Programming a Browser

I no longer believe using free Browsers like Firefox or Chrome as they are spying day & night on our data. I want to program my own browser, which website can teach me to program a web browser properly which is safe and has features that are commonly used?

 

I don't know if there's a particular website for coding browsers, but you need good C#, C++ (or similar programming language) skills first. Once you do, you will be able to implement new features and safety on your own.

 

I think you are deeply and exaggeratedly misinformed. If you really want to see if your data is being sent somewhere simply install a packet sniffer or some sort of network monitor that will allow you to see transmitted data in real time. Truth is, browsers aren't sending your data around the internet. It always amuses me when people claim FaceBook can turn on your camera and mic and listen to you. No..... no.

You have very little to worry about and unfortunately you are probably way too insignificant for anyone to spy on. If you are asking how to program a web browser then you are many many many years away from ever using the web haha...

 

Yes..... yes! Even Facebook itself confirmed it does listen to audio - https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/facebook-microphone-ads.html

 

No.... No like @NetStar said, they can't turn your mic and camera on to listen to you, if the OP is that bothered about being spied on he's considering building his own browser then perhaps he should just disconnect himself from the internet.

 

You mean that Facebook itself lies about recording audio on users' phones?

 

I wouldn't know about that. You should probably read mine and @NetStar 's post again, also the link you posted says:

 

It depends on OS. Facebook doesn't even need to turn the feature ON because you grant a permission for FB messenger to use microphone on OS like Android, etc. As a result, FB can record audio even when you don't use the app. That's why next version of Android will implement a new feature to protect users from apps like FB - it will disable background apps from using microphone.

 

@phpmillion is the kind of person who amuses me hahah

 

I'm sure I do. I took a look at your postings and found that many people with more than little competence amuse you. I guess it's because of this saying? The easiest person to amuse is always an idiot

 

You amuse me because you believe FaceBook turns on your Mic and Camera. You didn't even do your due diligence to know that if this were true your Recording indicator on your phone would turn on since this is a hardware feature. This entire rumor came from an update to the app where it asks for permissions to use your camera and mic. At the time noone knew why. But now in 2018 it's pretty obvious that FaceBook Live feeds will use your Camera and Microphone... hence why the permissions ask for such capability. FaceBook isn't a top security government agency located in Area 51 where leaking information could result with your life in danger... If FB had such spying capabilities programmed in to their app there would be a disgruntled programmer who would leak the info causing one of the largest investigations in the history of business... The fact that there are people like you spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories is amusing. You read too much fake news then form a opinion which you believe is fact. It's amusing. Understand?

 

Or you could just use Chromium which is Chrome without the in-built spyware.
https://www.chromium.org/

If you're serious about making your own browser, a good early step might be to contribute to a browser engine project like Chromium or Blink first.

Vivaldi, the browser I use (because it lets me do things like rocker navigation and portrait tabs out-of-box) is also built on the "blink" engine (what Chrome and Opera are using) without any known "spying" either.
https://vivaldi.com/

though for the most part browser telemetry data isn't real spying, and MOST of the spying as @NetStar has been saying is either ridiculously overblown or outright ignorant parroting of things people don't understand.

 

Is there at least a single IT-related topic in the world that you are not a great expert with? Checking your posting history, I see you are an "expert" in every single niche - from website coding to phone hardware. I'm not going to argue with you because I was educated to avoid arguing with incompetent people, so you just think about this - if your claim was true (about some mystical Recording indicator turning on), then nobody could make apps that listen to audio secretly. In other words, nobody could create a malware app for phones. Somehow, if you search for phone malware listens to audio or something similar, you will see dozens of malware apps that do exactly that. But once again, all these are just conspiracy theories because you know the best! Not to mention recording techniques used by government/law agencies to listed to audio (when "sleeping" phone just lays on table) without even installing any app.

Facebook itself confirmed 2 years ago that it listens to audio, but... yes, once again, you know better than Facebook itself!

Finally, would you tell us about phone's Recording indicator? But wait, don't proceed yet, I'm going to get my pop corn!

P.S. If you check some posts above, you will see that my thing was not to say FB 100% spies on someone, then sells this data, etc. My point was that they can do so without any problems if they want to.

 

@deathshadow other than what you mentioned, why do you like vivaldi? I installed it recently (because I saw your post about it somewhere else) and I didn't like it one bit. It's prolly a good browser, but I found it to be sluggish.

 

I'm not a deathshadow, but I use Vivaldi since its first release and I love it.

I was a heavy Opera fan since early 2000's because of how customizable and full-featured this browser was. However, once Opera switched from Presto to WebKit in 2013, many Opera fans (including me) were disappointed because a lot of features were removed. That is to say, Opera became a browser for "idiots" like recent versions of Chrome or Firefox. In other words, it transformed from a browser for staunch technologists and heavy Internet users to browser for everyone. Just install and browse.

