your installer" variety; many of the open-source programs I've seen do this. JetBrains, for those of their products that are open source, actually requires you to compile it in their IDE. Others let you compile, but you're left to run it out of your build folder alongside all the intermediate files and the source code. On top of that, some of those will then crash if you move the built version or even the entire containing folder).
• Supports decent privacy features. Anti-tracking, Do Not Track, DoH support (preferably with the ability to set the DoH provider).