CharmCityCrab
commented
6 months ago Hamburger menu>Customize Homepage>Uncheck any categories you don't want (Including all of them- or at least all of the listed ones)
I do think your request, where it concerns sponsored shortcuts specifically (See the very end of this post for a brief discussion of everything else you mentioned), is reasonable and probably in scope for the project, but I'm not sure how easy or difficult it would be for the devs to implement. It's up to them whether they want to tackle it or not (Plus, last I heard they were willing to accept patches submitted via pull requests from anyone- if compatible with what the devs and users want or are okay with. So, in theory, if you can code, you could offer them a patch [I can't code, so I get it if you can't either, though your username leads me to believe you may be able to. :) ]).
However, in the meantime (or if it would require too many resources for the project to maintain ditching the sponsored stories option or whatever it is), you can turn it off using the above path.
I noticed my sponsored pages were toggled to off. I can't remember if I did it or if that's a developer ticked setting (i.e. It may default to off unless you enable it on a new install as a way to make sure users aren't seeing ads out of the box, but giving them the option to see this sponsored stuff if they want to for some reason [Which would be the opposite of, say, Firefox, where all this stuff defaults to on]). My current install dates back a couple years (I'm on the latest version that came out recently, though, of course), and may have included some information ported over from my previous phone, where Iceraven had been installed virtually since it's inception. So, my four year old install (Albeit over the course of two phones) may be different from defaults in key ways, which is the point, actually (You know, having options and being able to customize and forget about the stuff you don't like that isn't there or can be turned off and forgotten), but makes it hard for me to remember what the defaults are at this point. :)
I just have never seen a sponsored shortcut on Iceraven.
Anything sponsored you might see with the setting on is coming from people paying Mozilla Firefox, not Iceraven, though, if that makes any difference. Iceraven isn't making any money off of them AFAIK.
If turning it off yourself isn't enough for you, and if the devs decide they have to leave it and no one can offer a free standing patch as a pull request, it seems like one in-between option might be to default it to off and gray out the box, or eliminate the setting visually and then set it to off in the code. I don't know if that'd be any easier than ripping out all the code pertaining to it, but if it is, most people would probably deem that to be good enough.
That's the sponsored stuff, which obviously is undesirable.
When it comes to the jump back in stuff, most visited, etc., those are actually features that all come from the sites you have visited. Most visited is the sites you've visited the most often. Jump back in is the site(s) you were looking at most recently. They really have nothing to do with advertising anything as long as the sponsored option is unchecked, and many people like or rely on them.
So, I'd leave the above stuff in even while taking the sponsored stories out if feasible (Though, like I said, you can turn it off right now on your personal install if you want, and it may or may not be off by default for new installs, but if it isn't off for them, they can turn it off the same way).
Something like whether you want shortcuts to your most visited sites doesn't sound like an advertising situation to me. It's just about whether you'd like that sort of thing or not. So, I think the current status quo where it's a user option works. Honestly, I have most visited shortcuts on- I don't feel strongly about needing them, but I guess I like them enough not to turn them off- and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so they make sense as what they are, an option. Whether they should be the default or not is complex- unfortunately Iceraven doesn't have the money to like do a focus group and a telephone poll or something (Which in a way is a good thing, because those type of things often lead to browsers that all look and act the same instead of giving users with minority preferences a choice to opt-in and opt-out of things, or to switch to browsers that more closely match what they want.).
But you're right on the narrow issue of sponsored shortcuts. You can turn them off easily, but ideally they wouldn't be there at all.
I do like your idea of more control over bookmarks in general. At one point I mentioned granular control of cookies, so the user could see a list and delete individually if desired, like desktop cookies in most desktop browsers, and was told at that time that it was a good idea, but not something they had the time or ability to do right away back then.
seniordevel
Add static instead of dynamic bookmarks to homepage.
Recent bookmarks are unreliable, important older bookmarks might vanisch. Allow manual order and edit.
You also might want to consider removal of redundant non-static homepage settings which more or less just mirror browser history: -most visited -jump back -recent (-sponsored, except Icraven developers earn the money)
Most important: -configurable manual bookmarks only