Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

bonsaibrowser.com

201–210 of 234 posts

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovative? I have been using qutebrowser for a while, and don't see the appeal of this. I just press a binding, start typing the name of the tab (fuzzy), get the list of matches, choose and there I am. As a basic example among many. Nyxt is just as powerful, if not more. If you like visual layouts like the one offered then OK, but not me, I think it's distracting and unnecessary. BTW the headline is blown af

Just because it's not useful or innovative to you, doesn't mean it isn't to others. It's always good to have more players in this game and to me what they are trying to do seems more approachable than the examples you showed.

> It's always good to have more players in this game

I agree with your overall points but this but stood out to me because it's not clear if Bonsai uses its own rendering engine of it is just another reskin of Blink / Chromium. What we really need is more competition with browsers which use their own rendering engines. Or at the very least, more browsers using Gecko (Firefox). If this is another Chromium-based browser then it's still definitely good to see some new ideas in UI but we don't really see much other benefit having more players in the game.

What worries me the most is that this is closed source but presented as if it is open source. Their binaries are stored on Github but there's literally nothing in the repo aside a README (https://github.com/hyferg/bonsai-browser-public). This is of particular concern given the sensitive content that people use browsers for these days (banking, shopping, research on potentially sensitive topics, etc). It would be trivial for a malicious browser to do some real damage to people and there's no way to prove this browser's intentions are sincere given how little information (ie "none") is published about its developers or even the code.

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#202
post #168

I don’t know why I’m unable to see a reply link to reply to the OP’s comment here. I visited the website and was excited to see the organization screenshots. However, I didn’t see anything else on the website and I have a bunch of questions. Is this closed source or open source? Which browser engine and framework is this based on? Can I (or will I be able to in the future) install WebExtensions line in the popular br…

I had the same questions so did some sleuthing and all I could find was a Github repo with a practically empty README (the same repo that's used to service the compiled application) hosted in a personal account: https://github.com/hyferg/bonsai-browser-public

This very much looks like someone's hobby project -- which is fine -- but without the source code and given the sensitive stuff we all do web browsers these days, I'm not willing to trust a random developer that their closed hobby project is safe to use.

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovative? I have been using qutebrowser for a while, and don't see the appeal of this. I just press a binding, start typing the name of the tab (fuzzy), get the list of matches, choose and there I am. As a basic example among many. Nyxt is just as powerful, if not more. If you like visual layouts like the one offered then OK, but not me, I think it's distracting and unnecessary. BTW the headline is blown af

I'm an avid qutebrowser user too! Thanks for introducing me to Nyxt. I'm curious, why are you using qutebrowser if Nyxt is _at least_ as powerful as QB?

Nyxt is more extensible due to CL, which I like. However qutebrowser is working just fine for me so far and I didn't like how some things worked out of the box in Nyxt, and was too lazy to customize them.

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovative? I have been using qutebrowser for a while, and don't see the appeal of this. I just press a binding, start typing the name of the tab (fuzzy), get the list of matches, choose and there I am. As a basic example among many. Nyxt is just as powerful, if not more. If you like visual layouts like the one offered then OK, but not me, I think it's distracting and unnecessary. BTW the headline is blown af

Not sure if you’re truly always that pedantic or if you are some sort of troll. Good for you that you enjoy something different, but I doubt anyone thinks “I think this is innovative, but let me check with maydup first because he knows it all”.

> Not sure if you’re truly always that pedantic or if you are some sort of troll

wat? I responded to this:

> this is the most innovative thing in the browser space for a long while

I simply mentioned how there have been some other browsers for a while that have an equivalent feature set, therefore this isn't so innovative.

The fucking snowflakes. Where every opinion must be cherished and never argued with.

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#205
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovative? I have been using qutebrowser for a while, and don't see the appeal of this. I just press a binding, start typing the name of the tab (fuzzy), get the list of matches, choose and there I am. As a basic example among many. Nyxt is just as powerful, if not more. If you like visual layouts like the one offered then OK, but not me, I think it's distracting and unnecessary. BTW the headline is blown af

Is that the same as ctrl-shift-a in Chrome?

Can't say, not using Chrome, but I wouldn't be surprised. It does seem like a no brainer to have in a browser, along with tab groups (which qutebrowser currently seems to lack).

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re truly always that pedantic or if you are some sort of troll. Good for you that you enjoy something different, but I doubt anyone thinks “I think this is innovative, but let me check with maydup first because he knows it all”.

> Not sure if you’re truly always that pedantic or if you are some sort of troll wat? I responded to this: > this is the most innovative thing in the browser space for a long while I simply mentioned how there have been some other browsers for a while that have an equivalent feature set, therefore this isn't so innovative. The fucking snowflakes. Where every opinion must be cherished and never argued with.

I think you confused what I mean. I was asking if you were always pedantic. I said nothing about not starting a debate. It’s the way you communicate, not what you communicate.

Your tone makes it seem like you just want to toot your own horn and not like you want to actually have a conversation about the topic.

Maybe you could’ve said “there is this other application that I’ve been using that’s been out for a while and has innovated the browser in similar ways, check it out”

Do whatever you want, I just think you might promote healthier conversations if you don’t come across as pedantic. Unless you’re a troll or proud of your tone, either way, thanks for your time.

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#207

Love it, this is the most innovative thing in the browser space for a long while. It's baffling to me how boring most 'new' browsers are - most propositions are 'like X but with less friction on these 2 or 3 things'. I hate that it's only for Mac so far, but glad to see others are on the way. I've been thinking about picking up a cheap older mac for development work, though, and this is one more reason in favor.

Innovative? I have been using qutebrowser for a while, and don't see the appeal of this. I just press a binding, start typing the name of the tab (fuzzy), get the list of matches, choose and there I am. As a basic example among many. Nyxt is just as powerful, if not more. If you like visual layouts like the one offered then OK, but not me, I think it's distracting and unnecessary. BTW the headline is blown af

> I think it's distracting

I'm confused why the thread got so much upvotes, and a lot of comments made me more confused. Not trying to be rude, but I don't really understand the usefulness ..

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's not useful or innovative to you, doesn't mean it isn't to others. It's always good to have more players in this game and to me what they are trying to do seems more approachable than the examples you showed.

> It's always good to have more players in this game I agree with your overall points but this but stood out to me because it's not clear if Bonsai uses its own rendering engine of it is just another reskin of Blink / Chromium. What we really need is more competition with browsers which use their own rendering engines. Or at the very least, more browsers using Gecko (Firefox). If this is another Chromium-based browse…

I'll edit the readme of that repo to make it more clear. We're distributing the browser off of github so we don't have to pay for download bandwidth and because it integrates with our CI.

Our website got 1TB of traffic yesterday (which it turns out I have to pay for) and thats without hosting the binary on our site!

Re: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure if you’re truly always that pedantic or if you are some sort of troll wat? I responded to this: > this is the most innovative thing in the browser space for a long while I simply mentioned how there have been some other browsers for a while that have an equivalent feature set, therefore this isn't so innovative. The fucking snowflakes. Where every opinion must be cherished and never argued with.

I think you confused what I mean. I was asking if you were always pedantic. I said nothing about not starting a debate. It’s the way you communicate, not what you communicate. Your tone makes it seem like you just want to toot your own horn and not like you want to actually have a conversation about the topic. Maybe you could’ve said “there is this other application that I’ve been using that’s been out for a while an…

Well, when something is presented as innovative, while it's really not (given the context of "browser space"), and you say so, how is it pedantry? There was an overenthusiastic false statement, and I responded to it accordingly, that's all.
Post reply on HN