
Brave 0.55 released - joshschreuder
https://brave.com/new-brave-browser-release-available-for-general-download/
======
newscracker
I didn’t understand what this meant until I dug up more information,
especially since I thought Brave was already based on Chromium. Turns out that
so far only the browser engine was Chromium based. Now its user interface is
also transitioning from an in-house open source framework called Muon [1] to
Chromium.

This is what an announcement more than six months ago (from March 2018) [2]
says:

> _Brave for Windows, macOS, and Linux currently use the Chromium rendering
> engine, but (unlike Brave for Android) it uses a custom HTML and JavaScript
> user interface. Technical readers will know that we call the runtime for
> this user interface Muon, which is a more secure fork of Electron, and which
> therefore combines Chromium and Node.js to enable applications built using
> JavaScript and HTML user interfaces and Node modules for the application
> logic._

After getting rid of Chrome recently (not that I was using it much before),
I’ve been using Firefox (my favorite browser), Safari and sometimes Brave.

[1]: [https://github.com/brave/muon](https://github.com/brave/muon)

[2]: [https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-
release/](https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/)

~~~
debaserab2
> Technical readers will know that we call the runtime for this user interface
> Muon, which is a more secure fork of Electron

Ew...

------
onyva
I love the irony in “You are not a product“ from a commercial product (open
source, I know) designed to monetize surfing (aka pay-to-surf), as if this is
what the internet is about. I think we should resist such an effort and stick
with projects (not companies) that want to keep the internet as it was meant
to be, ie Mozilla Firefox.

No problem with monetization but I want a browser that puts me first, not a
middleman that tries to profit from the trend to subvert the open culture of
the internet, pretending they put my privacy first. It’s an excuse, not the
main purpose of this browser.

~~~
user812
The fundamental question is who decides. Ideally the browser _is_ the product,
but not the user. For that, the browser needs to solve the question of the
flow of money.

Using Firefox makes you the product, because Mozilla monetizes you with
selling you to Google. That is not a browser that "puts you first" or promotes
the "open culture of the internet".

Giving people the ability to chose whether they want to participate in the
monetization makes Brave more of a browser that puts "you first".

Besides that, Mozilla is basically a company, and their non-profit
organization is basically a fig leaf. Even if you don't agree with this
assumption, the browser is as commercialiced as any other project, as proven
by Pocket, Google search partnership and Amazon affiliate links.

The Brave browser also doesn't claim this is "what the internet is about". On
the contrary, the default settings in Brave make the Web essentially non-
commercial and ad-free.

Finally and philosophically, there is no collective "we" you talk about, only
users who are free to chose from a variety of browsers and products.

Other than that, there is definitely some form of irony in the fact that the
people on brave.com wear a cap with a corporate logo, but are implied as being
free from corporate influence. The message would be more consistent if there
were no logo on the cap, and one could argue this implies that Brave is at
best a transition towards a better state.

~~~
simias
>Ideally the browser is the product

I disagree. I don't have anything against paid software but it's not the only
possibility, a lot of the software I use are open source projects maintained
by volunteers, not products. I ideologically refuse to consider that every
piece of software is a product.

Now regarding Firefox things are not really clear cut, Mozilla is effectively
non-profit but clearly their well being (and the salaries of the people
working for it) clearly revolves around their browser having a decent market
share. The whole "selling you to Google" stems from that.

~~~
oblio
> I ideologically refuse to consider that every piece of software is a
> product.

1\. Who pays for the hosting? How do they pay for it?

2\. Who pays for the site development? How do they pay for it?

3\. Who pays for the site content? How do they pay for it?

The vast majority of sites out there are commercial products, in some forms or
another. Even Wikipedia is, they're periodically begging for money.

Since we have this problem that running websites costs money, how are they
going to pay for it? The ad model is quite reviled by techies. What's the
alternative? How do websites make money to keep running?

~~~
pmontra
Software is not only web sites/applications. In that very same application
domain there are pieces of software like the Apache http server. AFAIK the
Apache Foundation is founded by donations. Is httpd a product? They're not
selling it and apparently they don't sell data about its users.

~~~
oblio
Ok, but my questions haven't been answered: how do we pay for websites?

There's the ad model, which people don't like, the subscription model, which
almost no one uses (it's used successfully for webapps, but not by websites,
there's maybe 10 or 20 successful subscription based sites in the billions of
sites out there).

What else is there that doesn't involve somehow turning the browser into a
product?

~~~
simias
Putting ads in your websites doesn't turn your browser into a product any more
than putting ad into a PDF turns your PDF reader into a product or getting
robocall turn your phone into (more of) a product. That's completely
orthogonal.

Well in the case of Brave that might not be completely true because they have
this whole agenda regarding ads but that's specific to this particular
browser, not a fundamental aspect of web browsing technology. ELinks is not a
product because you can use it to view ads for instance.

~~~
oblio
Putting ads in my websites turns _me_ into a product.

We need to turn this whole ecosystem on its head. How do we do that? I'd
rather have the browser manage payments to the sites I use based on some usage
statistics, but in this case, we still need some sort of payment system,
probably centralized. It might not be turning the actual browser into a
product, but it does make it put it awfully close to one.

------
enitihas
I have been using brave on android and really enjoy the experience. It is very
similar to chrome and thus gives most of the advantages of chrome (opening
browser after a long time feels very snappy, swipe to switch tabs). It also
has convenient options to block ads and js placed very prominently at the url
bar. It also has features like HTTPS everywhere and fingerprinting
protection(haven't tried this one yet). Firefox on Android supports desktop
extensions like uBlock origin, and I tried making it my default for some time,
but brave is simply much more usable. The two shortcomings for Android firefox
for me have been (a) No swipe to switch tabs, (b) Loading new pages is
noticeable slower than Chrome/Brave.

~~~
HappySweeney
What about power usage? One of the things that drove me from Chrome to Firefox
on Android was the insane power draw from Chrome.

