Zen is…
I was a Firefox user for a long time, even before I started using Linux. I still like it, but I don’t like what Mozilla does, so using a different browser is my way of protesting.
Then, I knew the Zen browser. It’s Firefox based, elegant, and it has the new vertical tabs trending that started some time ago. I’ve been using it for maybe year, maybe a little more, and everything went fine until a week ago.
Is it a coincidence with this update? Who knows.
The situation is GitHub started to fail to load the CSS, it looks like this.
I first thought, well, it’s GitHub, it has been failing since months ago, and it wouldn’t surprise me that this is just another issue. I was pretty busy on my work this week, so I didn’t have much time to work on my side project and in consequence to use GitHub that often.
Surprisingly, I was not the only one with this problem. I found this issue on the Zen repo a couple of days ago, and the user describes exactly what I’m experiencing.
I commented this:
I open the exact same GitHub url on another browser and it loads correctly, but Zen still refuses to load it.
And this:
Ctrl + Shift + R and clearing cookies don’t work. The only thing that works is closing and re-opening the browser. But it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.
One dev tried to help me, but nothing worked.
This morning I discovered something new. While one GitHub page refuses to load in a certain tab, it loads if I open it in another tab. Strange. I’m not a web dev, so I really have no idea how to continue debugging this, and the advices I get from AI about touching things on the developer tools just don’t work. At this point I can only wait for a new update to see if the error it’s still there.
I even tested a browser called Helium, just in case I have to switch from Zen. I liked it, it’s also good-looking, has vertical tabs, and it’s privacy focused. Sadly it’s Chromium based, I really would like to stay in the Firefox forks ecosystem.
Anyway, I’ll continue trying to figure out how to fix it, and if I do, I’ll comment it on the GitHub issue I just referenced.
Have a good day and remember to be happy.