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Otter Browser

otter-browser.org

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Re: Otter Browser

#91

Post by fragmede »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #40
dleslie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, let's be clear, Google's ability to enact change is a result of their pervasive influence over the internet. It took _years_ for XMLHTTPRequest to become a dominant influence on site design. Google can push new standard changes in fraction of the time because _their services demand it_. > Even webapps, which are more sensitive to browser environments due to their heavy use of JS, should not stop working on an ol…

Well, it's not like the entire web community haven't warned about it for the last 10 years. At this point, what can we do?

10? This was a problem even before 2001, which is when Internet Explorer 6 was released which (unfortunately) quickly became the Internet. Things weren't so multi-platform back then so swaths of the Internet became inaccessible unless you were using IE6 on Windows. Things are a bit different these days with smartphones and Apple's viability, but the landscape is starting to look strangely familiar.

Re: Otter Browser

#92

Post by dleslie »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #40
dleslie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, let's be clear, Google's ability to enact change is a result of their pervasive influence over the internet. It took _years_ for XMLHTTPRequest to become a dominant influence on site design. Google can push new standard changes in fraction of the time because _their services demand it_. > Even webapps, which are more sensitive to browser environments due to their heavy use of JS, should not stop working on an ol…

Well, it's not like the entire web community haven't warned about it for the last 10 years. At this point, what can we do?

Test everything in w3m, netsurf and other niche browsers.

Re: Otter Browser

#93

Post by imbnwa »

roenxi wrote: post #63
userbinator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should work on any browser that supports the standards. 10-15 years ago I would agree, but now I feel I must add something to that sentence: any browser that supports the standards before they became Google-ified because it is churning the standards so much that its weapon of monopoly is effectively change --- Firefox can barely keep up, and Microsoft already surrendered. What we really need to get rid of is the…

> ...its weapon of monopoly is effectively change... Rather novel weapon. This won't work, rapid change will just leave the large base of web developers behind. Tutorials and practices based on the Old Way hang around for decades. Google putting out a standard is only going to help them if it is (a) in demand by web devs and (b) competitive with the old way of doing things. I don't particularly like web apps, but the…

Think we're mixing up two things here: Google monopolizes the Web as a runtime with constant forward motion on the standards; no browser vendor can keep up, this is true.

However web dev practice has been driven by Facebook and its quasi-functional programming advocates for at least 5 years now (Redux/React). There's a whole generation of Web Devs that don't know that DOM Event handlers can be objects that bear the handleEvent interface because React prohibits that application for example, but that's a whole world of memory efficient async handling rather than generating throwaway functions for ever little thing

Re: Otter Browser

#94

Post by o8r3oFTZPE »

geocrasher wrote: post #6

I'm not well versed enough in the Browser Wars to say one thing or another about except this: I like the name. It lends it self to saying "I use the Otter browser" which is not just a great pun but the pun on 'other' defines what Otter is, the "other" browser. The web needs independent browsers. We need to get rid of the idea that websites are designed to work on any one technology. They should work on any browser th…

Do you like the name better than "Chrome"?

If someone says "I use Chrome" what does than mean to you?

Just curious.

Perhaps some websites do not make use of all the standards, thus browsers do not need support for all the standards for these websites to "work". For example, HN does not require a popular browser. In fact it can even be used without a browser. Why are so many "web devs" using HN but few to none of them can/will design similarly fast websites. That's a rhetorical question. (That means everyone already knows the answer.) Do "web devs" actually use the sites they design. Why would "web devs" use HN when it does not represent their own taste in websites. What does that mean.

Re: Otter Browser

#95

Post by musicale »

userbinator wrote: post #22
geocrasher wrote: post #6

I'm not well versed enough in the Browser Wars to say one thing or another about except this: I like the name. It lends it self to saying "I use the Otter browser" which is not just a great pun but the pun on 'other' defines what Otter is, the "other" browser. The web needs independent browsers. We need to get rid of the idea that websites are designed to work on any one technology. They should work on any browser th…

They should work on any browser that supports the standards. 10-15 years ago I would agree, but now I feel I must add something to that sentence: any browser that supports the standards before they became Google-ified because it is churning the standards so much that its weapon of monopoly is effectively change --- Firefox can barely keep up, and Microsoft already surrendered. What we really need to get rid of is the…

It really looks like w3c standard === Chrome at this point. Is "standards body capture" a thing like "regulatory capture?"

Re: Otter Browser

#96

Post by The-Compiler »

arp242 wrote: post #75
detaro wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Firefox/Gecko is much more one thing, Mozilla apparently even had some problems with that close integration and baked-in assumptions when building the Android variants.

Splitting this out a bit more seems like it would be a good strategic choice, not just for Mozilla, but for the web in general. There are undoubtedly all sorts of technical challenges involved, but betting on only Firefox is putting all eggs in one basket. Say what you will about Blink/Google, but the easy with which you can build a browser on top of it has spawned a plethora of browsers, ranging from Edge and Vivald…

Hey, I remember that nickname!

Yeah, for smaller projects with only a handful of people behind them, WebKit (via WebKitGTK) or Chromium (via QtWebEngine, Electron, Chromium Embedded Framework) are pretty much the only choices there are. The only exception maybe being Pale Moon.

For browsers which are based directly on the Chromium codebase without being supported by Google, there are definitely many more resources needed - I don't see a particular reason why those couldn't be based on Firefox either. From what I see in QtWebEngine, keeping up with Chromium isn't exactly easy - IIRC they said they need about a person-month to catch up with a new Chromium release, usually with millions of changed lines.

I was hoping for Servo to fill that embedding usecase gap, but it looks like that's been mostly abandoned by Mozilla nowadays. My only other hope is GeckoView: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ - I know at least the people behind Tridactyl would love to see it ported to x86_64: https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64

Re: Otter Browser

#97

Post by the_other »

berkes wrote: post #59
the_other wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dev in Firefox. It’s great! The tooling’s really good. It’s subtly different from Chrome and you’ll feel a twinge of friction moving, but by and large, it’s easy. Just shut it down and restart it every couple of days because it’s memory usage isn’t as tight.

Are you using the Firefox Developer Edition[1], or just the current stable one? Fellow web-dev here, using Firefox (the one that comes with Ubuntu) as main driver. And I'd like to know if the Developer Editiion offers any benefits over the stable one, for webdevelopment. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/developer/

Yes, I use the developer edition. TBH I’m not aure what the benefits are! ;-)

Re: Otter Browser

#98

Post by chopin »

roboticmind wrote: post #90
chopin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do too, but what I miss is customized throttling settings (I need to optimize for fast overseas connections: high bandwidth but also high latency). Chrome (and Edge) have this.

Firefox has this too. You can do it the network tab[1] or in the Responsive Design Mode[2]. There's drop downs there where you can control how much you want to throttle [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Network_Monit... ' [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...

Thanks, I know these settings. One can only choose from the predefined settings. You can't customize those (as for me, to high bandwidth and high latency).
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