~~~
enitihas
Power consumed is high. Brave consistently shows up as the highest cpu using
app. Is firefox better on battery? If so, I will give it another try, as that
is a very worthwhile trade-off.

------
netgusto
Yes! And now the dev tools can be docked to the edge of the webpage (they were
floating in their own window before this update).

For anyone (like me) wishing to have a default browser per use case (surf,
work, dev, hangout, etc.), have a look at this project (dynamic default
browser switch, based on URL):
[https://github.com/netgusto/bowser](https://github.com/netgusto/bowser)

Disclaimer: It's a pet project of mine.

------
petre
I've used the mobile version for a while, but switched back to Opera after
Google Ads showed up on a web page in a popover, despite having been blocked.
It was already Chromium-based. Opera doesn't have the flip-switch menu Brave
has to switch off certain features, including Javascript (very helpful for
disabling most those annoying cookie and GDPR consent popovers) but their ad
blocker is quite effective.

------
tschwimmer
Can someone outline the justification for the switch to Chromium and the
difference between Chromium and Muon, which seems to be based on Chromium
anyway?

~~~
quantummkv
Muon was a fork of electron, which included many patches for features required
for a variety of desktop apps. The amount of packages ensures that it takes
time to upgrade to new chromium releases (regression testing with the
patches).

Since brave is just a browser, it does not need all of those extra patches and
features. So it is simpler and easier to just roll with chromium directly.

~~~
drb91
Why was the fork necessary? Is the electron project hostile to changes?

~~~
quantummkv
Nah. Electron does not prioritize chromium version updates over everything
else. They generally do so at their own pace, instead focusing more on other
features and bug fixing.

It works fine for their intended userbase. For a browser that might be an
issue due to exploits and vulnerabilities.

------
nextlevelwizard
So what is the benefit over just using Chromium?

~~~
drb91
You can pay content providers with cash via Brave rather than ad views.

~~~
tikwidd
Why do we need a whole new browser for this?

~~~
Yoric
We don't, but getting there on the web at scale is a long battle.

The W3C has been working on WebPayments [1] for several years. Once it lands
on most browsers, it should enable websites to offer a choice between ads and
micropayments.

But there are lots of problems to solve first, ranging from finding the right
APIs and UXs to make sure that users won't end up paying by accident, or that
children won't pay with their parent's browser without their agreement, to the
fact that people don't use the same mechanisms for paying al over the world,
to security issues, etc.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/Payments/WG/](https://www.w3.org/Payments/WG/)

------
gattilorenz
The "download for Android" button leads to the Apple Store. That was...
interesting.

[https://brave.com/download/](https://brave.com/download/)

~~~
ghayes
The link for Android leads here:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.brow...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.browser&hl=en)

Maybe it was a rendering issue?

------
bassman9000
I'm surprised no one mentioned Vivaldi yet. I was a strong advocate of Brave,
till I tested the former. I don't think I'm coming back.

------
timwis
I'm nervous about switching browsers because if I have to switch back then I
have to deal with importing all my bookmarks back. Does anyone have a good way
of syncing bookmarks between all my browsers? The only thing I've seen is a
quasi bookmark service that uses bookmarklets.

------
pharouk90
Brave web experience is amazing, I turn off ads. I read everything in peace.
The loading time is promising of course.

Now, I set it to default browser in all my devices.

------
jakeogh
I wanted to compile it myself a few months ago... gave up after about 15min of
looking. I _know_ I missed some obvious repo/instructions somewhere.

~~~
Yoric
Last year, on my pretty kick-ass laptop, Chromium used to take ~12 hours to
build, so don't hold your breath :)

------
user812
I will probably start using or at least trying it again when they publish
version 1. For now, it's just not remotely comparable to Firefox et al. when
it comes to customization, control and stability.

It's basically a chrome copy plus future abilities (for now). So Chrome is a
better choice until now for me.

------
hackathonguy
Anyone using Brave? Would love to hear your impressions.

~~~
iSnow
Here.

I was a huge Firefox fan, but having 50+ tabs open made the browser unusable -
even the latest versions. I then switched reluctantly to Chrome, but always
hated the UI.

Having downloaded Brave, it was love on first sight, looks good, works good,
blocks ads. I very much miss all the Firefox extensions, I hope a lot will get
ported eventually.

Oh, and Mozilla? You need to reboot your company/non-profit. I don't know what
goes wrong there, but all the projects I found interesting got stopped
(Persona), and the browser is no longer really great. It just /feels/ clunky.

~~~
Yoric
> I was a huge Firefox fan, but having 50+ tabs open made the browser unusable
> - even the latest versions. I then switched reluctantly to Chrome, but
> always hated the UI.

Really? I haven't had any such problem with Firefox in years, and I tend to
browser with a few hundred tabs open. What platform are you using?

> Oh, and Mozilla? You need to reboot your company/non-profit. I don't know
> what goes wrong there, but all the projects I found interesting got stopped
> (Persona), and the browser is no longer really great.

The process is actually very simple: if nobody uses it, it gets stopped :)

> It just /feels/ clunky.

Are you talking about versions more recent than 57? Because the performance
boost during the last year has been huge.

~~~
iSnow
>Really? I haven't had any such problem with Firefox in years, and I tend to
browser with a few hundred tabs open. What platform are you using?

Windows at work and Macos/Linux at home. The situation has gotten better since
browser extensions that save and restore all tabs reliably don't work with FF
anymore. Now the browser usually forgets about 50% of my open tabs when I
restart it...

------
victoray
I love the Brave mobile.

