SRWare Iron

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SRWare Iron
Iron logo.png
SRWare Iron14.0.850.0.png
Iron 14.0.850.0 on Puppy Linux 5.2.8 Lucid Puppy showing the new tab page.
Developer(s) SRWare
Initial release September 18, 2008 (2008-09-18)[1]
Stable release

16.0.950.0 (Windows)

/ December 21, 2011; 42 days ago (2011-12-21)[2]
Operating system Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Engine WebKit
Size 19.6 MB (Iron 15.0.900.2 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]

Contents

[edit] 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 [5] . And on 7 January 2010 a beta version for Mac OS was released [6].

More recent versions of Iron has 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].

[edit] Differences from Chrome

The following Google Chrome features are not present in Iron:[7][8]

  • RLZ identifier, an encoded string sent together with all queries to Google[9] or once every 24 hours.
  • Google search access on startup for users with Google as default search[9][10]
  • 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.[11]
  • Automatic address bar search suggestions.
  • Bug tracking system, sends information about crashes or errors.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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