SRWare Iron

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SRWare Iron

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 31.0.1700.0 (Windows) / December 1, 2013 (2013-12-01)[2]
Development status Active
Operating system
Engine WebKit
Size 28.3 MB (Windows)
Type Web browser
License Proprietary ("all rights reserved")[3]
Website www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

SRWare Iron is a freeware web browser, an implementation of the Chromium by SRWare of Germany,[2] which primarily aims to eliminate usage tracking and other privacy-compromising functionality that the Google Chrome browser includes.[4] While Iron does not provide extra privacy compared to Chromium after proper settings are altered in the latter, it does implement some additional features that distinguish it from Google Chrome, such as built-in ad blocking.[1][4]

Iron is issued by SRWare under an "all rights reserved" license, indicating that it is made from a combination of proprietary and free software.[5] Although SRWare claims "Iron is free and OpenSource"[6] the source code hosted in RapidShare is blocked by the uploader.[7][8][9]

On 11 August 2010, Microsoft updated the BrowserChoice.eu website in order to include Iron as one of the possible choices.[10][11]

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.[12] And on 7 January 2010 a beta version for Mac OS was released.[13]

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]

If a user has Chromium installed, attempting to run Iron and Chromium simultaneously will open a new window of the first browser opened. Iron and Chromium also share all data (i.e. Bookmarks, History, etc.).[citation needed]

Differences from Chrome

The following Google Chrome features are not present in Iron:[14][15]

  • RLZ identifier, an encoded string sent together with all queries to Google[16] or once every 24 hours.
  • Google search access on startup for users with Google as default search[16][17]
  • 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,[18] because it could potentially be used by spammers.[19][20][21]
  • Automatic address bar search suggestions.
  • Bug tracking system, sends information about crashes or errors.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Iron news page
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 New Iron-Version
  3. ↑ Screenshot of about page (version 14.0.850.0)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 SRWare (undated). "SRWare Iron: The Browser of the future - Overview". Retrieved 18 July 2010. 
  5. ↑ SRWare Iron download, About File, License specified
  6. ↑ SRWare Iron download page. Retrieved 2nd May 2013.
  7. ↑ SRWare Iron source code - Part 1
  8. ↑ SRWare Iron source code - Part 2
  9. ↑ SRWare Iron source code - Part 3
  10. ↑ Kai Schmerer (10 August 2010). "Microsoft aktualisiert Browser-Auswahlbox". ZDnet. Retrieved 10 September 2010. (German)
  11. ↑ BrowserChoice.eu (undated). "Choose Your Browser". Retrieved 29 April 2012. 
  12. ↑ "Iron Pre-Alpha for Linux Download". Retrieved 29 July 2011. 
  13. ↑ "New Iron-Version: 4.0.275 Beta for MacOS". Retrieved 29 July 2011. 
  14. ↑ Whats the difference between Iron and Chrome?
  15. ↑ "Privacy, unique IDs, and RLZ - Google Chrome". 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Google Chrome, Chromium, and Google". Retrieved 28 January 2010.  See Which Google Domain
  17. ↑ "View of /trunk/src/chrome/browser/google/google_url_tracker.cc". Retrieved 15 November 2010.  Source code comment on line 31
  18. ↑ DNS Prefetching (or Pre-Resolving)
  19. ↑ Srinivas Krishnan, Fabian Monrose (2010). "DNS prefetching and its privacy implications: when good things go bad". USENIX. 
  20. ↑ Mike Cardwell. "DNS Pre-fetch Exposure on Thunderbird and Webmail". Retrieved 2013-09-25. 
  21. ↑ SRWare. "SRWare Iron - Frequently Asked Questions". SRWare. Retrieved 2013-08-20. 

External links

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