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Discussion on: The dangers of the unibrow(ser)

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maniflames profile image
Maniflames

When it comes to ad blocking and privacy features I'm really glad that Brave exists and has approached ad blocking on a browser level which makes them immune in this case. That definitely does not take away that it is a Chromium-based browser, at least their focus is on cherry picking changes. I'm rooting for Firefox (I'm a biased Rust lover tbh) but I'm afraid that the general public still sees it as a 'quirky alternative' rather than a privacy first browser. It would really be a bummer for innovation if one company with a large open source project rules the web. The change in rules concerning autoplay/audio early last year already shows how small decisions like this can have a big impact.

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Harry Dennen

My experience with Brave has been great. Since they switched to Chromium it's been even better.

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rhymes

Thanks for your reply Imani! I've to admit I've only tested Brave briefly before they switched to Chromium but I liked the idea, what is the situation with extensions?

I'm rooting for Firefox (I'm a biased Rust lover tbh) but I'm afraid that the general public still sees it as a 'quirky alternative' rather than a privacy first browser.

Yeah, the article I linked at the end talks about this too. It's also true that Mozilla has no significant power to "suggest" user to install their browser. Chrome is everywhere on desktop, suggested by google.com, the default on billions of devices and so on.

It would really be a bummer for innovation if one company with a large open source project rules the web.

It's due to happen eventually, unless something unforeseen happens, the hope is that the W3C committee won't be steered by Google only :)

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Nick Taylor

I've been using Brave on mobile for a couple of years now and it's great. I had it installed on Desktop when it was Electron based, but barely used it as my work revolves around web development and extensions and dev tooling (aside from Chromium Dev Tools) were not available.

Since they've moved to Chromium, it's my default browser at work and home. I have all the tooling I had on Chrome (extensions/extended dev tooling).

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maniflames profile image
Maniflames

I'm still pretty new to brave, how did you enable dark mode?! It looks really nice :D

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Nick Taylor

Just navigate to brave://settings or just choose settings from the hamburger menu on the top right of the window. From there, choose your Brave colours.

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maniflames profile image
Maniflames

Thanks!

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maniflames profile image
Maniflames

I switched to brave last September and to be honest, it pretty much feels like Chrome with a (heavy) build in add-blocker. Like Nick, I haven't had any problems with anything that I used in chrome (JSON Viewer, React dev tools, Vue dev tools etc.). You can go to the chrome webstore and install any extension that you like :)

Other than that I have faith that sooner or later (or a whole lot later) something will break the status quo, just like when IE was at the top. I'm just not sure if it's an existing browser or one in the making by some team somewhere.

To be fair all I know about W3C is that they are the root of all standards on the web. I have no idea who is involved in the committee at all, definitely something I'm going to Google later :P

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

I switched to brave last September and to be honest, it pretty much feels like Chrome with a (heavy) build in add-blocker. Like Nick, I haven't had any problems with anything that I used in chrome (JSON Viewer, React dev tools, Vue dev tools etc.). You can go to the chrome webstore and install any extension that you like :)

This is really cool. I'll probably keep it as a second browser to test (instead of Chrome ;))

I'll give it a whirl this weekend, thanks!

I envision a slogan: "Brave, Chrome without Google listening in" :P

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Kyle Boe

I'll have to check out Brave. I have heard a few people talk about it. I'll try it on as my non-work browser.

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Ben Halpern

I've been gradually trying to use Firefox more and more even though I still feel so used to Chrome, it's tough.

I'm very hopeful that they can stay viable and maybe increase marketshare. Privacy, performance, and really being a browser-first company. They have it all going for them, except it's tough to compete with such a monster of a company in Google.

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Erik Nelson

I switched to Firefox a while back, it did take a while to get used to it again but it's my primary browser now. Ever since they released Quantum (in FF57) performance has been pretty solid.