Aera has been built from the ground up on Electron — and we've reached the limits of what that framework can do for a real browser.
In the Electron-based versions there's no multi-window support, some websites have authentication issues, and certain basic browser functionality has been missing. We've patched around these with custom implementations, but the right fix is structural.
So Aera is being fully migrated to Chromium. It's a substantial undertaking, but the majority of functionality and UI has already been ported to our new Chromium fork. The move brings real browser security, the long tail of basic functionality that users expect, and recent Chromium niceties like split tab view.
The first fully Chromium-based version — v0.3.0 — is targeted for early-to-mid January. It will likely require a fresh install (the Electron version won't auto-update across the engine change), but chats and preferences should migrate.
Happy New Year from Aera — the next few weeks are going to be big.
