BlackHawk browser

[hazelnut]

Has anyone tried it?

 

http://www.netgate.sk/blackhawk/help/welcome-to-blackhawk-web-browser.html

 

http://www.netgate.sk/blackhawk/category/extensions

[Alan_B]

Some Firewalls are simple "Fit and Forget" for users who do not what to get involved.

Some aim for for more skilled users.

I was surprised to see Netgate offering

FortKnox Personal Firewall for Hackers ....

But perhaps that is just me ! ! !

[Corona]

Has anyone tried it?

 

http://www.netgate.s...eb-browser.html

 

http://www.netgate.s...gory/extensions

 

No, never heard of it.

Have you tried it?

[TeeJay3800]

It appears to be another Chromium variation like Google Chrome, SRWare Iron, and Comodo Dragon. I've never tried it though.

[login123]

... Has anyone tried it? ...

 

Yep, using it right now.

No reboot needed to install, seems quite fast. Plays streaming audio signal from my favorite oldies radio station. Have not tried any of the plugins yet,

 

Memory use shown by Process Explorer (4 tabs and one extra window open, audio streaming):

Sandboxie Folders created: Screenshot:

[hazelnut]

Some Firewalls are simple "Fit and Forget" for users who do not what to get involved.

Some aim for for more skilled users.

I was surprised to see Netgate offering

FortKnox Personal Firewall for Hackers ....

But perhaps that is just me ! ! !

 

@Alan

I was asking about the browser okay?

 

@Login123

Nice to know it works (good screenies btw). Is it a browser that could be considered for everyday use do you think?

[Winapp2.ini]

Seems like an interesting idea, I may have to try this out myself

[MikeW]

Some Firewalls are simple "Fit and Forget" for users who do not what to get involved.

Some aim for for more skilled users.

I was surprised to see Netgate offering

FortKnox Personal Firewall for Hackers ....

But perhaps that is just me ! ! !

 

Try reading it again, as it says

 

FortKnox Personal Firewall for Hackers and Spyware Protection

[Alan_B]

@ Hazel

Sorry, I just could not resist, it seems so funny that a Firewall is FOR hackers instead of AGAINST hackers.

 

@ Mike

I saw that the first time, hence I replaced with "...." the part that was not relevant to my observation.

 

I guess I must be an acquired taste ! !

[TeeJay3800]

@ Hazel

Sorry, I just could not resist, it seems so funny that a Firewall is FOR hackers instead of AGAINST hackers.

 

@ Mike

I saw that the first time, hence I replaced with "...." the part that was not relevant to my observation.

 

I guess I must be an acquired taste ! !

In their description of the firewall it says "FortKnox Personal Firewall is personal firewall solution that allows you to protect a PC against hacker attacks..." (link). That doesn't sound like it's for hackers to me...

[Alan_B]

In their description of the firewall it says "FortKnox Personal Firewall is personal firewall solution that allows you to protect a PC against hacker attacks..." (link). That doesn't sound like it's for hackers to me...

That was not evident from the publicity pages that Hazel linked. You had to go hunting to discredit a little bit of humour ?

 

It is surely self evident that no Firewall would be designed to act FOR the benefit of hackers,

Just as it is self evident that PUBLICITY TITLES ought to be proof read by someone familiar with the idiom of the target audience.

I guess the problem originates from the fact that NetGate comes from Slovak Republic as per

http://www.netgate.sk/content/view/21/46/

[TeeJay3800]

That was not evident from the publicity pages that Hazel linked. You had to go hunting to discredit a little bit of humour ?

I understand the irony of a firewall being for hackers, and I was just posting correct information about the software. Your earlier posts suggested it was indeed "for" hackers which made me curious to read more, so I did...

[login123]

I'm using Blackhawk right now, it seems considerably faster than Firefox, Opera or ie8. If it continues to perform like this, it will be my default browser. Reason for the qualifier statement is that the net connection here slowed to a crawl recently because of static in the isp's hardware. Water problems with the wires, I think. So maybe Blackhawk just seems faster.

 

Edit: just switched back to ie8, and Blackhawk is faster. Here's a comparison screenshot of the memory ie8 uses for the same tabs & windows. Doesn't look like much difference, but Blackhawk is noticeably faster at opening tabs & windows.

 

 

Nice find, Hazel, thanks. Any thing I can do to check it out further?

[hazelnut]

At last got a bit of spare time to give this browser a run. You are right Login, it is quite fast and it seems quiet, not fussy if you know what I mean.

