SRWare Iron
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 Iron 14.0.850.0 on Puppy Linux 5.2.8 Lucid Puppy showing the new tab page. |
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| Developer(s) | SRWare |
| Initial release | September 18, 2008[1] |
| Stable release |
18.0.1050.0 (Windows) / April 10, 2012[2] |
| Operating system | Linux, Mac OS X, Windows |
| Engine | WebKit |
| Size | 21.70 MB (Iron 18.0.1050.0 for Windows) |
| Development status | Active |
| Type | Web browser |
| License | BSD license |
| Website | Official website |
SRWare Iron, or simply Iron, is a free and open-source web browser implementation of the Chromium source code[2] which primarily aims to eliminate usage tracking and other privacy-compromising functionality that the Google Chrome browser includes.[3] While Iron does not provide extra privacy compared to Chromium, it does implement some additional features that distinguish it from Google Chrome, such as built-in ad blocking.[1][3]
On 11 August 2010, Microsoft updated the BrowserChoice.eu website in order to include Iron as one of the possible choices.[4][5]
Development history
Iron was first released as a beta version on 18 September 2008[1], 16 days after Google Chrome's initial release.
On 26 May 2009 a Preview-Release (Pre-Alpha) of Iron came out for Linux [6] . And on 7 January 2010 a beta version for Mac OS was released [7].
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 [1].
Differences from Chrome
The following Google Chrome features are not present in Iron:[8][9]
- RLZ identifier, an encoded string sent together with all queries to Google[10] or once every 24 hours.
- Google search access on startup for users with Google as default search[10][11]
- A unique ID ("clientID") for identifying the user in logs.
- A timestamp of when the browser was installed.
- Google-hosted error pages when a server is not present
- Google Updater automatic installation.
- DNS pre-fetching, because it could potentially be used by spammers.[12]
- Automatic address bar search suggestions.
- Bug tracking system, sends information about crashes or errors.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Iron news page
- ^ a b New Iron-Version
- ^ a b SRWare (undated). "SRWare Iron: The Browser of the future - Overview". http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php. Retrieved 18 July 2010.
- ^ Kai Schmerer (10 August 2010). "Microsoft aktualisiert Browser-Auswahlbox". ZDnet. http://www.zdnet.de/news/digitale_wirtschaft_internet_ebusiness_microsoft_aktualisiert_browser_auswahlbox_story-39002364-41536677-1.htm. Retrieved 10 September 2010.(German)
- ^ BrowserChoice.eu (undated). "Choose Your Browser". http://www.browserchoice.eu/BrowserChoice/browserchoice_en.htm. Retrieved 29 April 2012.
- ^ "Iron Pre-Alpha for Linux Download". http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=382. Retrieved 29 July 2011.
- ^ "New Iron-Version: 4.0.275 Beta for MacOS". http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1048. Retrieved 29 July 2011.
- ^ Whats the difference between Iron and Chrome?
- ^ "Privacy, unique IDs, and RLZ - Google Chrome". http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107684.
- ^ a b "Google Chrome, Chromium, and Google". http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-google.html. Retrieved 28 January 2010. See Which Google Domain
- ^ "View of /trunk/src/chrome/browser/google/google_url_tracker.cc". http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/google/google_url_tracker.cc?annotate=16699#l31. Retrieved 15 November 2010. Source code comment on line 31
- ^ See discussion at http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/dns-prefetching-or-pre-resolving.html
External links
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