Just thought I would say hello and let you know we (the Guardian Project / Tor Project) are beginning to look into use GeckoView as the basic of our next generation Orweb secure+private+proxy-enabled browser.
We have promoted a privacy-enhanced configuration of Firefox Android for a while (https://guardianproject.info/apps/proxymob/) including offering our own Proxy enabling add-on. Orweb up to now has been built on Android's WebView, but since they switch to Chrome for version 4.4, they have taken away all the various sneaky ways we use to set the proxy. They also don't give us all the control we need to truly achieve parity with Tor Browser on the desktop. Anyhow, more in the note below, and in general, so far so good! Happy to have discovered this important project of yours. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [guardian-dev] Orfox: first step towards Tor Browser on Android Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 23:18:30 -0500 From: Nathan of Guardian <[email protected]> To: Guardian Dev <[email protected]> Since Android 4.4 replaced the guts of the WebView component with Chrome, and there is no apparent way to set a proxy anymore (even through tricks like reflection), I decided to accelerate our move towards an entirely new approach to privacy-enhanced browsing. I discovered two projects that provide a full standalone browser component that you can embed in an app. ChromeView, based on Chromium, and very much a drop-in replacement for WebView: https://github.com/pwnall/chromeview GeckoView, Mozilla's own attempt to turn their browser engine into an Android developer component: http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2013/10/geckoview-embedding-gecko-in-your-android-application/ I started with ChromeView, but got stuck just trying to get it to run. Both approaches require some strange use of putting .so and .pak binaries into asset folders and such. I don't entirely understand why yet. I ended up getting the GeckoView project's GeckoBrowser sample running easily, and very quickly, started hacking in all the privacy-enhancing Firefox "about:config" preferences I know. All the SOCKS and HTTP proxying stuff works well, and I have even gotten to a fairly decent report back on ip-check.info in terms of cookies, referrals, user-agents, etc. You can find the repo here, if you want to build and try yourself. No binaries posted yet: https://github.com/guardianproject/Orfox I am aiming to do a release fairly quickly, at least for the Android 4.4 users who are currently left [email protected] a lurch. Otherwise, if anyone wants to help build the best, most secure and privacy-enhancing mobile browser in the world, what we need to do from here is: 1) Start building the GeckoView library from source ourselves, and figure out which components we really need. It is very bloated, and the current APK is humongous. 2) Re-implement Orweb's various preferences into the new Orfox app, so that users can easily choose to turn on/off javascript, clear cookies, and so forth. 3) Connect with Mike Perry of Tor Project and start figuring out how the Firefox patches / modifications he makes for Tor Browser can be applied to the GeckoView builds. Best, Nathan _______________________________________________ Guardian-dev mailing list Post: [email protected] List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev To Unsubscribe Send email to: [email protected] Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/guardian-dev/nathan%40guardianproject.info You are subscribed as: [email protected] _______________________________________________ mobile-firefox-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mobile-firefox-dev
