Brave Beta is Now Available
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 28, 2018
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Brave has announced the first formal beta release of its flagship alternative web browser, a major milestone before its 1.0 release.
“This beta is a work in progress for developers and users who would like to see our latest advances,” the Brave announcement notes. “We’d like to encourage users to test this beta and share their impressions as we gear up for the general availability of this new browser.”
Before getting to what’s new in the beta, perhaps a quick overview of this browser is in order: Founded by Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich, Brave is creating an open-source browser built on the same Chromium base that Google uses for Chrome. But Brave is different: It automatically blocks ads and trackers and includes a controversial contribution system so that users can optionally pay participating content creators.
For the beta, Brave is adding private browsing with support for the Tor virtual tunneling technology and a new user interface that visually differentiates the browser from Chromium. These features build on top of features Brave added earlier in development, including extensions, a dark theme, and browser data importing capabilities.
But really, the big things here are privacy, security, and performance.
“Brave [includes] tracking protection, HTTPS Everywhere, cookie blocking, fingerprinting protection support, referrer blocking, Flash disabled by default, distinct privacy-protecting search engine selection for a private new tab page, ‘block this element’ support by right-clicking on anything in any page, proxied safe browsing to be more private, and permission-based autoplay support,” the company notes.
Though Brave is available on both desktop and mobile platforms, cross-device sync is missing in action. But Brave says it will be available soon, and in time for the 1.0 release.
Anyway, if you’re looking for an alternative to Chrome given Google’s recent tone-deaf and privacy-averse actions, Brave is emerging as an excellent choice. You can download Brave for Windows (x64), macOS, and Linux from the Brave website. And it’s available for Amazon Fire, Android, and iOS from the respective mobile stores.
Conversation 14 comments
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Dryloch
<blockquote><a href="#329833"><em>In reply to markbyrn:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>100% agree on Vivaldi. Everyone I show it to switches to it. Even non techy friends can appreciate what it offers.</em></blockquote>
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Stooks
<p>Brave is pretty good. By default it will get around many sites "drop your blocker" stuff, including this one :)</p><p><br></p><p>Three things I want to make it my default browser. </p><p><br></p><p>Syncing like you said, because I think the iOS version is nice but I need my bookmarks/passwords to sync. </p><p><br></p><p>The ability to accept self signed certificates like FireFox does, where it wont prompt you every time. At work I log into lots of stuff that is LAN only with self signed certs and I do not like clicking through all of those warnings. With FireFox you can add an exception once. With Chrome you can go through this lame process of exporting the cert via the developer mode (F12) and then importing the cert into the OS and it wont prompt you again.</p><p><br></p><p>Lastly the ability, like Safari to completely block both audio and video from automatically playing and then easily allowing it. No one does this better than Safari on the Mac. I have tried lots of extensions that never work 100%, and Chrome has a lame way to block audio but the video starts going and getting the audio to come back on is not convenient. </p>
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nwwoman
<blockquote><a href="#329858"><em>In reply to Stooks:</em></a><em> TY for the heads up re your theft of published articles by getting around the drop your blocker code. I will work on new code to prevent thieves from stealing wages and their benefits from our employees. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>
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PeterC
<p>Excellent – I'm firmly of the opinion users data privacy will come to define much of the tech industry offerings over the next 7 years. There will be great new start-ups, watch out for eelo OS https://e.foundation/ and some notable failures too.</p><p><br></p>
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nwwoman
<p>Brave's future depends not on users but on the very sites it is putting out of business with its centralized, authoritarian approach. When publishing info that educates, entertains or informs is no longer possible due to its scaling, the result will be a web of government sites financed by tax dollars, product sites financed by the obvious and a few subscription sites. I can hardly wait. </p>
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PeterC
<blockquote><em><a href="#331031">In reply to nwwoman:</a></em></blockquote><p>Hmm not really. Companies like Brave will hopefully establish their niche market and audience and will co-exist alongside Google’s. I remember the good times when the internet really offered some awesome potential. Now it’s just a big mess of shopping, advertising and pretty disappointing social media adventures all controlled by a very small number of companies. So no., let’s introduce some change and choice. </p>
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mrinneard
<p>Nice and promising product. I did notice that if you try to invoke LastPass using TFA the authentication page will freeze up and, for example, if you've been sent an SMS code from LastPass it can't be input. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this issue. </p>