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Show HN: We launched a new web browser

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#161

Post by hklgny »

mariusor wrote: post #133
sofixa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Andreas Kling Mar 30 > There's still a long way to go before it's usable for daily browsing. For example we need to improve support for flexbox, grid and table layouts. Performance also needs work. > Our JavaScript engine is decently mature, test262 score tracked here: https://libjs.dev/test262/ In a few years when they have achieved feature parity with Chromium or at least Safari we can discuss this again, but for…

Hahaha, I don't think a project as monumental as a browser deserves such dismissiveness. Let's not forget that Mozilla's full rust browser has not achieved (and never will) feature parity with safari or chrome either, and they invested far more man power and time into it. The lone effort of a handful of developers that got equally far is worthy of a mention as a "new browser" even if it's not fit for human consumptio…

I don’t think they’re dismissing it - that’s the point they’re making. And the other response here furthers it. Nobody is going to invest 20 years at this point until there’s a more compelling reason to do so.

So until then, why moan about the things people are doing to innovate in the space even though they’re using an off the shelf core.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#162

Post by mike_hearn »

gwbas1c wrote: post #155
sofixa wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. People say "a new OS" when talking about a new Linux based distro. A new Chromium based browser is apt. I think the ship has sailed and we won't have a new browser from scratch any time soon. If two of the richest companies in the world can't do it ( Apple's Safari is always late with features, has significant bugs; MS abandoned their Edge), who could and why? What would be the value add over just using Chromium?…

> I think the ship has sailed and we won't have a new browser from scratch any time soon. I think the big mistake is that we let the HTML spec get so complicated that it's essentially become Google's platform. Although it's technically open, it certainly looks and smells like a monopoly. How do we fix it? Maybe someone could make alternate rendering engines that use Canvas and WASM?

This is a topic dear to my heart. Actually, I'm working on a first-step project to help address this very issue. It's worth reflecting on a few important points.

1. "We" didn't "let" HTML5 become anything. HTML5 reflects whatever browser makers choose to ship, which is why it's un-versioned. The attempt at an industry wide consensus building effort around what HTML should be failed (W3C), largely because it spent most of its political capital on implementation-independent academic dreams rather than incremental improvements. But if you're shipping a browser then what you want is incremental improvemetns.

2. I think by alternative rendering engines you mean different approaches to rendering UI and documents, that aren't HTML. But then you describe something that would have to fit entirely within the constraints of whatever browser makers impose. You'd be trying to build a competitor to browsers on top of browsers. The industry has a history of that and it doesn't work - browser makers always find reasons to kill them off. Flash, Java, Shockwave, ActiveX. Some were more secure than others but in the end, browsers killed them all. They won't tolerate competing platforms that ride inside the browser. That means to make a competitor to HTML5 you need to go outside the browser and build new kinds of browser and document/app technology.

3. To do (2) it really helps to have a good, easy to use deployment technology.

Watch this space.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#163

Post by Ajedi32 »

sofixa wrote: post #122
xchip wrote: post #118

You launched a version of chrome, not a new web browser :/

Eh. People say "a new OS" when talking about a new Linux based distro. A new Chromium based browser is apt. I think the ship has sailed and we won't have a new browser from scratch any time soon. If two of the richest companies in the world can't do it ( Apple's Safari is always late with features, has significant bugs; MS abandoned their Edge), who could and why? What would be the value add over just using Chromium?…

Still, I wish more "browser distros" like this would base themselves off Firefox rather than Chromium. Chrome doesn't exactly need the help at this point, and Firefox is the only fully independent browser left that isn't beholden to a major corporation.

A hard fork of Chrome would also be nice; would be a great way to create another fully independent browser without needing to do all the work of building a browser from scratch (though maintaining it would still require a lot of resources).

This is just a generic gripe with the overall state of the web though; obviously it's not up to OP specifically to solve it if that's not the goal of this project.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#164

Post by throwaway2016a »

grkvlt wrote: post #74
throwaway2016a wrote: post #5

Congrats on the launch. I think this indirectly slowed down the foreverdomains server with the HN traffic. Since you advertise "decentralized internet" vs blockchain, I'd love to see this also support some more non-blockchain protocols such as Dat ( https://dat.foundation/ ) and IPFS directly. Maybe even Bittorrent and Tor (Onion router). It may already do some of that, I just couldn't tell from your wording.

https://dat.foundation/ > is apparently deprecated in favour of https://dat-ecosystem.org/ > which is impressive since it only became the dat foundation in december 2019 ...

I just picked the first thing that came up when I google Dat protocol that seemed to match. Thank you for pointing out the mistake.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#166

Post by ilaksh »

mike_hearn wrote: post #162
gwbas1c wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the ship has sailed and we won't have a new browser from scratch any time soon. I think the big mistake is that we let the HTML spec get so complicated that it's essentially become Google's platform. Although it's technically open, it certainly looks and smells like a monopoly. How do we fix it? Maybe someone could make alternate rendering engines that use Canvas and WASM?

This is a topic dear to my heart. Actually, I'm working on a first-step project to help address this very issue. It's worth reflecting on a few important points. 1. "We" didn't "let" HTML5 become anything. HTML5 reflects whatever browser makers choose to ship, which is why it's un-versioned. The attempt at an industry wide consensus building effort around what HTML should be failed (W3C), largely because it spent mos…

Seems really interesting so I have been Googling to try to figure out what you are talking about. Is the Hydraulic product a way to easily deploy GraalVM software? And maybe by adding some type of search and document browsing capability, it can become a new type of web browser?

Could you take a look at my comment in this thread and also at https://github.com/runvnc/tersenet

I have not totally updated that but my current thinking is that we really want to finish deconstructing the overlay operating system that the "web browser" has become. For example, we should actually not bundle the information browsing program and application VM together, but rather have a simple standard for them to work together. Such as, the info browser can save the list of the application binaries to a file or directory that the VM system knows to watch.

We also actually want to further decompose this into a multilevel window manager concept. On the first level, just a rule that applications save and reload window layouts when the user adjusts them.

I really think it should be a goal to standardize on some web assembly extension with simple UI features like canvas or framebuffer and keyboard events.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#168

Post by Melatonic »

charcircuit wrote: post #108
Melatonic wrote: post #65

Handshake has looked interesting for awhile now but what is the point of a blockchain based DNS? Isn't a big selling point of DNS having the fastest possible response times?

The block time would be more comparable to a record's TTL, and not how long it takes to look up that record.

Good to know - this is is the kind of info I was looking for!

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#169

Post by Melatonic »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #99
Melatonic wrote: post #65

Handshake has looked interesting for awhile now but what is the point of a blockchain based DNS? Isn't a big selling point of DNS having the fastest possible response times?

No, the selling point of DNS is mainly that everybody knows how to work with this bit of technology from the 1970s. Mostly it's fast because modern implementations do a lot of caching and only occasionally query parents in their hierarchy. You can use the same strategy to make pretty much any alternative implementation fast as well. And of course slapping some sort of DNS compatible facade on that is not rocket scien…

I agree on most points and this is why I for the most part run my own DNS.

Re: Show HN: We launched a new web browser

#170

Post by ahtihn »

sk55 wrote: post #68
Melatonic wrote: post #65

Handshake has looked interesting for awhile now but what is the point of a blockchain based DNS? Isn't a big selling point of DNS having the fastest possible response times?

Using blockchain prevents the domain from being seized. This is helpful for service providers so they can maintain uptime and it also helps users who might rely on a service.

It also means you can lose control of your domain permanently if you make any mistakes with your keys.
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