Can Brave run Chrome's extensions?Īfter choosing 'Extensions' from Brave's Window menu, the browser heads to the Chrome Web Store, the official market for add-ons and themes suitable for, well, Chrome (and some, though not all, Chromium-based rivals). (In hindsight, Eich's decision to go with Chromium - rather than with Firefox's Gecko rendering engine - was smart, even though most expected Brave to lean Mozilla's way, what with Eich's connection to the latter.) Braveīrave's default browser behavior can be customized in preferences. Other browsers that depend on Chromium include Edge, Opera, Vivaldi and Qihoo 360, one of the most popular Chinese-made browsers. WebKit is required as the backbone of any third-party browser submitted to Apple's App Store. On iOS, Brave instead relies on WebKit, the open-source foundation that also powers Apple's Safari browser. (Google uses Chromium to provide the source code for its Chrome browser.) The back-end technologies that power Chrome - including the Blink rendering engine and the V8 JavaScript engine - also power Brave.

That's not a surprise: Ad blocking extensions don't stymie search ads either.īrave is built atop Chromium, the open-source project Google and others maintain.

Brave doesn't lay a finger on those, including the ubiquitous Google Ads (formerly AdWords) advertisements within Google's results. Does Brave block ads within search results? (By comparison, Google's Chrome launched in September 2008 and Microsoft's Edge traces its lineage to July 2015.) The firm was co-founded by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and a co-founder of Mozilla, after he left that browser vendor under pressure for supporting California's 2008 Proposition 8, a ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage. Its maker, Brave Software, is among the newer entries in the browser battles, having previewed the browser in January 2016.

Like other browsers, it is free to download and use, remembers site authentication information, and can block online ads from appearing on sites. What is the Brave browser?īrave is a more-or-less standard browser that lets users navigate to websites, run web apps, and display online content. The Brave browser can show users how many ad trackers (and ads) have been blocked. (If you do decide to try it out, download information is detailed below.) Brave Here's what you need to know to decide whether Brave's for you. Computerworld took a deep dive into Brave to figure out what it is, what it does and how it does it.

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