Vivaldi is actually a reborn of good, old-fashioned Opera that is has tons of customization features, lots of settings, etc. As a result, it might look like a very complex (if not overkill) solution for "normal" users, but it's the main reason I love it.

 

I haven't found it sluggish at all, but really it's the out of box features that sell me on it. It's highly configurable, does anything Chrome can do... and has a LOT of the features Opera used to have before they told their loyal fans to go f*** themselves with the pathetic slapping of their logo onto Chrome that was ChrOpera.

It's highly configurable -- the stuff I don't like (such as the stupid colouring of the whole window to match a site) is easily disabled. That's actually a common thread in my likes and dislikes of software in that it's often not about all the features it comes with, but the ability to turn OFF the stuff I don't like! You can see this in my choice of editor -- Flo's notepad 2 -- where it will actually remember I don't want colour syntax highlighting, it DOESN'T have tabs (which for a 1440p multi-display user is a technological step backwards), etc, etc.

In Vivaldi's case, as mentioned there's the window frame colouring -- I turn that off and set it to the "subtle" theme which has the lovely mix of classic greys with modern minimalism.

One thing that does give it a bit of a performance hit is tab thumbnails so I disable those AND the popups for them -- setting the tabs to be displayed on the left as a column at the maximum allowed width lets me see a significant portion of each sites <title> tag, and that's a HUGE usability improvement over the garbage top tab placement -- adding more vertical width at the cost of horizontal on widescreens is great too.

The speed dial is better than Opera's ever was allowing for folders, and stands head and shoulders (IMHO) over every other browser's implementation or even any third party extensions I've tried. That it is mapped DIRECTLY to the bookmarks folder and can be manipulated/configured both from itself AND from the bookmarks is SUCH an obvious answer... particularly with the "open all bookmarks" option in the context menu for bookmark and speed dial folders, handy for "well these are the pages I visit every morning" as well as for creating testing configs during development. Other browsers TRY to implement this, but leave me... wanting on functionality. (Kind of like *nix GUI desktops, they do a good job of LOOKING modern, but from a functionality standpoint they still hasn't caught up to windows 3.0)

"Panels" -- a classic Opera feature is also present, and works great and keeps getting better. You can even add web applets to the panel. I leave the panel bar open all the time on the left for easy access to bookmarks, notes and downloads with a meaningful interface WITHOUT leaving the current page or dealing with tabs/separate windows... which SOMETIMES, particularly with "notes" is a pretty important feature. Opera Notes was a classic feature that ChrOpera STILL doesn't have, and the extensions/mods/plugins/pickANameNotYourNose to try and do it in other browsers are just crippled and unreliable.

One of the more interesting features is that it is in fact a full stack web application. I'm not wild about the fact it uses react and I do think that any perceived sluggishness can have the finger pointed STRAIGHT at that framework, but under the hood it the core executable is basically the same thing as nw.js or electron. Because it is a full stack web application you can actually add your own JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to the program's interface. This opens the door to some interesting possibilities. I you know how to program websites, you can reverse engineer and modify the browser's UI with relative ease. When it first started out that was a huge selling point for me -- though in recent versions a LOT of what I was DIY is now built in.

Which is something else, they actually seem to listen to user requests for stuff to be built in.

That it can out of box also run ALL chrome extensions, and works with the Chameleon extension allowing the running of Opera add-ons is welcome -- particularly given some types of extensions have been banned/blocked from the Play Store for doing things Google doesn't approve of like downloading YouTube videos.

After the constant "dumbing down" of the UI's of other browsers to the point they're less useful than IE 4 for the Mac (to the point they're damned near ripping off its UI now) It's ... refreshing to see something a bit more inline with what I expect out of a modern browser interface.

I mean, just look at this on the laptop I'm using right now:
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/laptop_vivaldi_screencap.png

That's what I'm talking about.... and at least it's STABLE -- that's more than I can say for Firefox which has ALWAYS been an unstable unreliable mess for me. I used to joke back in the Opera 12/earlier days I trusted their beta's more than I do Firefox's stables. These days I trust Vivaldi's snapshots more than I trust FF's stables.

 

There are TONS of IT related topics that I am NOT an expert in. I am also not an expert in Mobile App development. I simply have an average level of common sense which is all that is required here..

If you are suggesting that FaceBook .000001% spies on someone you literally suggesting that FB in fact spies on someone. 100% spies on someone. Do you lack an average level of common sense?

 

I guess the main reason you posted such an irrelevant post is because you truly didn't notice my post asking to explain about malware that listens to audio and mysterious phone's recording indicator, right? In other words, that was a classic "f**k, someone just proven I posted a total bulls**t by trying to position myself as an expert. I'd better skip/ignore that message and post something else to distract everyone's attention" attempt that actually gives an opposite result.

 

Grabs popcorn; for once a pissing contest I'm not involved in.