> All the app code – tab and bookmark management, our new tab page, our password manager, etc. – is written by our own engineers. For rendering, it uses a public macOS API, making it super compatible with Mac devices.
It’s a better way to say it. For you and me it might be better to say “WebKit renderer”. But for a non programmer, calling out the parts they wrote themselves is more reassuring, and highlights all the ways other browsers have to spy on you.
This was indeed hard to describe. When people say they "use Webkit", people seem to take away some kind of direct incorporation of Webkit code. That's not the case here in that we haven't forked anything.
Technically, the article links to the WKWebView class. So it sounds like they aren’t directly using WebKit, but rather WebView, a cross-platform API that delegates rendering to the OS preferred rendering engine, which on Apple devices happens to be WebKit.
> they aren’t directly using WebKit, but rather WebView, a cross-platform API that delegates rendering to the OS preferred rendering engine, which on Apple devices happens to be WebKit.
WKWebView is a part of the WebKit API, so it always uses WebKit. As far as I know it's also a Cocoa API, so it's only cross-platform in the sense that it's available on both iOS and macOS.
I wonder why they went with WebKit? It is nice to see another WebKit browser and not just a Blink/Chromium spinoff. Still it is a surprising choice, even if there's really only WebKit and Blink available for wannabe browser makers.
Other comments seem to say it's based on Webkit, but why not something like Mozilla Firefox? I stay as far away as I can from Chrome and Google, but Webkit doesn't seem like the answer. That being said, I may still try it.
A very long time ago, Mozilla decided it was too difficult to keep Firefox’s engine API stable and said it’s more important that we have developer velocity than we have other people releasing software based on our rendering engine.
A decade or so later they kinda backtracked on that stance with boot to gecko and FirefoxOS but it is my understanding that they never took that momentum to make gecko into something that can be used for electron like platforms or indeed a new browser.
Bottom line is that WebKit/blink gives you better website compatibility (because major parts of the web is only tested against chrome) and is easier to use as a library than trying to wrap something around Gecko.
I think this has been one of Mozilla’s worst decisions.
The "The Browser" episode from the Acquired podcast might shed some light on the reasons why. If one of the key figures in the development of Mozilla and JavaScript didn't choose it for his own new browser, why would anyone else? :(
As mentioned in that interview, Brave's biggest reason for switching away from Gecko was that they couldn't support Netflix DRM. Gecko-based browsers can support it today because Widevine works (see Librewolf).
It's worth noting that Brendan Eich is far from the most impartial party you could hear criticize Firefox. He used to be the CEO, and resigned after Mozilla employees discovered his political contributions.
This looks great! But I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out the bitwarden integration: I already have a bitwarden account (in fact, I run my own self-hosted server), and I can't figure out how to use it in this browser.
Is it just that the password autofill feature uses bitwarden under the hood, but you can't actually use a bitwarden account? If so, that should be mentioned/documented somewhere.
> But we understand some folks want to continue using third-party password management across browsers and devices. So, we’ve teamed up with Bitwarden, the accessible open-source password manager, in the first of what we hope to be several similar integrations. In the coming weeks, Bitwarden users will be able to activate this seamless two-way integration in their browser settings.
Some brief considerations regarding the UI, after some testing:
– It would be nice to be able to set the initial zoom level to pages or, at least, to remember the previous zoom level. I have to do it every time I open the same website.
– While any website is working on something (loading, for example), there's no indication of that. I ended up closing a tab by mistake while a process on the website was still active. This is something that Chrome does well, adding a loading icon to the tab.
– The text on the main search bar jumps abruptly from the center to the left when clicked. In Safari, there's a smooth animation there, which feels more natural.
– The contrast between the search field and its surroundings is very low. Again, in Safari, there's a fine line that helps with it.
It's a browser with a bunch of privacy features, just like Brave but with a more opinionated design and subtle differences. It caters to people who don't want to configure a thousand things before they use their browser, which is the only unique selling point of this that I'm aware of.
DDG isn't doing uBO level ad blocking like Brave does. It's just blocking common tracking domains and elements, so you don't get (much) cosmetic filtering and some ads will still show up. My local newspaper's site has grey boxes where the ads would be without content or DNS blocking. On YouTube, it can't block the ads unless you open in the "Duck Player" (a page where it embeds the video). It also doesn't support extensions.
That said, it has a cleaner interface than Brave, and it has that fire button from DDG Mobile that deletes everything except for cookies on sites you "fireproof". It's a really nice compromise between "save everything until you delete everything" and "incognito mode" that I wish other browsers would adopt. Plus it uses WebKit so theoretically it should be fast and battery efficient like Safari.
