[APP][4.0+] Atlas Web Browser: Ad / Privacy Filters + Material Design

Hello,

I've long been dissatisfied with the way mobile browsers work, and have set about creating something better.

The impetus for this project has been the following:

• Web sites commonly use excessive JavaScript to an extent that pages take too long to finish loading, consume battery, data plan, and sometimes even make the device uncomfortably warm.
• The effect is often compounded by too many requests for various user tracking resources, affiliate resources, and advertising.
• Many sites have obnoxious advertising.
• Many sites have poorly implemented and limited-functionality mobile versions that I would prefer not to use.
• Many sites constantly annoy with JavaScript popups requesting that I download an app.

To remedy these problems, I've built the "Atlas Web Browser", available now for download (as a beta). Like most everything I've published here on XDA, it follows a free/paid model, with a *real* free version (not a trial) and a paid add-on that hopes to appeal to power users.

The free version is of course ad-free. It doesn't collect/send ANY information to anyone; not anonymously, not to "special marketing partners", not in aggregate, not in a box, not with a fox, NOT AT ALL.

Atlas is being built with Material Design. Please bear in mind that at present Android L is still a developer preview and backward compatibility libraries are not available, and Atlas is targeting ICS, Jelly Bean, KitKat, and Android L. It thus can't present the complete Material Design experience until after Android L is released.

When you initially open Atlas, it displays your bookmarks:



Atlas has left and right slideouts that are used to switch between windows and control the browsing experience (respectively).

Swiping open the left slideout shows the open windows:



Swiping open the right slideout reveals the "Control Panel". The "Control Panel" provides you with control over the browsing experience:



The first item, "Content Filter" is used to enable or disable the filtering of advertising, privacy trackers, and nuisances that may slow down site performance. AdBlockPlus' "EasyList" filters are used for this purpose. You can enable or disable individual filters for privacy, advertising, and social media annoyances. Currently it's limited to the most popular EasyList filters, but this feature is being further expanded to be more flexible and customizable. Because the content filter can easily be turned on and off, you can leave it off to support sites that don't use offensive advertising.

The next item, "Browsing Mode" is fairly self-explanatory: it allows you to control which version of a site (desktop or mobile) is requested from the server. This may not work for some sites, as regrettably all we can do is *request* the desktop version.

The "Experience" selector controls what types of rich content are displayed. The "HI-FI" mode provides the full experience, while the "LO-FI" mode disables JavaScript and rich media. Using LO-FI can have a tremendous impact on performance, but may come at the expense of web site functionality. A final "TEXT" option can be useful in critical low-signal situations.

Atlas is hardly the first browser to offer the ability to turn JavaScript on and off, or to allow configuration of desktop-vs-mobile browsing. What's different here is that it's readily accessible all the time. When you encounter a site or circumstance where things are behaving poorly, you can often very readily correct the problem using the control panel.

The "Adjust Text Size" selector does its best to make up for Android's new Chromium browsing engine's lack of text reflow. You can also use a THREE-finger pinch-zoom gesture to adjust the text size without sliding out the control panel.

The "Atlas+" paid add-on currently adds the following items:

• Ability to open more than four tabs.
• Dual-view mode (view two sites at once: not recommended on phones for general use, but very useful for product comparisons).
• Ability to permanently save settings for individual sites, such that they are automatically applied when a site is visited.

While it's in beta you can simply check a box in the settings to make all features available (for the duration of the beta program). This check box is NOT checked by default.

More screenshots:

Dual view mode in Atlas+


Site Settings Manager in Atlas+


Filter selection (all versions...needs to be expanded for additional and custom filters):


A few technical notes:

• Atlas is based on Android's WebView API, and thus will use the Android WebKit Browser on Android 4.0-4.3 and the Android Chromium Browser on Android 4.4 and Android L.
• Google removed support for proper "Private Browsing" in the Chromium API. Atlas works around this problem by using a second sandboxed browser process to provide private browsing, but unfortunately cookies cannot be enabled or we risk leaking them from the "normal" mode into the "private" mode due to severe deficiencies in the Android WebKit API design.
• Content filtering is performed using AdBlockPlus URL filters. These are currently sourced only from the "EasyList" filter collection, support for additional types of filters is being added (e.g. hosts-file style block lists).

Known issues:

• Content filter may not engage on the first site visited in a new browsing session (press reload if required)
• Option to manually enter content filter URLs is not yet available.

Download:

• Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nextapp.atlas
• Direct Download: http://android.nextapp.com/atlas/r79/Atlas_r79.apk

Reserved.

m0d said:

Great work.
Loving this browser from the get go.

It would be nice to have the option to go to home or bookmarks when last window is closed instead of exiting app.
Also, if you find a way to enable embedded video playback (such as youtube), that would be great. I am not sure why non of the other lightweight/open source browser have working media on web sItes as when I was using an old firefox beta it worked fine, video and audio.
Your browser only audio plays, video is all black

Great addition to your app collection, as FX file explorer sets the standard

EDIT:
Another useful detail would be to add the link url on the pop-up when long clicking links
I.E.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thanks,

Are you in HIFI mode? LOFI disables JavaScript and thus media playback generally won't work. Can you play the "freeing storage space" video on android.nextapp.com?

And definitely agree on the bookmarks/homepage scenario with closing the last window. Will do something akin to FX where you can double-tap back to exit if it's the last window (with the "press back again to exit" toast message).

I can't see the image in your edit, it just gives me a 1x1 pixel image.

anonymous-bot said:

I'm liking this browser so far; it has a great look and it has builtin adblock. I would just like to see a couple features:

1. Allow a custom URL for the search engine. Firefox lets you long-press on a search field and add it as a search engine.

2. A built-in "Link Bubble" feature. Link Bubble is great but I despise using it since there is no adblock.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thanks!

You currently can change the search engine, but it's limited to a few choices: Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu. There are two URLs for each search engine, one for search (where an HTML page is the response) and one for suggestions (which is XML or JSON, I forget). In any case I do need to add this. Search engine selection is currently under settings / general.

Need to look into more options for background loading, there currently is a "open in new window in background" option if you long press on links, but it doesn't integrate with other apps.

m0d said:

I agree, sharing directly with photoeditor, too.

Another small thing would be for undoing close tab; for example, long click new tab for small popup to undo the last closed tab.
Are you planning to add history viewer?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Yes, long pressing on + button needs to reopen closed tab, didn't make the cut for first release but is a priority.

There is a history viewer, tap the back forward button in the action bar and then the "clock" icon to the far right. I need to also add this option into the "Privacy and User Data" settings.

declan8888 said:

Open Google.com on startup causes crash issues

When restarting the browser it doesn't save my 'load in mobile view' setting and reverts to desktop view

Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Free mobile app

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Are you just opening Google.com or setting it as your home page? Just realized there's a bug if you're using a URL as your home page, make sure you put "http://" in front of it (and this is absolutely a bug in Atlas, no one should have to do that, it will be fixed).

Are you tapping "Save as Default" after you switch to mobile view? Modified settings won't be kept otherwise.

Thanks for reporting these!