[HN Gopher] Brave Browser Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M...
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Brave Browser Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active
Users
Author : theBashShell
Score : 218 points
Date : 2020-11-02 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| pachico wrote:
| I use Brave but mostly because it's fast and blocks lots of ads.
| mapgrep wrote:
| Brave is the only browser on iOS that lets me turn off javascript
| on a per-site basis. VERY useful.
|
| (If you're aware of others, I'm all ears.)
| bmarquez wrote:
| Brave recently became my default browser, but I personally don't
| care for the crypto stuff.
|
| The current iOS beta allows users to sync their bookmarks with
| Windows and iOS privately, and it's what convinced me to switch.
| I didn't need to create an account with my email address, or
| install iCloud...just scan a QR code.
|
| I wish they'd fix the captcha problem though, a lot of sites that
| use ReCaptcha think Brave browser users are bots (due to the
| security).
| colordrops wrote:
| I appreciate that you can turn off all of their additional
| features pretty easily.
| bsclifton wrote:
| Fix for the CAPTCHA issue coming! There's a pre-release version
| out which you can try: https://github.com/brave/brave-
| browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71
|
| Shooting to have the official version out today or tomorrow
| atty wrote:
| I don't think I'm alone as a Brave user when I say that the
| crypto stuff and some of their default settings aren't the
| greatest, but overall still provides a compelling solution to
| multiple problems. So while it's not a perfect product, and the
| crypto stuff still weirds me out, I find it to be the best option
| for my personal use case. I get chromium and it's large library
| of extensions, as well as having it be decoupled from Google, and
| some decent Adblock and tracker blocking built in. On the
| downside, because of the crypto stuff, I feel like I need to
| double check the news a few times a year to make sure they
| haven't made it mandatory, or done anything shady. Overall I'm
| happy with Brave, and glad to see it growing.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| The opt-in ads are a bunch of shady crypto-currency things, but I
| love it. I've actually been making like ~$5/month from ads
| consistently for almost a year now.
| topspin wrote:
| Yes, 90% of the ads are 'shady crypto-currency things.' I've
| seen ads from Amazon in Brave though. I click on those (and
| some others,) not because I need reminders of Amazon's 'deals'
| and whatnot, but to support Brave.
| sjtindell wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit? I'm obviously interested. I just turn
| on Ads normally?
| topspin wrote:
| Here it is in a nutshell:
|
| By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,)
| Brave will periodically (every 120 minutes or so) popup an
| ad. The ad doesn't appear 'in the browser window.' On Windows
| 10, for instance, it pops up in desktop Notifications. The ad
| is a sentence of text and a button, full stop. No video,
| audio, animations, or anything creepy. Just a little dialog
| box you can click or dismiss.
|
| Every time that happens you receive BAT, a cryptocurrency,
| that accumulates in your automatically created BAT account.
| You do with it what you will but, by default, it is
| periodically distributed to sites that opt-in to accepting
| BAT.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Interesting that a browser designed to block analytics has built
| in analytics. Is this enabled by default?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I was curious too and so I looked it up. I believe it's opt-out
| https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/
|
| Here's a list of the telemetry https://github.com/brave/brave-
| browser/wiki/P3A
| fastball wrote:
| Pretty sure the goal is to block 3rd party ads and tracking
| scripts. The goal was never "block all analytics". For example,
| I don't think Brave will by default block 1st party analytics
| either.
| kqvamxurcagg wrote:
| Been using Brave as my main browser for several months now. It's
| great.
| andirk wrote:
| - Uses far less phone battery. - Blocks abuses of web technology,
| mainly advertising tricks. - Almost identical to Chrome now but
| not part of the Google monolith. - Use Tor w/ 1 click.
|
| Disclosure: I'm invested in $BAT, the browser's native token
| fastball wrote:
| Interesting that you don't mention the BAT / pay for attention
| part of the equation, except as it relates to your own
| investment.
| quaffapint wrote:
| Recommend Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com) as an alternative to
| Brave. Same Chromium based browser, but without any of the crypto
| stuff and has a lot of nice built-in features. Works on
| PC/Mac/Linux/Phone.
| eznzt wrote:
| The UI needs a lot of polish. Other than that, good.
