Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome? • Hacker News Board

anderspitman wrote: post #25

My dream is that someone will spec out a nice simple subset of modern HTML/CSS, and folks will start making compatible static sites. A few years of that and we could have some nice truly lightweight browsers again. Imagine how fast sites like Wikipedia or YouTube could be if JS wasn't even an option.

Is the first step really needed? Nothing technical is stopping folks from making such websites. If browsers use a lot more RAM than needed when viewing such simple websites (I'm not even sure that is the case!), there should be low hanging fruit improvements to decrease RAM usage in this scenario.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#55

Post by knoebber » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

Emacs - eww

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#56

Post by anderspitman » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

spanhandler wrote: post #50

anderspitman wrote: post #25

My dream is that someone will spec out a nice simple subset of modern HTML/CSS, and folks will start making compatible static sites. A few years of that and we could have some nice truly lightweight browsers again. Imagine how fast sites like Wikipedia or YouTube could be if JS wasn't even an option.

The most frustrating thing about web standards is that if we were going to do the whole apps-over-HTTP/HTML thing we could have features and light weight, by building way more functionality directly into HTML. Better form elements with more built-in features, better tables more like what's available in native UI kits, maybe even direct built-in support for major, complex UIs to support ecommerce and banking workflows…

That could be cool but mostly I just want it for the read-only portions of the web.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#57

Post by anderspitman » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #49

anderspitman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to migrate. Keep it compatible with current browsers. Users will reap the benefits of the lightweight sites regardless of what browser they use. It would sort of be like AMP that way. But over time if you get enough major sites with compatible versions it would become useful to have a browser that only speaks the lightweight web, and that's when things could start to snowball. At no point do you need b…

> It would sort of be like AMP that way. You may have noticed that this was pretty much exactly what I was talking about ;) Usability issues aside, nobody fixed their stuff until Google threatened their SEO.

Yeah you got me. AMP really is close on a technical level but my blood boils every time I see a /amp/ url.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#58

Post by basch » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

axaxs wrote: post #3

Brave and Vivaldi are both Chromium based, but perhaps worth a shot. There's only two other engines left: firefox and webkit. You may want to look into a webkit based browser?

ill give Brave a nod as well. Everybody is so offput by its optional ads, they are missing out on the most efficient, fastest, and best "it just works" ad blocker out. It's a pleasure to surf the web again after years of ublock/umatrix and constantly having to tweak the settings for each site I visited.

Edge has become my backup quick test of "is it something in Brave breaking it"

I have Firefox open at all times as well, but find myself using it the least of the three.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#59

Post by drcongo » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #9

Why wouldn't you use Safari on it? When it comes to being optimised for the Mac, that's where it's at. You're on a closed sourced OS, webkit is open.

Safari is incredibly lightweight and efficient compared to Chrome. I use Safari for all my actual browsing and Firefox for dev stuff. Never Chrome.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#60

Post by axaxs » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #58

axaxs wrote: post #3

Brave and Vivaldi are both Chromium based, but perhaps worth a shot. There's only two other engines left: firefox and webkit. You may want to look into a webkit based browser?

ill give Brave a nod as well. Everybody is so offput by its optional ads, they are missing out on the most efficient, fastest, and best "it just works" ad blocker out. It's a pleasure to surf the web again after years of ublock/umatrix and constantly having to tweak the settings for each site I visited. Edge has become my backup quick test of "is it something in Brave breaking it" I have Firefox open at all times as…

Yeah, Brave is probably my favorite as a browser. That said, its sync story sucks, which ultimately forced me over to Vivaldi.