Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thoughts on Arc Browser

chrishannah.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 87 posts

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#41

Post by drivebycomment »

satvikpendem wrote: post #15

I've used it, it's fine I guess, nothing super outstanding. I don't want to be that guy on HN, but the way they market themselves as being some revolution in browsing while simply wrapping Chrome like others like Vivaldi (which also has a lot of customization), Edge, Opera etc is not that interesting. It's even less so when I would lose adblocking due to Manifest v3 because, really, how long will these browser makers…

> It's even less so when I would lose adblocking due to Manifest v3

You don't lose adblocking with MV3. I have been using uBlock Origin Lite since it came out and I have not noticed any difference in actual blocking. I like having adblock extension that has significantly less security or privacy exposure, and I like MV3 provides that.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#42

Post by wereHamster »

still_grokking wrote: post #28
rvnx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day I discovered an independent engine: LibWeb (Ladybird Browser) which is developed from scratch. Quite brillant guys and effort.

Ladybird isn't mainstream. So it doesn't count in this list. Blink (Chromium) and WebKit are also closely related as the former is a fork of the later. So there are effectively only two "independent" engines. But in reality there is actually none. Both engines exist through Google money. Given that most people can't even tell the difference between the internet and the web (hello, Arc developers!) and the web became…

Blink has forked from WebKit a long time ago and only diverged since, they should be considered two engines.

WebKit itself forked from KHTML.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#43

Post by Fnoord »

Command palette is a feature I miss in my current browser. Though there's probably some Alfred extension for it, I use Firefox on macOS, Linux, Android, and Windows. There's Plotinus [1] for Gtk3 (Linux) but that won't work on Gtk4, nor is it cross-platform.

Firefox also has a sidebar (I use TTS extension) and permanent pages (Pins) as well as containers e.g. against FAMAG tracking. TTS has themes. Its a bit annoying hiding top tabs but it can be done with some CSS.

[1] https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus/issues/45

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#44

Post by Fnoord »

imbnwa wrote: post #32
soulofmischief wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envision a browser inspired by the likes of foobar2k in which core engines are open source and interchangeable, and any browsing experience is achievable through a rich plugin and layout system. The browser itself would be little more than scaffolding and an SDK.

Isn't this what XUL was? Admitedly I'm aware its arch was too complex to compete with Chromium's speed and security features, but way before Electron, I was using desktop apps built with XUL like Songbird for my music app, as well as a Twitter client whose name I can't recall now (of course, Thunderbird as well). Maybe they threw the baby out with the bath water a little bit by electing to concede to WebExtensions AP…

You can make PWAs of nearly every page. I do this to make 'apps' of Netflix and such. Don't have offline storage though, but at least you don't need the Electron stuff and you decide the extensions it runs (uBlock is a welcome candidate). There's also containers in Firefox.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#45

Post by FractalHQ »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #30

I've been using Edge on Windows, macOS, and Android for the past year or so and have been really happy with it. I signed up for Arc and haven't gotten an invite yet but, looking at this article, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a game changer? At least not as much as the pretentiousness of "The Browser Company of New York" ( gag ) would have you think. Edge has vertical tabs with the exact same "pinned tab"…

Edge is nice but it’s extremely invasive. Brave is a great drop-in replacement that prioritizes privacy without sacrificing features that people love from chromium browsers.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#46

Post by Semaphor »

drivebycomment wrote: post #41
satvikpendem wrote: post #15

I've used it, it's fine I guess, nothing super outstanding. I don't want to be that guy on HN, but the way they market themselves as being some revolution in browsing while simply wrapping Chrome like others like Vivaldi (which also has a lot of customization), Edge, Opera etc is not that interesting. It's even less so when I would lose adblocking due to Manifest v3 because, really, how long will these browser makers…

> It's even less so when I would lose adblocking due to Manifest v3 You don't lose adblocking with MV3. I have been using uBlock Origin Lite since it came out and I have not noticed any difference in actual blocking. I like having adblock extension that has significantly less security or privacy exposure, and I like MV3 provides that.

You already lost some adblocking with MV2 because you are using Chrome where uBO doesn’t support CNAME uncloaking.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#47

Post by FractalHQ »

nbzso wrote: post #17

Tested it. Moved back to Brave. Wish I can hide the url field on chrome based browsers. This is the only thing that I like in Arc. In my view the problem with Arc is the UX. It is hidden and complex and as a result lacks a natural discovery flow. It seems targeted towards the small audience of specialists which will have no problem giving a lot of their data. And I hate the size of the borders:) Make them small or re…

On MacOS I use the fullscreen window shortcut (followed by browser fullscreen shortcut) to hide the UI for a more Vivaldi-esque experience.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#49

Post by TranquilMarmot »

FractalHQ wrote: post #45
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #30

I've been using Edge on Windows, macOS, and Android for the past year or so and have been really happy with it. I signed up for Arc and haven't gotten an invite yet but, looking at this article, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a game changer? At least not as much as the pretentiousness of "The Browser Company of New York" ( gag ) would have you think. Edge has vertical tabs with the exact same "pinned tab"…

Edge is nice but it’s extremely invasive. Brave is a great drop-in replacement that prioritizes privacy without sacrificing features that people love from chromium browsers.

Maybe I'll give Brave another try. I don't really mind the invasiveness of Edge, but I know I'm kind of an outlier on Hacker News in that regard.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#50

Post by nine_k »

soulofmischief wrote: post #40
imbnwa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what XUL was? Admitedly I'm aware its arch was too complex to compete with Chromium's speed and security features, but way before Electron, I was using desktop apps built with XUL like Songbird for my music app, as well as a Twitter client whose name I can't recall now (of course, Thunderbird as well). Maybe they threw the baby out with the bath water a little bit by electing to concede to WebExtensions AP…

Yeah, Electron and Chromium fill a close enough niche that I don't think the market is really demanding what I envision. Try giving foobar2000 a spin or checking out some screenshots to get an idea for what I mean. Unlike Chromium, the browser should be extendable, at runtime, via a component system and editable layout tree. Runtimes, backends, common libs, fonts etc should be managed using a repository system. Chrom…

There are two things that become harder with such architecture: integration, and security.

Integration is relatively easy to solve. I did not use foobar2000 for a long time; I can compare instead with Emacs, where various packages are aware of various other packages and will integrate if a counterpart is present, but won't require that.

Security is much harder; the need to isolate pages means relatively smaller customizable API surface, and, most importantly, greater trust to the components. It's much like web extensions now: you have to think well before giving an extension access to your web mail or online banking web pages.

XUL was an attempt to build a very flexible architecture, and it was great, but the (lack of) security killed it.

Post reply on HN