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| +1 Vivaldi is a beautifully designed product in my experience.
| I haven't used on mobile tho.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Vivaldi is a browser that feels like "it's almost there" to me.
| Opera feels like a fully fleshed out and different browser
| whereas vivaldi feels like "hey weve got a massive backlog of
| stuff that doesn't even compare to the competition yet."
|
| My favorite lightweight browser though is fallon. It's like IE
| but not as bad.
| yabones wrote:
| Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN'
| fallacy.
|
| Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound
| by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your
| country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in
| a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.
|
| Or - with browsers - rather than install and configure Firefox to
| disable the (very limited) telemetry and configure ad blockers
| etc, you install a chromium derivative with all the Google pieces
| replaced with a different flavour of mystery sauce. You're still
| having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with
| far less scrutiny than Google.
| naringas wrote:
| > with no oversight whatsoever.
|
| for many of us who grew up in 'third world' (and/or
| 'developing') economies, this is not in any way better to
| "heavily regulated". I expect that people from very corrupt ex-
| soviet states will agree with this sentiment.
| golergka wrote:
| > Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP,
| bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations
| in your country
|
| That's only fallacy if you think I'm using VPN because I care
| about who has my browsing data.
|
| I really couldn't care less. I'm using it because my country
| blocks certain websites and Netflix doesn't have Arrested
| Development or West Wing licenses for it.
| andirk wrote:
| I rarely use the Tor feature which is the VPN "fallacy". It's a
| widely successful anonymity network w/ no relation to Brave. If
| you have issue w/ Tor, then dont use Tor.
| msvan wrote:
| But people don't use Brave because they care about privacy.
| It's the whole monetization angle that appeals to people,
| right?
| dsissitka wrote:
| I use it because it seems like it might be our only hope for
| a Blink based browser with minimal Google nonsense. For
| example, see how Brave, Edge, and Vivaldi (And Mozilla, even
| though they're not Blink based.) responded to Manifest v3.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Tech illiterates tend to think of privacy first, when
| discussing Brave. Go into any geeky subculture not full of
| programmers, and ask about a privacy browser. Brave always
| comes up, the monetization model rarely does
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Tech illiterates are typically not geeky subcultures, and
| they say they value privacy when asked but in reality they
| prefer free and easy to use/access.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I'm referring primarily to gaming subcultures (board and
| video). Tech illiterate may not be the proper term. But
| most geeky people I know (even the ones who build their
| own PCs, and dabble in scripting) have a very cargo-
| cultish understanding of computing technologies.
|
| Dilettantes, perhaps?
| criddell wrote:
| Where are tech illiterates discussing Brave?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I posted this in another child comment, but I think the
| same response is appropriate. I've miscommunicated.
|
| I'm referring primarily to gaming subcultures (board and
| video). Tech illiterate may not be the proper term. But
| most geeky people I know (even the ones who build their
| own PCs, and dabble in scripting) have a very cargo-
| cultish understanding of computing technologies.
|
| Dilettantes, perhaps?
| glouwbug wrote:
| He's probably referring to r/programming
| codehalo wrote:
| Meanwhile, this site has been shitting on Bitcoin and
| cryptocurrencies since 2009.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP,
| bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations
| in your country, you send all your traffic through a third
| party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.
|
| which is precisely the point because one of the most popular
| use cases of VPNs is to send copyright infringement letters to
| /dev/null.
|
| Every single time when VPNs come up there's people talking
| about all the pitfalls of VPNs when the vast majority of people
| just want to get past geo-restrictions or avoid being sued for
| torrenting.
| petre wrote:
| I use it because it blocks ads and it isn't Google Chrome,
| meaning no forced logins, not much BS except for the rewards
| which I disabled and hidden. I can also block scripts with two
| taps. Didn't know it had a VPN. On the desktop I use FF, on
| mobile the UI is quite underwhelming.
| weavejester wrote:
| > Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP,
| bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations
| in your country
|
| That's nice if you live in one of those countries. Some
| countries have very little privacy regulations for data
| collected by ISPs; others actually _mandate_ collection and
| storage of data.
| eznzt wrote:
| What VPN? Are you thinking of Opera?
| meowfly wrote:
| I'm still not sure what the VPN fallacy is, and I'm asking
| genuinely trying to understand.
