I'm still curious why the #dat project thought making their own browser was a good idea. They have solid protocol thing going on with Dat but #beakerbrowser on the other hand is... not a very good browser and it supports none of the addons I rely on.

So, why didn't they just fork #Firefox like #TorBrowser did or extend it with Web Extensions? Or write a bridge that runs on localhost and can be opened from any browser?

I hope they didn't think they can get away by using #electron , as if that was all that's necessary for a good browser. Because that would be very, very sad.

Especially since they have bigger problems than having their own browser, like not working behind firewalls. Which, imho, is a huge issue if they care about widespread adoption of their protocol.

As far as #firefox is concerned, the protocol was just whitelisted for WebExtension in the new version Firefox 60. (Currently in the nightly channel)

A WebExtension might be developed by someone soon.

That's good to hear.

And is there any news on evading firewalls? Because Tor can do it and if Tor can do it then I expect Dat to do the same, if not automatically then by providing an easy solution that does not require users setting up proxies.

One big problem with browser extensions is that all you can do is websockets and xhr. No tcp, udp, and I think you can't do webrtc either. Extending a big project like firefox outside of their official extension system is a big undertaking and maintaining upstream compatibility makes that even harder.

Also, the dat project and beaker browser are separate groups. Beaker started out using ipfs but switched to dat later because updates are presently a bit easier.

Oooooh, I didn't know that! The official site gave the impression that it's their project or is at least officially sanctioned.

IPFS's "nested URL" scheme was also a problem.

Beaker will get better.