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Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

browser.kagi.com

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Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#61

Post by solarkraft »

KitDuncan wrote: post #60
solarkraft wrote: post #40

I’ve been using it for a few months and i’d day it’s almost ready for public consumption. It’s essentially a better Safari, but (and this is what makes it the ONLY alternative to Firefox) with tree style tabs. Progress has been rapid and the interaction with the dev(s) has been great. I see a bright future ahead for this browser.

Have you tried the iOS app as well? Interested to hear your experience with it.

I have (semi-daily) and would say it’s somewhat close to being day to day usable. They recently added Safari-style back and forth gestures and you can choose to arrange your tabs vertically (though not in a tree).

The main thing preventing daily driving is that it’s not in the App Store yet, leading to it not being selectable as a default browser. I also experience occasional crashes with hundreds of tabs open.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#62

Post by jefftk »

traveler01 wrote: post #42
tnorthcutt wrote: post #21

I don't see any mention of developer tools, but in case anyone working on this is here, that's something that would probably be interesting to the HN crowd. Since the home page has a screenshot of HN, I'm guessing devs are the target market.

In my experience most browsers based on these major engines, like Vivaldi, Edge or whatever have broken dev tools. You'd be better using Safari for that imo.

Edge's devtools seem to work very well to me -- what have you run into?

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#63

Post by VOBOSHI »

gls2ro wrote: post #44

If possible (a.k.a if Apple allows this) please integrate Keychain with this browser. I am not sure if there are many people like me, but I am using Keychain and it is the reason why I default to Safari and using any other browser it takes effort that I am doing, but I really wish Keychain could be integrated in other browsers too. LE: It seems they already support this as stated in their FAQ/"How does Orion store my…

The FAQ mentions that this is possible / done with the latest Safari.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#64

Post by freediver »

Hey everyone,

I am the founder behind Orion, bootstrapping the project. Started working on it three years ago with a small team just to see if it would be possible to build something like this from scratch and we just kept going. Orion is today a daily browser for a few dozen beta-testers and it warms my heart to see that we got that far considering the competition.

Few questions about Orion answered that I see pop put in the comments:

- Orion uses native Keychain integration for passwords and will use iCloud Sync to sync between devices. We have full import from Safari, including passwords [1]

- Orion uses a slightly modified WebKit which allows us to run Chrome/Firefox extension support layer on top of it (about 70% of all extensions currently work in Orion - including uBlock Origin). We are planning to complete the support in the upcoming months.

- Orion is currently trying to get to the feature parity of the reference browser (Safari).

- Orion features developer tools from Safari with a few extra ones like the Error indicator in the address bar [2] We just started with this, expect many useful additions in the future.

- Orion is designed as a zero-telemetry browser.

- Orion iOS also features a number of useful innovations like the Data saver mode [3] and multiline URL edit [4]

- The business model for Orion is to have a Pro version for those who want to support its development.

I was the founder of ManageWP [5] which got acquired by GoDaddy in 2016. Moved from Belgrade, Serbia to SF Bay Area as part of the acquisition. Spent a couple of years there as VP of Product and then decided I want to build Orion and Kagi (privacy-respecting alternative to Google search), because one ambitious project was not enough :) Main reason for this is the concern for the future of the internet and the web my children will grow into using.

[1] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1431290547877007363

[2] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1445301620187693056

[3] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1429588837391507458

[4] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1441511763631960074

[5] https://managewp.com

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#65

Post by hunterb123 »

Ransid wrote: post #51
hunterb123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I count Brave's emphasis on crypto as a pro and necessary for our hopefully one day ad-less future. If you block ads without allowing the ability to donate a token you are effectively stealing from site owners and causing the rise of paywalls and other restrictions on the internet.

"If you block ads without allowing the ability to donate a token you are effectively stealing from site owners and causing the rise of paywalls and other restrictions on the internet." No

Great rebuttal buddy.

Sites costs money, users need a way to pay site owners.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#66

Post by hunterb123 »

StevePerkins wrote: post #41
hunterb123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I count Brave's emphasis on crypto as a pro and necessary for our hopefully one day ad-less future. If you block ads without allowing the ability to donate a token you are effectively stealing from site owners and causing the rise of paywalls and other restrictions on the internet.

Putting aside legitimate qualms about Brave’s ad blocking business model, “skeezy” refers to Brave themselves showing me by default multiple home screen ads for various crypto wallet and NFT brokers. Opinions vary wildly on HN, but for me that entire scene is kissing cousins with MLM.

Yeah affiliates is how they make money. You can hide all that stuff, but it's a good way to support them if you buy crypto often.

Beats being the product using Google, or having a product fall behind like Mozilla because you had to fire all of your engineers.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#67

Post by jonplackett »

perardi wrote: post #46

A bit of a tangent, but not that much: I loathe the new Safari “tabs”, with as much scare as you can get in those scare quotes. But, I still can’t leave Safari be, as I appreciate the history and Keychain sync with my iOS devices. It’s that tight macOS/iOS integration that makes me stay on Safari, along with the relatively lighter energy usage versus Chrome. This looks nice in terms of using native UIKit elements (pr…

Here you go, someone 'fixed' the tab highlighting for you, and for only $2!

https://apps.apple.com/app/activetab/id1588852241?mt=12

(via John Gruber: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry")

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#68

Post by zoul »

perardi wrote: post #46

A bit of a tangent, but not that much: I loathe the new Safari “tabs”, with as much scare as you can get in those scare quotes. But, I still can’t leave Safari be, as I appreciate the history and Keychain sync with my iOS devices. It’s that tight macOS/iOS integration that makes me stay on Safari, along with the relatively lighter energy usage versus Chrome. This looks nice in terms of using native UIKit elements (pr…

The new Safari tabs are so bad that I’m sure they can’t stay that way for long. I was hoping I would get used to the broken active tab highlighting, but after a few days I’m still clicking the wrong tabs in the tab bar. I can’t believe it.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#69

Post by akrymski »

perardi wrote: post #46

A bit of a tangent, but not that much: I loathe the new Safari “tabs”, with as much scare as you can get in those scare quotes. But, I still can’t leave Safari be, as I appreciate the history and Keychain sync with my iOS devices. It’s that tight macOS/iOS integration that makes me stay on Safari, along with the relatively lighter energy usage versus Chrome. This looks nice in terms of using native UIKit elements (pr…

I hated them at first, forced myself to live with them and now I love them. So much more vertical space on the screen.

Re: Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac

#70

Post by webmobdev »

I'd use this if you can remove all the Apple crap features:

- All the crap of AI / machine learning to prevent cross-site tracking that's useless to me in "Private Browsing" mode - just give me back control over cookies (manually and through third-party extensions), and keep Apple away from my data.

- Remove the crap "Web Advertising: Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness" code from webkit. Keep advertisers, and Apple's online advertising networks, away from my data.

So just as there are many Chrome clones that advertise they've removed all Google spying code from it, please offer a Webskit browser without Apple's crap baked into it. If possible also reverse the changes Apple made to Webkit that actually slightly cripples adblockers, like uBlock, from working effectively on it.

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