In my opinion there isn't much reason to use DDG Browser unless you really like the fire button. If you want a WebKit browser, Safari with the AdGuard extension blocks ads and trackers, has extensions including more password manager options, and has its own email relay feature. Otherwise Firefox and Brave are excellent and cross-platform.
It seems to be designed as a standalone "incognito" only browser. You can except certain sites from being routinely cleared from memory (fireproofing as they call it).
Doesn't really have other features or support for extensions from what I've seen.
It didn't always have a generic Chrome UA, if you go here[0] it had 'Brave' somewhere in the string, which you could fix by turning on fingerprinting prevention. Glad they fixed that. I don't want people to know I use Brave, although I'm sure there's ways to detect Brave with JS.
JSON.stringify is outputting the "own, enumerable" properties. The default properties of window.navigator aren't enumerable and/or come through the prototype chain.
Readit News
Is this a new way of saying that they use Webkit?
Technically, the article links to the WKWebView class. So it sounds like they aren’t directly using WebKit, but rather WebView, a cross-platform API that delegates rendering to the OS preferred rendering engine, which on Apple devices happens to be WebKit.
WKWebView is a part of the WebKit API, so it always uses WebKit. As far as I know it's also a Cocoa API, so it's only cross-platform in the sense that it's available on both iOS and macOS.
A decade or so later they kinda backtracked on that stance with boot to gecko and FirefoxOS but it is my understanding that they never took that momentum to make gecko into something that can be used for electron like platforms or indeed a new browser.
Bottom line is that WebKit/blink gives you better website compatibility (because major parts of the web is only tested against chrome) and is easier to use as a library than trying to wrap something around Gecko.
I think this has been one of Mozilla’s worst decisions.
The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/the-browser-with-brendan-ei...
Is it just that the password autofill feature uses bitwarden under the hood, but you can't actually use a bitwarden account? If so, that should be mentioned/documented somewhere.
> But we understand some folks want to continue using third-party password management across browsers and devices. So, we’ve teamed up with Bitwarden, the accessible open-source password manager, in the first of what we hope to be several similar integrations. In the coming weeks, Bitwarden users will be able to activate this seamless two-way integration in their browser settings.
Some brief considerations regarding the UI, after some testing:
– It would be nice to be able to set the initial zoom level to pages or, at least, to remember the previous zoom level. I have to do it every time I open the same website.
– While any website is working on something (loading, for example), there's no indication of that. I ended up closing a tab by mistake while a process on the website was still active. This is something that Chrome does well, adding a loading icon to the tab.
– The text on the main search bar jumps abruptly from the center to the left when clicked. In Safari, there's a smooth animation there, which feels more natural.
– The contrast between the search field and its surroundings is very low. Again, in Safari, there's a fine line that helps with it.
Use web apps wherevery you can and delete the cookies and web storage whenever it makes sense.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app
[1] https://crypt.ee/download
Also the fact that their contract requires them to whitelist Microsoft trackers is something to be wary of.
https://brave.com/privacy-features/
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
Brave for Mac is not Webkit-based. It is Blink and V8.
That said, it has a cleaner interface than Brave, and it has that fire button from DDG Mobile that deletes everything except for cookies on sites you "fireproof". It's a really nice compromise between "save everything until you delete everything" and "incognito mode" that I wish other browsers would adopt. Plus it uses WebKit so theoretically it should be fast and battery efficient like Safari.
In my opinion there isn't much reason to use DDG Browser unless you really like the fire button. If you want a WebKit browser, Safari with the AdGuard extension blocks ads and trackers, has extensions including more password manager options, and has its own email relay feature. Otherwise Firefox and Brave are excellent and cross-platform.
Doesn't really have other features or support for extensions from what I've seen.
Deleted Comment
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Would love to show the amount of visitors in Simple Analytics dashboards. [1]
Does anybody know a way to detect the DuckDuckGo browser?
[1] https://www.simpleanalyics.com
Only in the DDG iOS app the useragent adds a DuckDuckGo string appended to a generic Safari string. You can test here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=what+is+my+useragent&ia=answer
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=what+is+my+useragent&ia=answer
If you run `JSON.stringify(window.navigator)`, it only shows the _duckduckgoloader_ variable. Anybody knows why JSON.stringify behaves like that?
The rules for JSON.stringify are actually pretty complicated: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...