Sad news. Swing Browser, that amazing hybrid browser that combined Chrome with Active-X, is no more. It reached official End-of-Life status as of January 7, 2019.
Swing Browser's service was officially discontinued in 2 phases earlier this year, per an announcement on their website that included links for backing up your data and a sweet farewell:
For a good look at what Swing Browser was and what it could do, check out my old post full of screenshots and commentary:
10원 Tips: My review of Swing Browser (스윙 브라우저)
Meanwhile, for those who don't remember, Swing Browser tried to bridge a gap that still exists today although in a smaller size.
Way back in 2013, the rising popularity of Chrome even in Korea was clear, but there was the fact that all Korean online services were built for Internet Explorer. People were having to switch back and forth between browsers, which meant most people just stuck with IE. If only there were some way that Chrome could run Microsoft's Active X plugins...
In stepped a C or D level internet portal service called Zum (a subsidiary of ESTsoft, most famous at the time for the Altools suite of anti-virus, zip-compression, etc tools). Their plan was to use the open source nature of Chromium to build a fast speedy browser that could still run a compatibility mode that allowed those Active X plugins to work. Way back in 2013 this was the bleeding edge and could have changed the game.
But the rules changed.
Swing Browser never really caught on, I think for a few reasons.
Let's give this unique browser with an ahead-of-its-time idea a nice goodbye and take a look back at its original promotional video, which actually strikes me now, 6 years later, as surprisingly well done.
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| Swing Browser website with pop-up EOL announcement |
Swing Browser reaches EOL
Swing Browser's service was officially discontinued in 2 phases earlier this year, per an announcement on their website that included links for backing up your data and a sweet farewell:
[공지] 스윙브라우저(PC) 서비스 지원 종료 안내2018-12-13
안녕하세요. 스윙브라우저입니다.
2019년 1월 7일 스윙브라우저 서비스 지원 종료를 안내 드립니다.
그동안 스윙브라우저를 사랑해주신 모든 분께 감사드리며,
기존에 사용하시던 데이터를 안전하게 보관하실 수 있도록 세부 종료일정과 백업방법을 안내드립니다.
[종료 일정]
1) 2019.01.07 스윙브라우저 서비스 지원 종료(스피드모드 변경 미접수)
2) 2019.03.31 스윙브라우저 로그인 서비스 종료(로그인 불가)
[백업 방법]
※ Internet Explorer 기반 ‘알툴바’를 통해 온라인 서비스(즐겨찾기/디스크/메모)를 계속 이용하거나 데이터 백업을 할 수 있습니다.
온라인 즐겨찾기 데이터 백업 방법 안내 >
알툴바 최신버전 다운로드 >
그동안 스윙브라우저를 아껴주신 모든 분께 감사 인사 드리며,
더 좋은 서비스로 다시 찾아뵐 수 있도록 노력하겠습니다.
감사합니다.
Swing Browser history
For a good look at what Swing Browser was and what it could do, check out my old post full of screenshots and commentary:
10원 Tips: My review of Swing Browser (스윙 브라우저)
Meanwhile, for those who don't remember, Swing Browser tried to bridge a gap that still exists today although in a smaller size.
Way back in 2013, the rising popularity of Chrome even in Korea was clear, but there was the fact that all Korean online services were built for Internet Explorer. People were having to switch back and forth between browsers, which meant most people just stuck with IE. If only there were some way that Chrome could run Microsoft's Active X plugins...
In stepped a C or D level internet portal service called Zum (a subsidiary of ESTsoft, most famous at the time for the Altools suite of anti-virus, zip-compression, etc tools). Their plan was to use the open source nature of Chromium to build a fast speedy browser that could still run a compatibility mode that allowed those Active X plugins to work. Way back in 2013 this was the bleeding edge and could have changed the game.
But the rules changed.
Why did nobody use Swing Browser?
Swing Browser never really caught on, I think for a few reasons.
- Nobody uses Zum
Their blog service (egloos.com) is probably their most successful product, but the Zum portal just doesn't have the traffic drive, and never was able to get the message out. AFAIK Swing was only ever even know about by people in the techie circles. [I just noticed their portal homepage still doesn't use https]. - People don't like change. Especially back in 2013, changing browsers (or even updating to Windows from XP to 7) was a hassle. Today installing a new browser is fairly easy and more understood. But common folk saw no real reason to change, especially if it increased the hassle of banking/shopping. Everybody just uses IE, why should I be some early adopter for a program that might not even work.
- Active X went away. We can argue about how long and drawn out this process has been, but the objective fact is that Korea has been (slowly but) steadily moving away from this system and into modern security features that work on a variety of systems (yes even including Linux). Most major banking institutions now let you do online banking via any browser, any OS (sometimes it's as easy as ignoring the requests to install their 20 security plugins). There are some stragglers (Hometax, HiKorea...) but this makes it clear that the technical quagmire of maintaining this type of compatibility layer just wasn't worth it. In my latest download of Whale browser, this feature was also removed so I'm guessing Naver agrees.
- Whale Browser. When Naver released their own Whale browser in 2016, just 3 years later, it was clear that if a Korean home-grown browser could gain traction, it would be this one. It could sync your Naver account bookmarks and logins, with deep integration with Naver services. It also maintained Chrome engine updates, never being more than 2 or 3 versions behind (i.e. putting it on par with Opera and other Chromium-based browsers)
- Lax security. It's a little odd to mention, but the elephant in the room is that Swing Browser was notoriously buggy and hackable. It was routinely 10 to 20 versions behind the current Chromium engine release. Not to mention the ALtoolbar it often relied on was the butt of hacking and personal data loss. ESTsoft has been plagued with blunders in this area. (More on those here). I think at some point they just gave up trying to maintain this thing. It was a never-ending uphill battle... for what? Swing did reach 20 million downloads but that was likely a high point for them.
Calling it quits
What I find interesting is that in their support notices, there is a notice of service suspension for upgrades on December 11, 2018, and then just two days later on December 13, they announced the total shut down of the service.
What did they find during this audit/upgrade? My guess is whatever effort would've been needed to bring it back up to snuff was deemed a lost cause.
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| Swing Browser notice board. Screenshot: Swing Browser |
They had already shut down development of the Android version months earlier on July 11, 2018. I guess they just decided to throw in the towel. And what strikes me as saddest of all is that I didn't even notice until now, 6 months later, that it had signed off. It passed away forgotten and alone.
The .exe file can still be downloaded (at http://cdn.swing-browser.com/installer/swing_installer.exe), so this might be your last chance to grab a copy for posterity or just surf the web dangerously.
The .exe file can still be downloaded (at http://cdn.swing-browser.com/installer/swing_installer.exe), so this might be your last chance to grab a copy for posterity or just surf the web dangerously.
Goodbye, Swing Browser
Let's give this unique browser with an ahead-of-its-time idea a nice goodbye and take a look back at its original promotional video, which actually strikes me now, 6 years later, as surprisingly well done.
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