|
| If someone goes into private mode (and tor becomes enabled) and
| visits a site, wouldn't the owners of that site have less
| information on that person than if they visited from their own
| IP address?
|
| What exactly is the fallacy here?
| layoric wrote:
| If you're in Australia, no fallacy imo, government mandated
| data retention laws in place. I believe started that very few
| gov departments could see this data but has increased over time
| to the point I believe is accessible for some civil cases and
| to organisations [0], so please don't dismiss VPN privacy use
| case as it is very applicable for some. I don't use Brave and
| there are a lot of problematic VPN providers which makes it
| complicated for those who want to use them.
|
| [0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-
| scheme-a...
| axaxs wrote:
| You may overestimate some people, for example myself. I don't
| like firefox, and I don't like ads. Brave is superb for that
| use case.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Hear, hear. The block chain stuff is for the birds, IMO. And
| I don't do the VPN stuff. Not google, but still chromium ,
| with ad-blocking is fantastic.
| [deleted]
| Miner49er wrote:
| How is Brave better than Chromium with uBlock Origin, in this
| case?
| antonok wrote:
| Brave's adblocker is all native code, so it's a bit more
| memory/CPU friendly than uBlock Origin. There's also some
| enhancements like CNAME uncloaking[1], which only otherwise
| works in uBlock Origin on Firefox because Chromium doesn't
| expose the required DNS API support for extensions.
|
| [1] https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/
| ignoramous wrote:
| CNAME cloaking is only the first of many possible
| mitigations. CNAME flattening would be the next likely
| angle of attack.
|
| Advertisers can very well get websites to run "cloud
| functions" at the edge (with Fastly, Cloudflare, Netlify,
| Vercel, AWS Lambda etc) under the first-party domain, and
| the content blockers (native or not) will be none the
| wiser. This is similar to how content blockers struggle
| to block ads served from first-party domains on YouTube
| and other Facebook properties.
|
| Exhibit A: https://github.com/samkelleher/cloudflare-
| worker-google-anal...
| antonok wrote:
| Of course, adblocking has always been and will always be
| a game of cat-and-mouse.
|
| Interesting link. I will say though, Brave's been
| aggressively pushing for an end to third-party cookies,
| and if websites are increasingly forced to run first-
| party analytics as a counter-measure, that is still a
| major win for the internet as a whole.
| tdeck wrote:
| Brave works on mobile and supports ad blocking I've never
| tried it on desktop but on mobile it offers the performance
| of Chrome without the ads.
| axaxs wrote:
| Not a ton of difference on desktop. You can sync without
| logging in, I guess, but that's pretty minor. However, I
| require that my mobile and desktop sync, and as far as I
| can tell you can't ad block Chrome on mobile.
| gsich wrote:
| >Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP,
| bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations
| in your country, you send all your traffic through a third
| party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.
|
| I have seen that argumentation only in reverse when people were
| defending DNS over HTTPs by Cloudflare.
| varispeed wrote:
| Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that
| they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the
| wrist.
|
| I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs
| your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000?
|
| The thing with being protected through paying off politicians
| is that it works, until it doesn't.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes.
| varispeed wrote:
| They did settle, but it is worth noting that Microsoft is
| not Google. I consider Google to be much higher on the
| ladder of evil.
| Craighead wrote:
| Subjective statements are just that
| sneak wrote:
| Not everyone is perpetually stationary. IP geolocation amounts
| to city-level coarse location, and accessing a service over
| time basically shares with them your travel habits: at which
| dates and times are you in which places?
|
| Using a VPN is a good way to obscure that information. Not
| every website you visit or app you use needs to know that
| you're in city X on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and city Y the
| rest of the week. That's pretty sensitive stuff for a lot of
| people.
| fullstop wrote:
| > Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP,
| bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations
| in your country, you send all your traffic through a third
| party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.
|
| Is this in reference to tor?
|
| I use brave because it's fast, compatible with chrome
| extensions, but a least a little bit disconnected from Google.
| Trackers and ads are blocked by default, and it's generally a
| nice browser.
| Miner49er wrote:
| No, OP is comparing VPNs to Brave. With a VPN, you don't
| actually gain privacy, you only replace your ISP with some
| foreign-country entity that operates under foreign laws.
