51–60 of 181 posts
This project is solving the wrong problem. It's not the interfaces of web browsers that suck, it's the gigabytes of RAM they consume.
I fully support innovation in terms of a new web browser... but this isn't really what I'd like to see. I feel like the web browser should be more of an OS than what it is today. Why does the language attribute in the script tag only support javascript? Wouldn't it be rad if I could write C#, and not have to transpile it... wouldn't it be rad if browsers could add more language support automatically (with your permis…
That last one is already implemented with browser caching. Go to a popular website and check the Requests tab on your dev console, it'll probably show 304s for CDNs. But possibly some companies join many JS files together before publishing.
For anyone interested, here are some web browsers that are actually minimalist and not just reskins of chromium: http://surf.suckless.org/ https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/ http://www.uzbl.org/
This project is solving the wrong problem. It's not the interfaces of web browsers that suck, it's the gigabytes of RAM they consume.
RAM is meant to be consumed. If your browser is using 50MB of RAM and has to swap every background tab to disk then you're not utilizing the resources of your computer, and getting a crappy user experience as a bonus.
I assume you're running up on your RAM because (like me) you have tons of tabs open?
If you're one of those people, consider The Great Suspender: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...
Also, have the right extensions. E.g. microadblock instead of Adblock Plus, etc. etc. There's a balance to be achieved somewhere in there. :)
For anyone interested, here are some web browsers that are actually minimalist and not just reskins of chromium: http://surf.suckless.org/ https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/ http://www.uzbl.org/
All of those are WebKit-based, which was Chromium's rendering engine until recently. The rest of Chromium is primarily UI and network code, along with their sandboxing system and extensions - WebKit's "ports" have their own implementation of said network code tying into the framework that they're porting to (GTK+ or Qt, usually), and all three browsers you list use the WebKitGTK+ port. uzbl, the one I've used the mos…
Edit: Thanks very much for the links. This will be a lot of fun testing out. Just responding here to avoid triggering the anti-flamewar protection.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RAM is meant to be consumed. If your browser is using 50MB of RAM and has to swap every background tab to disk then you're not utilizing the resources of your computer, and getting a crappy user experience as a bonus.
Yes, RAM is meant to be consumed, but I still find it incredibly hard to believe that my browser NEEDS multiple gigabytes of memory. Regardless of how much I have to spare.
If I am not missing something obvious, aren't we blaming the wrong thing?
The typical web browser UI is a terrible waste of pixels. It might be a requirement for non-techies but no-one surely clicks the back button or drags the scroll bar, at least no power user does. I personally use Firefox + vimperator with menu bar, address bar and scroll bars disabled. A single line status bar has all the info I need. I've also dabbled with some of the "micro browsers" but none was satisfactory withou…
IIRC, back button is one of the most used UI elements of a browser.
I'd probably consider myself a power user (I work on browsers for a living), and I use and most of the features you've described. Especially scrollbars, they're a great "read progress" indicator.
On a side note, we so often forget how small is the bubble of the so-called "power users".
This project is solving the wrong problem. It's not the interfaces of web browsers that suck, it's the gigabytes of RAM they consume.