Brave is a free web browser designed to make surfing the internet fast, private and secure. The program supports installation on most popular platforms, and the project repositories are available on GitHub to anyone interested.
Brave Browser has many attributes of a modern browser. The tab manager allows you to pin, clone, color and group them into sets – a kind of separate workspaces. The user also has the option to preview the page content when hovering over the tab with the mouse cursor.
Developers build the browser around several aspects of security. So, when opening web pages, Brave tries to request a secure HTTPS connection from the server instead of the usual HTTP. In addition, by default, the program sends the header “do not track” user actions to sites. Additional confidentiality is provided by a mechanism for creating private tabs, including using onion routing technology (TOR).
Another Brave option related to user privacy is the automatic clearing of browsing history, downloads, cache, cookies and autofill data when the program is closed. This function can be useful, for example, when using one PC by several employees in shift mode.
Shields are what makes Brave special and sets it apart from many other similar products on the market. These are a kind of firewall filters that help to cut off advertising, block malware and phishing software, as well as hide the browser’s own fingerprint from various trackers and analyzers.
The browser interface is designed in a corporate style in a combination of gray and orange tones and resembles a mixture of popular browsers. Menu bar elements, bookmarks, selection borders and other components have a rectangular shape with barely noticeable rounded corners.
Advantages of Brave
Free distribution of the product.
The presence of Russian and Ukrainian localization.
Support for two dozen search engines with the ability to switch between them using hotkeys.
Support for scaling browser elements.
The ability to create private tabs, including using TOR technologies.
Ability to import data from other browsers.
The presence of several built-in password managers at the user’s choice.
Support for popular extensions and the Brave Payments feature.
The presence of advanced security settings.
Availability of developer tools.
Availability of installers for x86 and x64 architectures.
Disadvantages of Brave
No VPN extensions out of the box.
Lack of built-in themes.
Conclusion
The program is characterized by a relatively high speed of operation. Some features are implemented very conveniently. In general, Brave is suitable for everyday use as the main browser. As for website development, here the user should focus exclusively on recognized leaders who exactly follow the standards of HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript 6.
Installing Brave
The browser is installed using a full-fledged installer without the need to connect to the Internet. At the same time, the wizard does not provide the user with any choice of installation parameters, such as the location of the program and others.
To add the Brave browser to Windows, run the installer file and wait for the process to complete. After the installation is complete, the browser window will open automatically.
To change the language of the program, go to the browser settings window by clicking on the hamburger menu icon in its upper right corner. In the list that opens, select “Settings”. Next, in the settings configuration tab, go to the “Advanced” section using the quick access menu on the left (by default, the lowest item), then select the desired language value in the drop-down list next to the inscription “Language”. For the changes to take effect, you need to restart the browser.
Changes in the latest version
The Brave Wallet has been updated to sign Solana transactions with the selected account instead of the commission payer.
The Brave Wallet has been updated so that it does not use the first available public key as the “To” address for unknown Solana instructions.
Updated the “More Details” link on the Windows 7 and 8.1 obsolescence dashboard.
Disabled the Manifest V2 obsolescence warning message.
Fixed a crash when re-opening Brave News from the “Customize Toolbar” modal window after navigating to the source.
Fixed a bug that caused some websites to not load when the Brave://flags#brave-block-screen-fingerprinting option was enabled.
Updated Chromium to 108.0.5359.128.