|
| Brave is like that, but a browser. You replace Google/Firefox
| with a smaller, maybe slightly less watched, browser that
| still does the same stuff.
| fossuser wrote:
| In some ways brave is worse.
|
| At least with FF there isn't an incentive to sell your
| attention.
|
| Brave is explicitly positioning themselves as a reseller of
| attention which they then obscure by pretending to focus on
| privacy. I'm not sure why anyone uses them - they're an ad
| company and their incentives are not aligned with their
| users.
|
| I find them really untrustworthy and their pro-privacy
| branding has really confused their users.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The number of examples within the "tech industry" where users
| fall for a fallacy is too long to list.
|
| In these cases, deception of the user is a prerequisite for
| "success".
| Dahoon wrote:
| >"Malware Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active
| Users"
| pkulak wrote:
| Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or
| Edge long before I use Brave.
| wnevets wrote:
| I rather have google track me than infest my machine with
| cryptominers.
| Karunamon wrote:
| That's not how Brave works.
| Dahoon wrote:
| If it walks like a duck...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Great - tell me how to make mouse gestures work on ALL pages -
| that include new tab page/speed dial and firefox internal and I
| am sold. Unfortunately I don't think that anything short of
| messing with the code and rebuilding makes it possible.
| lenitabinol wrote:
| please elaborate
| amitport wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| fuu_dev wrote:
| Have fun:
|
| https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
| pkulak wrote:
| Replacing ads on sites you visit with their ads, wrapped up
| in a cryptocurrency scheme, like you'd expect from a literal
| virus, brought to you by a guy too homophobic to be on
| Mozilla's board.
|
| Plus, and I have no evidence of this apart the synchronized
| hype they do for the browser, but I'm pretty sure Brave is
| secretly bankrolling those very... political... Linux
| YouTubers.
| ColanR wrote:
| > too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board
|
| I do enjoy the irony that Mozilla seems to have gone
| downhill ever since he left / got kicked out. The people
| replacing him, IIRC, aren't as knowledgeable or expert as
| he was. But then, I am somewhat a fan of pure meritocracy.
| coolspot wrote:
| Probably reference to all crypto-coin related stuff in Brave.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Even without the crypto stuff, when I installed it, it felt
| like an intern first eclipse plugin. Few buttons more, a
| different help page and that's it. Didn't inspire technical
| strength and quality.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That's weird, it's pretty indistinguishable from the
| other browsers for me. Reminds me of a cross between
| Opera and Firefox.
|
| It's run by one of the principle Firefox devs (Eich) and
| none of the stories about it ripping people off or being
| insecure appear to have been well founded.
|
| I've used all the major browsers, starting with Mosaic
| and Netscape, was there when FF was phoenix, have been
| writing websites for 20 years (only a small amount of
| that time commercially). YMMV but it seems trustworthy,
| privacy focused, fast enough (ie I can't tell if it's
| different in performance terms).
|
| It's just reskinned Chrome with privacy extensions built
| in and a system to enable people to try and send
| micropayments to sites if the sites are signed up.
|
| It's not reminiscent of Eclipse in anyway for me (mind
| Eclipse to me most evokes poor DE integration, I'm a long
| time KDE user, and having a billion settings).
|
| Use the browser that pleases you most though.
| jolmg wrote:
| > Brave taking cryptocurrency donations "for me" without my
| consent
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
| satysin wrote:
| Do you have anything to back that up?
|
| I ask because I feel the same but don't actually have any proof
| that things are shady. It is just a _feeling_ which obviously
| isn 't enough to convince others but is enough to put me off
| using it the few times I've tried.
|
| Something about all this 'rewards' stuff just _feels_ dodgy. No
| idea why I feel this, I probably read something at some point
| but don 't recall now.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| They lost a lot of credibility when they put an affiliate
| links automatically without any disclosure.
|
| Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-
| browser-aff...
| agilob wrote:
| I never understood why people think affiliate are bad.
|
| I get that it's unethical do it without users consent,
|
| but I am personally OK with anyone using affiliate links
| for whatever I subscribe to. I don't lose anything, I don't
| pay for it, some company is letting other people or smaller
| companies increase budget. I often ask my colleagues if
| they can get me referral link before I signup for
| something. What's wrong with it?
