Soren Stoutner @privacybrowser@fosstodon.org

Thiago Nazareno Conceição Silva de Jesus <mochileiro2006-trilhas@yahoo.com.br> has kindly agreed to do a Portuguese translation of Privacy Browser. Anything that is ready will be included in the 3.5 release, with the full translation to follow.

Main WebView is by far the most complicated because it has the most things going in. I am doing the other first so I can learn all the tricks before tackling the hardest one. When it is done, 3.5 will be ready for release.

The following three activities remain:

• Bookmarks
• Bookmarks Database View
• Main WebView

Privacy Browser can now gracefully restart (change day/night theme) for the following activities:

• About
• Domains
• Guide
• Import/Export
• Logcat
• Requests
• View Source

I wrote a blog post explaining why Privacy Browser will never monetize the default search engine.

https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-will-never-monetize-the-default-search-engine/

The last thing to do before the 3.5 release is to train Privacy Browser to save and restore the state when it is killed in the background. This is very important for the new day/night theme because every time the theme changes (like entering battery saver mode) the app is restarted. Handling this correctly is a tricky process, and I have no idea how long it will take to figure it out. But, I just made the logcat restore the scroll position on restart. 😀

https://redmine.stoutner.com/issues/461

The new WebView dark theme, which uses Android’s relatively new built-in dark mode. It generally works better than the previous method, and, more importantly, it doesn’t require that JavaScript be enabled. However, people still on Android KitKat will not be able to use it because their WebView is too old.

I came upon this video, which has a review of Privacy Browser at about 17:20. Based on the icons and the comment dates, I think the video is a couple of years old. I’m also happy that Invidio chooses to play video without JavaScript. 😁

https://invidio.us/watch?v=LRL22Rt8n88

I recently learned about Liberapay, which is similar to Patreon, but with a focus on the open source community. As such, I created a Liberapay account at https://liberapay.com/sorenstoutner/ for those who would like to support the development of Privacy Browser.

The color scheme for the night theme has been altered to a soft violet, which is easier on the eyes and matches the Android 10 night theme.

Also note that there are a few things that don't yet work smoothly because they require other planned 3.5 features. Particularly, changing the theme currently doesn't work well without restarting the app.

https://redmine.stoutner.com/projects/privacy-browser/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&set_filter=1&sort=id%3Adesc&f%5B%5D=status_id&op%5Bstatus_id%5D=o&f%5B%5D=priority_id&op%5Bpriority_id%5D=%3D&v%5Bpriority_id%5D%5B%5D=4&f%5B%5D=&c%5B%5D=tracker&c%5B%5D=status&c%5B%5D=priority&c%5B%5D=subject&c%5B%5D=assigned_to&c%5B%5D=updated_on&group_by=&t%5B%5D=

Note that the settings database version 11 format is not finalized for the 3.5 release, so if you are doing testing make sure to save a copy of your settings from the 3.4.1 release to import into the final 3.5 release.

During the development process I did over 200 debug builds and tested across 5 different physical devices and several virtual machines. However, the changes are significant enough that I might have misses something. Feel free to build it yourselves and submit bug reports.

The new style using the Day/Night theme has been pushed to Git. https://git.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowser.git;a=commitdiff;h=74655c0cd0ba72c80ac6c48df55bc3d2f5280ad2

This is the navigation drawer in night mode.

This is the main interface in night mode. Note that the WebView is not modified in this screenshot. Seeing if I can make that more intelligent is the next project. https://redmine.stoutner.com/issues/366

The second hurdle is removing all the coding I had to handle the custom light/dark theme I built years ago. This screenshot shows the mail interface in day mode.

Reworking the app theme to work with Android’s relatively new Day/Night theme is a bit trickier than it might look. First, I had a lot of interface designs that need to be adjusted, like making the navigation drawer move below the status bar instead of sliding under a translucent scrim like it does in the current release. This has all types of implications for things like notches and full screen browsing mode.

However, the Day/Night theme will provide a better light and dark experience going forward, and is worth the effort.

For example, right now I am working on switching the theming to use Android's relatively new Day/Night theme. This is more complicated than may be readily apparent, as there was a lot of customizations I made to the theme so that it would work well with both the custom light and dark modes I developed.