gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » iron http://www.ghacks.net A technology news blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:07:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 SRWare Releases Iron 4 Release Candidatehttp://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/31/srware-releases-iron-4-release-candidate/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/31/srware-releases-iron-4-release-candidate/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:25:19 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=21949 Iron is a web browser that is based on the Chromium source code that is also powering the Google Chrome web browser. The main difference between Iron and Google Chrome is that the developers of Iron have removed privacy related issues from the code. This includes things like the unique client ID, error reporting or Google Updater which is a program that is automatically started with Windows. Iron basically follows the same development cycle as the Google Chrome web browser with version 4 currently in development.

The Iron developers have released the Iron 4 release candidate two days ago which is as usually available as a portable version and installer for the Windows operating system. Most notable changes in Iron 4 are similar to that of the Google Chrome web browser. This includes support for the extension system, bookmark synchronization and better Windows 7 support.

The extension system seems to be pretty stable and most extensions seem to install and work just fine. Some extensions on the other hand, like the Stumbleupon extension, seem to install fine but fail to work afterwards, something that is very likely to be fixed in upcoming versions of Iron. The developers have also mentioned that Linux and Mac version of Iron 4 RC will be offered soon on the official website.

Windows users can download Iron 4 Release Candidate right now from the developer’s website.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/31/srware-releases-iron-4-release-candidate/feed/ 6 Chromium Ironhttp://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/25/chromium-iron/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/25/chromium-iron/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:51:59 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7212 The release of Google Chrome and its Open Source counterpart Chromium put Google for the first time in the position that Microsoft was in for the last ten years or so. Users are looking at Microsoft products with suspicion suspecting privacy breaches and data collection on large scales. This is especially apparent in Microsoft operating systems where tools have been developed that turn off features that communicate with Microsoft servers.

It is a known fact that Google is collecting a massive amount of data. The main part stems from searches conducted on the search engine but other tools like the Google Toolbar add to that. Google on the other hand did not release a software until now that became such a center of criticism. Privacy advocates focused their criticism on two aspects of the Google Chrome browser.

The first was the unique user Id that was generated which could theoretically identify a user. The second that everything that was entered in the browser’s address bar was transmitted to Google even if the user never submitted the text to the search engine.

Several minor objections have come to light in the past week and software developers started to develop solutions that would eliminate identification and data transfers unless they were necessary.

Iron (vie Download Squad) was developed from the Open Source browser Chromium. That’s something that Google did encourage and the developers were the first to provide a version of Chromium that was stripped down of all known data collection and privacy problems: The client-ID, timestamp, suggest functionality, alternate error pages, error reporting, rlz-tracking, google updater and url tracker have been removed.

The functionality on the other hand remains the same. The only problem that could arise is if developers cannot keep up with the development pace of the Chromium browser. As of now this is the recommended release for users with privacy concerns.

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