SRWare Iron explained

SRWare Iron
Developer:SRWare
Licence:BSD, with some parts under other licences.[1] Source code not provided.
Ver Layout:Stacked
Operating System:Windows 7 and later, OS X 10.9 and later, Linux, Android 4.1 and later
Engine:Blink, V8
Size:74.1 MB (Windows), 110 MB (Android)
Genre:Web browser

SRWare Iron is a Chromium-based web browser developed by the German company SRWare.[2] It primarily aims to eliminate usage tracking and other privacy-compromising functionality that the Google Chrome browser includes.[3] Iron ships with certain Chromium privacy options switched on by default, it provides some additional features that distinguish it from Google Chrome.

Development history

Iron was first released as a beta version on 18 September 2008,[4] 16 days after Google Chrome's initial release.

On 26 May 2009 a Preview-Release (Pre-Alpha) of Iron came out for Linux.[5] And on 7 January 2010 a beta version for macOS was released.[6]

On 11 August 2010, Microsoft updated the BrowserChoice.eu website in order to include Iron as one of the possible choices.[7] [8]

More recent versions of Iron have been released since then, which has gained the features of the underlying Chromium codebase, including Google Chrome theme support, a user agent switcher, an extension system, integrated Adblocker and improved Linux support.[4] Support for Windows XP ended with version 50, but all older versions are still available.[9] With version 55.0.2900, control of WebRTC is taken over by an add-on.[10] Therefore, the "WebRTC disabled" builds are no longer available.[11]

Differences from Chrome

The following Google Chrome features are not present in Iron:[12] [13] [14]

Added features include:

Criticism

In December 2014, Lifehacker said that Iron offers little that is not available by simply configuring Google Chrome's privacy settings.[23] However, the_simple_computer wrote that Iron removes the Google Native Client, Google's custom navigation and error pages and other similar features.[21]

In October 2014, the_simple_computer wrote that even though SRWare Iron released under the BSD licence, the latest source code publicly available at the time was incomplete and for version 6, even though the binaries were on version 14;[21] source code was moved to RapidShare in 2013, with external access blocked, effectively making the program "entirely closed source".[21] In the same year, Lifehacker wrote that SRWare had not released the browser's source code for years.[23] In 2015, SRWare temporarily resumed releasing the source code for the browser.[24]

See also

Notes and References

  1. "SRWare Iron is based on the Soucecode of Chromium. It is licensed under the BSD-license." SRWare Iron installer. Accessed 2020-05-19.
  2. Web site: SRWare Iron - The Browser of the Future . 2014-04-24.
  3. Web site: SRWare Iron: The Browser of the future - Overview . 18 July 2010. SRWare. n.d..
  4. Web site: SRWare Iron - The Browser of the Future. SRWare. srware.net. 21 July 2015.
  5. Web site: Iron Pre-Alpha for Linux Download. 29 July 2011.
  6. Web site: New Iron-Version: 4.0.275 Beta for MacOS. 29 July 2011.
  7. News: Microsoft aktualisiert Browser-Auswahlbox. Kai Schmerer. ZDnet. 10 August 2010. 10 September 2010. de.
  8. Web site: Choose Your Browser. 29 April 2012. BrowserChoice.eu. BrowserChoice.eu. n.d.. https://web.archive.org/web/20140208004146/http://www.browserchoice.eu/BrowserChoice/browserchoice_en.htm . 8 February 2014.
  9. Web site: Index of /old/iron/win . 2022-12-10 . download1.srware.net.
  10. Web site: WebRTC Block Extension - SRWare.net . 2022-12-10 . www.srware.net.
  11. Web site: Iron WebRTC disabled Builds . 2022-12-10 . www.srware.net.
  12. Web site: SRWare Iron - The Browser of the Future. SRWare. srware.net. 21 July 2015.
  13. Web site: Privacy, unique IDs, and RLZ - Google Chrome.
  14. Web site: Google Chrome Privacy Whitepaper. google.com. 21 July 2015.
  15. Web site: Google Chrome, Chromium, and Google . 28 January 2010. See Which Google Domain
  16. Web site: View of /trunk/src/chrome/browser/google/google_url_tracker.cc . https://archive.today/20120730090821/http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/google/google_url_tracker.cc?annotate=16699%23l31#l31 . dead. 15 November 2010 . 30 July 2012. Source code comment on line 31
  17. Web site: Chromium Blog: DNS Prefetching (or Pre-Resolving). Chromium Blog. 21 July 2015.
  18. Web site: Srinivas Krishnan, Fabian Monrose . DNS prefetching and its privacy implications: when good things go bad . USENIX . 2010. 10 .
  19. Web site: Mike Cardwell . DNS Pre-fetch Exposure on Thunderbird and Webmail . 2013-09-25.
  20. Web site: SRWare . SRWare Iron - Frequently Asked Questions . SRWare . 2013-08-20.
  21. Web site: The Private Life of Chromium Browsers. thesimplecomputer.info. 21 July 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150206050613/http://thesimplecomputer.info/the-private-life-of-chromium-browsers. 6 February 2015. dead.
  22. Web site: New Iron-Version: 13.0.800.1 Stable for Windows. SRWare. srware.net. 15 May 2017.
  23. Web site: The Best Privacy and Security-Focused Web Browsers. Alan Henry. Gawker Media. Lifehacker. 21 July 2015. 29 June 2017. dead. https://archive.today/20170629195740/http://lifehacker.com/the-best-privacy-and-security-focused-web-browsers-1672758270.
  24. Web site: SRWare Iron - The Browser of the Future. SRWare. srware.net. 21 July 2015.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "SRWare Iron".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.