I’ve been using Brave for about 7-8 months now. I am using Brave on Linux Mint 19.2 on a Dell Latitude E5430 laptop.
I would describe myself as a “power user”.
Here are the things that I like about Brave Browser:
1 Speed. I’m coming to Brave from Firefox, which I have been using since it was called Phoenix. It used to be slim and fast, but as time went on, it became more and more bloated and lethargic. It is the complete opposite for Brave. Brave is snappy and responsive. When you click to open it, it opens immediately.
2 Extensibility. Very convenient to use Chrome extensions, as there are analogues for pretty much every extension that I used on Firefox, if the actual ones aren’t available.
3 Looks. The browser just looks modern and mostly well thought out. It has a great feel to it. The daily artwork is a nice touch. I like having the clock come up on the homepage. Very nice.
4 Shields. The great thing about Shields is, it doesn’t trip the “adblocker installed” warning on very many websites. Yet, it still blocks ads on those sites. Genius.
All of these features and qualities are AWESOME, but if I could improve anything about Brave, these are the things that I would work on.
1 No way to open bookmarks with a single click. Yes, I realize that you can probably do it with a key combination. When I’m “mousing”, I don’t want to take my hands off the mouse. When I’m keyboarding, I don’t want to take my hands off the keyboard. Transitioning from one input method to another is kludgy and inconvenient. IMHO, keyboard shortcuts for simple things actually interfere with the flow of tasks that I am working on.
Here’s the really head-scratching part…I can BOOKMARK a site with a single click. but then I have to click TWICE to get to what I just bookmarked.
If I were to guess, I’d say that people ACCESS bookmarks more than they CREATE bookmarks. For example, today I’ve accessed my bookmarks several times but haven’t made a single new bookmark. So why is it easier to CREATE a bookmark than it is to USE one? It doesn’t make sense.
There’s already a button there for bookmarks. Why can’t that button open a menu with an option to create a new bookmark at the top, and a list of your bookmarks below?
2 Disregard the italic portion that follows: Brave obviously isn’t rolled out to the Linux repositories in a timely manner. Just this week, I was troubleshooting a problem and the suggestion was made to upgrade from 1.2 to 1.8. Sounds good, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t, because I keep updating with APT and it tells me that I already have the newest version. So, I’m stuck with some issues until 1.8 hits the repository. This puts Linux users at risk of security vulnerabilities and means they have to wait to get new features. Disregard the italic portion. I found out that I have to go back to Brave.com and re-add the repository like I did when I installed for the first time. How do I get Brave to update itself along with the rest of my system without doing this?
3 Brave Rewards is a hot mess. I still don’t fully understand how it works, but I do know that everything moves so S-L-O-W-L-Y. I have BAT showing in my browser that didn’t deposit to my Uphold account on May 5, but SOME did. Tips don’t work for me at the moment. On the homepage, it says I have 34.3 BAT. When I click the triangle in the address bar, it says I have 46.5 BAT. And when I click “Details” below that number, it says, “6.5 BAT earned from ads. 10.1 BAT earned from ads.” How much BAT do I have? This feels like a word problem from elementary school:
“If Johnny has 34.3 BAT on his homepage, but 46.5 BAT in the address bar menu, and 6.5 + 10.1 BAT in the Details tab, how many BAT does Johnny have in total?”
And, just like in elementary school, there’s probably an answer that’s correct, but makes no sense whatsoever.
Brave Rewards needs to be SIMPLE and TRANSPARENT. This feels like a shell game. Last month I watched my amount go up and up and up until I had something like 48 BAT and then ended up with 29 BAT in my UPHOLD account. Huh?
Despite the BAT issues (and yes, I’m complaining about getting free stuff…lol), I’m encouraged by the direction of Brave and hope that it continues to improve. Right now, Brave is very, very good, and with a few very minor enhancements, could be excellent.
