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Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

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Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#11

Post by jcun4128 »

m1k1o wrote: post #4
lbotos wrote: post #2

I was kinda confused as to what this is, but I think it's meant so you can host a browser as a "server" and have multiple people stream that "browser server"? When I first clicked I thought it was going to be for programmatic testing of code.

Alternative to having browser (or any app) in a container and accessing its gui using noVNC (or Apache Guacamole). Except, this is done using WebRTC, what makes it perfect for viewing videos + audio of course.

What's the bridge for the input? I'm not 100% yet on what this is doing, conceptually I think I got it. Streaming a video broadcast of a browser. But I would think that you need like a websocket to send the mouse coordinates/click/typing over the actual browser. Is that an extension in the browser or is it literally a remote OS kind of deal eg. Teamviewer.

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#13

Post by Sean-Der »

jcun4128 wrote: post #11
m1k1o wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative to having browser (or any app) in a container and accessing its gui using noVNC (or Apache Guacamole). Except, this is done using WebRTC, what makes it perfect for viewing videos + audio of course.

What's the bridge for the input? I'm not 100% yet on what this is doing, conceptually I think I got it. Streaming a video broadcast of a browser. But I would think that you need like a websocket to send the mouse coordinates/click/typing over the actual browser. Is that an extension in the browser or is it literally a remote OS kind of deal eg. Teamviewer.

It is using a WebRTC Data Channel. You can send binary/text data over the same connection that is receiving the media.

The other exciting thing about Data Channels is that you can send lossy/unordered messages and get flow control. You can know how much data you can send and how fast. You can build faster and more responsive data APIs that way!

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#15

Post by jcun4128 »

Sean-Der wrote: post #13
jcun4128 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the bridge for the input? I'm not 100% yet on what this is doing, conceptually I think I got it. Streaming a video broadcast of a browser. But I would think that you need like a websocket to send the mouse coordinates/click/typing over the actual browser. Is that an extension in the browser or is it literally a remote OS kind of deal eg. Teamviewer.

It is using a WebRTC Data Channel. You can send binary/text data over the same connection that is receiving the media. The other exciting thing about Data Channels is that you can send lossy/unordered messages and get flow control. You can know how much data you can send and how fast. You can build faster and more responsive data APIs that way!

What I'm saying is from the gif (repo README) you see this localhost web thing. I'm aware you can screenshare say from Chrome and show a tab or your whole desktop. In this way you have mouse control/people would just watch your screen. I'm not clear on how they're clicking into that shared browser (to use YouTube).

Normally for this kind of thing you need an OS-level component.

There's something on the GO side but trying to find the bridge on Vue side

https://github.com/m1k1o/neko/blob/master/server/internal/we...

idk maybe somewhere in here https://github.com/m1k1o/neko/blob/master/client/src/compone...

I had to deal with this problem too with regard to remote control somehow without installing an OS-level app but that didn't happen went a different route.

Idk this is a cool project, looks like it is possible to do remote control with webrtc. And webrtc as said above can replace websocket for data transfer.

https://github.com/maxogden/screencat

ehh then again:

> On the host side the app must synthesize mouse and keyboard events on the host OS. This is the tricky part, and the only part where a custom native node addon (C++) is required.

Yet another cool project robotjs hmm

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#16

Post by matthewaveryusa »

This is great for when you have a corporate laptop and you want to separate your personal browsing session from your work browsing session easily. I also like it because I setup a VPN for the browser and have access to some self-hosted stuff.

It also raises the bar for MiTMs to intercept your session cookies significantly.

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#18

Post by okdjnfweonfe »

https://getmetastream.com/ is an also-FLOSS alternative, instead of a server, it syncs site interactions (e.g. opening up the same video on each person's browser, and then automatically hitting play, seek, etc)

So, pros and cons of each approach

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#19

Post by throwaway413 »

xemoka wrote: post #10
throwaway413 wrote: post #9

Great project, thanks for sharing. Also in this space is Mighty ( https://mightyapp.com ). I believe streaming GUIs is the future of the web. We are already seeing this take off with cloud gaming like Stadia. Imagine a truly unified auth identity or in memory db that can communicate and share info across unrelated webapps, or browser macros that brings browser automation capability to the end user for their daily sur…

"Taking off" and "Stadia" in the same sentence seems... out of touch. Interesting ideas all around, and great engineering challenges. But these things aren't rocketing into the stratosphere of public acceptance and adoption.

Hah, fair enough, didn’t realize it when typing it out but you’re right on Stadia not exactly being a rocket ship. Hey, I use it and enjoy it as a casual gamer.

I just meant we are seeing that type of tech start to pop up with Stadia and Xbox cloud gaming, as the gaming industry being an early adopter of this new web paradigm. I think we will see more industries begin to explore the space and the possibilities there.

The first use case I personally want to see handled is a set of inline browser developer tools that I can access from within a web page, meaning also across any device, without using an additional third party browser or native tooling.

Re: Show HN: Neko – Self hosted virtual browser that runs in Docker and uses WebRTC

#20

Post by chenders »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #16

This is great for when you have a corporate laptop and you want to separate your personal browsing session from your work browsing session easily. I also like it because I setup a VPN for the browser and have access to some self-hosted stuff. It also raises the bar for MiTMs to intercept your session cookies significantly.

you should never have a personal browsing session on a work laptop. DISCOVERY. not even once!
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