 

Flash works as it should re-YouTube etc. and the spell checker works. Have put the favourites bar on and added a few icons on it so I can just click on them to go to my forums.

 

Will keep this for a while and see if it breaks !

[login123]

Here's a screenshot from Blackhawk > Tools > Task Manager > Stats for Nerds (no kidding, its called that ).

 

 

If I read it correctly, ie8 with 2 tabs open uses almost twice as much memory as Blackhawk does with 2 tabs plus the third "Diagnostic" tab. In any case, I can confirm that it is a bunch faster than ie8.

 

Edit: Another picture from Process Explorer, shows that opening two tabs in Blackhawk creates 3 instances of Blackhawk.exe. Running outside the sandbox.

 

 

In that picture in post 5, 2 windows and 4 tabs created 8 instances of that same exe. Don't understand that. Still fast, tho.

[hazelnut]

I have noticed the same (about each tab equalling another process) I wonder if it is because it is Chromium based? Perhaps it is sort of sandboxed itself anyway?

 

In Process Explorer if you right-click on a Blackhawk entry and select properties and then select the security tab, under NT Aurthority it says Deny,Owner which means it is running with reduced rights. Doing the same with the other entry shows that one isn't

 

I am considering making it my default, I cannot believe it is so fast.

[Andavari]

I'm giving it a try right now as well, just installed it a few minutes ago.

 

For those security minded don't forget to get some useful extensions for it:

* AdBlock

* WOT - just install the Google Chrome version.

 

Edit:

I don't know if this forum is running slow at the moment or not, however it's slow on here at the moment while everywhere else is fast.

[Andavari]

I've just removed 6.62 MB from the installation by removing all the language .DLL files I don't need located in the program folder here:

NETGATE\Black Hawk\locales

[TeeJay3800]

So basically it's a copy of Iron. I don't see anything yet that distinguishes BlackHawk from all the other Chromium-based browsers.

[hazelnut]

So basically it's a copy of Iron. I don't see anything yet that distinguishes BlackHawk from all the other Chromium-based browsers.

 

Speed and download size.

 

http://fromasmalloffice.blogspot.com/2011/05/blackhawk-web-browser.html

 

Have you tried Blackhawk yourself TeeJay?

[TeeJay3800]

Speed and download size.

 

http://fromasmalloffice.blogspot.com/2011/05/blackhawk-web-browser.html

 

Have you tried Blackhawk yourself TeeJay?

You bet. It doesn't seem any faster at anything than Iron though, and I prefer not to have a menu bar to save on screen space. I'm also unsure how quickly it comes out with updates. When Chrome comes out with a new stable version, SRWare usually updates Iron within a few days. At this point I have no idea how quickly NetGate releases updates (could be quick, could be slow, no idea right now).

[hazelnut]

@TeeJay

I've tried Iron and Blackhawk is definitely faster for me. But everyones machines are different and can depend on so many things..extentions etc. Also on this machine I use Open DNS which really speeds things up for me anyway.

 

@Login

I gather that each tab and extention gets a different process id so that if it fails or gets exploited only that tab will fail and not the browser (thanks for the info Sully)

[TeeJay3800]

After using it a little more I've noticed two things. First, it's built on a much older version of Chrome/Chromium than Iron. In the newest version, the settings window opens in it's own browser tab with the URL of chrome://settings/browser, but in BlackHawk, settings opens in it's own window like the older versions of Chrome. Also, for some reason, text on forums such as this one look slightly blurry, whereas they look sharp and crisp in Iron. Speed is subjective and varies from machine to machine as Hazel said, but from my perspective, Iron is a better and more up-to-date browser.

[login123]

I have noticed the same (about each tab equalling another process) I wonder if it is because it is Chromium based? Perhaps it is sort of sandboxed itself anyway?

 

In Process Explorer if you right-click on a Blackhawk entry and select properties and then select the security tab, under NT Aurthority it says Deny,Owner which means it is running with reduced rights. Doing the same with the other entry shows that one isn't

 

I am considering making it my default, I cannot believe it is so fast.

 

Cannot compare to Chrome or Iron, never used them.

 

Is this the rights issue you're talking about, Hazel? All I ever looked at before was the resource usage.

 

 

Edit: It is just a bunch faster that FF, Opera or ie8, looks like it will soon be the default here.

[Andavari]

For me it was no faster than Firefox 5, so I don't know what everyone else is raving about and it was really slow on this forum.

 

Also with all those blackhawk.exe processes running it was consuming gobs more RAM than Firefox 5 especially since I applied a tweak in Firefox to disable plugin-container.