Brave or Chromium

I am in dilemma of choosing Brave or Chromium as my default browser.

The following is my comparison,

	Chromium	Brave
Arch Linux official repo	Yes, in Extra	AUR
Sync	Sync a lot of things, including tabs, history, compatible to Google Chrome	Sync bookmark only
AdBlock	Require extension, such as uBlock Origin	Built-in adblock, but leads to difficulty to customize blocking certain HTML elements. Adblock also breaks some anti-adblock sites. But adblock works on mobile version on both Android and iPhone
Start	Fast start	Slower than Chromium, because it runs pacman (Arch Linux package manager) to check pepper-flash.
Privacy	Nothing special	Built-in Tor feature for private browsing with Tor

I am still continue using Brave, because I prefer Brave over Firefox on Android. In order to conform with Brave on Android, I choose Brave on desktop.

Besides that, Brave has built-in Tor. Alternatively, we can use Tor Browser (based on Firefox), which means I need to use two browsers: Firefox and Tor Browser.

Microsoft To Do

In my previous post, I mentioned I migrated Wunderlist to Microsoft To Do.

However, there are two annoying things. Firstly, do not expect there will be Chrome App version of Microsoft To Do similar to Wunderlist and Google Keep, because Chrome Apps is going to be discontinued.

Secondly, I frequently experienced To Do web page doesn’t load properly, either stuck at the loading page, or the tasks not showing or showing partially.

In order to resolve the second issue, I need to test the page with incognito mode, to make sure the page works fine. Then in normal browsing, I need to remove the HTTP cookies for to-do.live.com, live.com, microsoft.com, and any cookies used by the page. Lastly, re-login to To Do.

Brave browser

I wrote a post about Brave recently, and found that Brave browser is interesting. So, I am switching to Brave from Chromium for a trial.

A brief introduction about Brave: Brave is developed by Brave Software, which is founded by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is the product of Mozilla Corporation. However, Brave is built on Chromium, the open source project for Google Chrome. So, I personally perceive Brave as the Chromium with the soul of Firefox. That is why, it makes Brave different from Chromium and Firefox.

Why not Firefox?

Actually I was trying to switch from Chromium to Firefox before. However, Firefox doesn’t fit my needs. Since I am doing web development, sometimes the web browser will be crashed. Firefox crashes more frequent than Chromium. The worst is, Firefox crashing will cause systemd core dump and the computer slow down, until I do hard reboot on the computer. That is very bad development experience.

Besides that, Firefox rendering engine is different from Chromium. Most of the web developers I know are using Chrome. If I am using different web browser, the CSS styling may be varied. It will be difficult to do testing and review.

Bookmark sync

Bookmark sync is one of my main requirement to choose a web browser. Chromium and Firefox both support bookmark sync, with the requirement to create user account.

Brave is a little different, it doesn’t require any account created, but it can sync between desktop version and mobile version.

Please take note that, Brave desktop disabled the Sync feature by default. This can be enabled by going to brave://flags, then enable “Enable Brave Sync”.

Besides that, we can doing copy-paste for the bookmark folders from Chromium to Brave easily. Need not to export and import.

Side note: Workspace (personal method)

Since I am migrating from Chromium to Brave, I also discover a method to manage my workspace.

Most of my works require Slack as the communication channel, so does other communication applications like Skype, GMail, Google Calendar, etc. These web apps need to open during working hours.

I was using All-in-One Messenger long time ago. However it focuses on messengers only.

Then one of my project managers mentioned Shift. It has similar interface like Slack App. But I didn’t try any of them. I used alternative app, namely Franz. After some time of using Franz, the app limits to three services only, meaning I can maximum run three services at the same time, such as one GMail, one Slack, one Google Calendar, no extra.

After Franz, I found the other alternative, that’s Rambox. It is very good solution so far.

The rationale that I use different app for the communications is to decentralize the usage of single web browser for all tasks. Let’s say the web browser crashes, the communication app can still work.

However, I plan to centralize every task in Brave, in order to try out the potentiality. In order to make a working environment similar to Rambox or Franz, this is what I am doing:

1. Create a bookmark folder, eg: Workspace
2. Create all the bookmarks for my working web app in the folder
3. Whenever I work, just right-click and open all bookmarks in the folder in New Window
4. Practise that the New Window is for communication only, don’t open new tab for browsing or development.

By doing the above, Rambox will be unnecessary.