| markdown wrote:
| They create the wrong incentives. In a niche I operate
| in, there are a ton of otherwise reputable websites
| promoting inferior products merely because they make more
| money promoting those products rather than products whose
| owners don't have an affiliate system.
|
| A widget hand-made by an owner-operator in small-town USA
| who sells from his own website gets ignored while the
| Amazon-listed widget made in a Chinese sweatshop gets
| shilled because Amazon pays affiliates.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I've used it for over a year and yeah it's nothing more than
| a feeling -- experience has just been better than anything
| else in terms of the default ad blocking. "Disable your ad-
| blocker" things also leave you alone because they know if you
| are using Brave you aren't going to budge.
| redvenom wrote:
| Brave by default collects telemetry data. It is anonymized
| but any security researcher will tell you that metadata of
| this nature over time can be more revealing that is claimed.
| It's right their in their FAQ.
|
| Brave's primary customers are advertisers. While this is not
| evidence in itself, it is certainly something to be wary of.
| songshuu wrote:
| "Any security researcher" who actually understands how
| differential privacy works would not.
| eznzt wrote:
| >Brave by default collects telemetry data. It is anonymized
| but any security researcher will tell you that metadata of
| this nature over time can be more revealing that is
| claimed.
|
| So like Firefox?
| dsissitka wrote:
| > It's right their in their FAQ.
|
| Which FAQ?
|
| This appears to be the only FAQ that mentions anonymized
| data:
|
| > Will Brave sell user data to advertisers?
|
| >
|
| > We do not have access to identifiable user data. The
| anonymized aggregated ad campaign related data we do
| collect is used for accounting and reporting, but this data
| cannot be mapped back to devices or user identities of any
| kind. Learn more
|
| If you follow the "Learn more" link it says:
|
| > If you switch on Brave Rewards and switch on ads (in
| Rewards settings) you will see ad notifications, and will
| receive BAT to reward you for viewing these ads.
|
| It seems like it's off by default?
| 24t wrote:
| Microsoft and Google are proven bad actors. I'm not much of a
| believer in 'the devil you know'.
| chaBha wrote:
| I recently moved away from datahogger chrome. Google is throwing
| me captcha every single time I use Brave browser, but same thing
| does not happen when using Safari browser. Why is that?
| coolspot wrote:
| User agent string, among orhers, affects how often you get
| captcha.
|
| For example Tor Browser with default user agent gets all the
| captchas, many rounds per. Same Tor Browser with manually
| overriden normal Firefox UA barely gets any captchas.
| axaxs wrote:
| Brave uses Chrome's user agent string.
| pgm8705 wrote:
| I'm guessing 3rd party cookie blocking being on by default.
| satysin wrote:
| The one feature I wish _any_ other browser would do as well as
| Chrome is on-the-fly translation. I think Microsoft Edge does
| this using Bing Translate but I guess as none of the other
| browser makers have a translation service they can use they
| instead rely on a wonky extension that uses Google Translate
| which isn 't anywhere near as smooth as the built-in translate in
| Chrome (naturally).
|
| If anyone has any suggestions I would _love_ to hear them as it
| is the only thing keeping me on Chrome these days.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Because Brave is chromium-based I believe you can actually use
| that exact feature in Brave if you install the Google Translate
| extension.
| satysin wrote:
| Not my experience a few weeks ago when I last tried. It
| prompts you to install a Google Translate extension that
| basically just sends the URL to Google's web translate
| service rather than translate 'in place' like Chrome does.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Google charges (quite a bit) for the translation service.
| Unfortunately, at this time Brave is only able to offer the
| Google Translate extension (which we agree isn't as nice).
| ColanR wrote:
| I imagine that google can do on-the-fly translation because
| they can eat the cost of the servers running the translation.
| Best I've seen for firefox uses deepl, which I've heard (on HN)
| is better than google translate.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| https://Deepl.com/translator is really good IME. It provides
| more fluid translations and some better, more precise use of
| terms for me when translating technical documents (mechanical
| engineering) from French/German.
| dshep wrote:
| I've been using Brave most of this year and really like it.
|
| The killer feature for me is that it lets you disable scripts for
| individual websites or 'Allow scripts once'. This basically makes
| most paywall news sites readable.
| fsflover wrote:
| This is exactly what Noscript extension on Firefox does since
| forever.
| dshep wrote:
| Noscript is incredibly fussy and hard to use. Also it does
| not have the 'allow scripts [to run] once' ability afaict.
| fsflover wrote:
| Works smooth for me. This option exists too, it's called
| "allow temporarily".
