A browser without all this new stupid checks of "malware sites", HTTPS complaining and so on. I want to use it as a program, not as an secure antivirus tool
Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
81–90 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#82Better bookmarking.
How so?
As such a heavy user of bookmarks that I pay cash money for a 3rd party bookmark manager: literally any improvements would be great. The built-in bookmark managers of browsers - especially mobile ones - are incredibly anemic.
EDIT: The bookmark manager I pay for is called Linkman - http://www.outertech.com/en/bookmark-manager. I first bought it around 10 years ago and still use an old version, so unfortunately I'm neither up-to-date with its present capabilities nor the current landscape of 3rd party bookmark managers.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#83The web needs to split into two: * Reader browser * Application browser The reader browser should show you the "web" in a kindle-like readable experience, just as it does today. However, the application browser, although it does receive a URL, should not have any HTML page as a default view. Instead, a JavaScript should be first loaded, and from there, following the permissions it requests, it can open new windows, n…
Interesting concept, but it seems needlessly complicated. What's to prevent websites like, say, the Guardian from declaring themselves as applications?
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#84The reason why I originally switched from Firefox to Chrome was because Chrome was minimalistic and very, very fast - a chrome for the web. Now I'm seeing Chrome become bloated, and slow. On top of this, it's now trying very hard to identify me by asking me to sign in with my Google account. I want my next browser to make me forget that I'm using a browser in the first place, and also to not care about my identity.
Sounds like you might want to give Firefox a try again then – it’s much better now than in the 4.x days. Or if you’re on a Mac Safari is pretty slim (although slightly lagging in JS abilities).
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#85Basically Opera 12 or pre-Chromium Opera in general.. - Obvious things like encryption support, tabs, full cookie options, (customizable) "smart" address bar, speed dial, history, favourites, optional synchronization, extension support, spell check... - heavily customizable UI, - plenty of other customization through settings or Opera's neatly done opera:config, - easily togglable (is that a word?) side panel with M2…
I would second the wish for a return of Opera Unite. I thought their vision for what Unite could be was incredible and I was really sad to see it go.
Yep, same. I considered that to be a rather revolutionary feature. Even if it was standalone I would use it as I haven't seen anything similar yet.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#86The web needs to split into two: * Reader browser * Application browser The reader browser should show you the "web" in a kindle-like readable experience, just as it does today. However, the application browser, although it does receive a URL, should not have any HTML page as a default view. Instead, a JavaScript should be first loaded, and from there, following the permissions it requests, it can open new windows, n…
Interesting concept, but it seems needlessly complicated. What's to prevent websites like, say, the Guardian from declaring themselves as applications?
Nothing. But it would need to request permissions when it does so, and you can then choose not to use it.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#87Better bookmarking.
How so?
Using Firefox and bookmarking heavily with giving tags to my bookmarks. I would like to have a bookmark simple search language that allows me to combine the tags and narrow down the results, for example:
give me all bookmarks that are tagged "tools" AND "unix" AND "visualization" AND (NOT HAVING "monitoring")
There is an add-on called "tagsieve" that I used heavily, it had a nice visual possibility to filter the bookmarks with a tag cloud - though it didn't have a search language. But throughout the years often it was not compatible with new Firefox version (just see that it is installable again).
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#88MOBILE: when I zoom a page the browser should treat this the same as if I change the window size on a desktop browser, and reflow the text. Mobile browsing is a really lousy horrible experience because there are some conflicting philosophies.
No. It should actually limit horizontal reflow width inside element to screen width. That way you can always read a passage of text by using only vertical scrolling.
In other words, a block element's internal flow width should be restricted to screen width, so that a row of inline elements inside that block can never be wider than screen width.
In other words, text columns should flow at screen width.
Just doing what desktop browsers do would squish the text in a very narrow space. Not desirable.
For me, this is the single most important feature in a mobile (phone) browser.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#89Modularity. I would like to see a browser that is designed as an engine, meaning that no UI/UX, or 'browsing' features are included. Much like a raw linux kernel in philosophy. I would like this ideal browser to have interoperability with various JS engines, HTML and CSS renderers, as well as the standardized specifications for the underlying network protocols. It should be 'safe' by being written in languages where…
I'm having a really hard time working out whether or not I agree with this idea. On the one hand my inner developer loves the idea. The notion that everything is a module, with well documented and robust APIs for communication between modules, is perfect. The browser could be all things to all people. But on the other hand there would be absolutely no additional value for a typical user. 99% of people (generalising, don't know the real number, but it's high) do no customisation to their browser. They don't even know they can.
A modular browser would only benefit developers, and we can already cope with delving deep in to the internals of many browsers if necessary. So is there really any point in a modular browser? Who would it be for?
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?
#90More light weight. Less memory consumption, less processor usage and faster. As far as it can go. Firefox was built on that ideology. Until it became the same monster that it was supposed to replace. The same thing is happening to chrome.
Less memory consumption is often at odds with less processor usage. For example, a browser can consume a lot less memory if it doesn't cache decoded images, etc. But then the engine needs to decode same images over and over again.