The new `Buffer` instances in browserify are really excellent, why not just use them directly? They're based on `Uint8Array` in supported browsers so they're fast and also support all the methods from node's [Buffer API](http://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html).

Also, if you don't mind incurring a copy, you can just convert a `Buffer` to a plain `Uint8Array` with: `var arr = new Uint8Array(buffer.toArrayBuffer())`