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Much of what Brave does out of the box can be achieved with
| an array of extensions which have existed for some time. One
| major appeal of Brave is that these features are built-in,
| on-by-default, and have no reliance upon Google to not break
| them moving forward (see Manifest v3 and uBlock Origin,
| and/or MetaMask being temporarily removed from Google's Web
| and Play Stores). With Brave, the type of privacy and control
| users expect is baked-in, and easy to use. Download, Run, and
| Done. The way it ought to be in 2020
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| If you work on brave and are reading this... can you stop showing
| random Crypto banners over nytimes.com and the like? It's very
| tacky
| bsclifton wrote:
| That's part of "Web3" (aka Dapps) and you can turn it off.
| Under brave://settings/extensions for `Ethereum provider for
| using Dapps` pick `None`
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| I don't get any crypto banners when I go to nytimes.com in
| Brave.
| fullstop wrote:
| I think that this is what they were referring to:
| https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png
|
| I'm not sure why it shows up for nytimes.com, though, and not
| other sites.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Some times perform a bit of reflection, and scan over
| global objects in the document window. This can sometimes
| trigger our dApp-detection logic.
|
| The experience should be better in Brave Beta, and in the
| future we hope to get rid of the problem entirely by
| removing the current injection-based detection.
| mdre wrote:
| Can someone enlighten me on why does literally everyone use
| Chromium as the engine for their browser? Why does Firefox not
| have anything comparable to Chromium/Node/Electron? Is Chrome's
| JS engine that superior or what?
| taftster wrote:
| I don't have a real answer for you, more just shades of
| understanding. I believe it's the case that Chromium is just
| more extensible and designed for reuse. Whereas Firefox is more
| monolithic and less able to be extended.
|
| I don't think it has anything to do with the javascript engine
| per se, but more the general API surface that Chromium gives
| you. There might be some additional benefit that Chrome is the
| most used browser (currently) and so there might be some
| developer sentiment or familiarity with it; Chrome's popularity
| might push adoption for Chromium.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't understand why Mozilla itself doesn't support an
| Electron clone.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| Because the people calling the shots don't understand the
| "market". They've been coasting on their (predecessors')
| early success for years. Their numbers with respect to
| audience size is dependent on the same factors that
| OpenOffice depends on: people with a faint awareness of
| what the project is / once was but no real exposure to the
| ins and outs of what has changed about the projects in the
| last several years.
| err4nt wrote:
| I know there are browser fans who have a preference of UI or
| companies etc etc, but the answer to the question of why so
| many people choose to fork Chromium to make their browser
| distro is solely based on the fact that it's technically the
| best browser engine out there and to fork anything else would
| be putting you at an immediate disadvantage compared to forking
| Chromium, so you'd start with the best and then extend it from
| there.
| bgdam wrote:
| The last time I looked into this (about 3 years ago), it was
| ridiculously difficult to embed Gecko into anything, almost to
| the point of being impossible. Chromium in comparison is
| relatively easy to embed (via CEF or LibChromiumContent).
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| Mozilla had an Electron alternative before Electron even
| existed. It stopped being a viable option several years ago,
| though. The reason is the same as for every other problem that
| Mozilla is afflicted with: incompetent leadership.
|
| (Note also that the choice is not a dichotomy between Blink and
| Gecko. WebKit exists.)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Webkit has the same foundation as Blink. So while it's
| diverging they are much closer than Gecko or Edge HTML.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| To say "it's diverging" has to be the understatement of
| season. Two simple questions for you: what was the purpose
| of your comment, and how is it relevant in this context?
| fastball wrote:
| All I can tell you is that when watching HTML5 videos on
| Firefox my CPU spins way up. On Chromium it does not.
|
| Also yes in general every JS-heavy web app I've ever used runs
| much smoother on Chromium than FF.
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