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Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

minbrowser.org

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Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#151

Post by ehhthing »

maria2 wrote: post #145
Kalium wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/security This seems like a good start to understanding Electron security and why using it to do what the documentation expressly states is unwise might be less than optimal.

Can you give a specific example of what is wrong with Min's security configuration, assuming it is following Electron best practices. Asserting that the security model is bad and linking to Electron's security tutorial is not helpful.

First and foremost, electron runs on often outdated versions of chromium which are vulnerable to known 0days.

Electron RPC also makes it really easy to get RCE if you don't implement it properly, and most JavaScript developers don't implement it properly. Electron also does not have anywhere near as much security research into it.

If you want to read more into the current state of electron security research, see https://blog.electrovolt.io/

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#152

Post by arboles »

vorpalhex wrote: post #137
arboles wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer sidebery because it's cleaner than TST OOTB https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

sidebery also has very lovely tab grouping and tab sleeping (unloads the tabs from memory). This is nice because you can take all your tabs for a research project, condense them to a group and then nap them until you come back to the project.

> tab grouping and tab sleeping

Oh yes I forgot TST doesn't have that since I haven't used it in so long. Keeping groups of unloaded tabs might not be healthy for me, enables my tab hoarding habit.

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#153

Post by unsafecast »

moffkalast wrote: post #25
latexr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electron, WebKit, nope. Electron uses Chromium. Which uses Blink, not WebKit.

Well the worst part of Firefox is arguably Gecko. If one could make a browser with Firefox's backend and instead render with Blink that would be pretty dope.

Yeah, let's feed the monopoly! Surely a good way to get better products.

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#155

Post by josephd79 »

d12bb wrote: post #45
xnacly wrote: post #3

A browser in electron? At this point just use chromium - makes no difference. Anyway, use firefox or librewolf. Stop enabling the chromium monopoly!

> Anyway, use firefox or librewolf. Stop enabling the chromium monopoly! Or Safari of course, it's really a great browser if one's on the Mac.

Safari is great on Mac. Never tried librewolf but what’s the difference between it and Firefox itself?

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#156

Post by pipeline_peak »

I hate to be egotistical, I’m sure like many people before me, I had the idea of a reader only browser.

Of course I never came through with the idea because well…look how much unpaid work goes into it.

As others have said, I don’t think Electron is well suited for anything to be resource friendly. I think it’s well suited for apps on machines that can afford to run Electron, not something as general purpose as a browser.

Writing a browser is very hard, but something done in reader mode is clearly more feasible. I wanted to marry FreeText with Gumbo, OpenGL and C++. Maybe even throw in a built in RSS reader that displays the stripped pages. but I have no idea how to get FreeText working with OpenGL.

I think if I could achieve this, I could get something that’s truly lightweight.

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#157

Post by RussianCow »

daneel_w wrote: post #146
RussianCow wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? What is it "overstuffed" with?

Nobody really knows. Firefox is 350 MiB in size. The Windows XP SP3 install CD is 310 MiB in size.

The Arch Linux Firefox package weighs in at 237.8 MB installed.[0] Meanwhile, Chromium is 20% larger at 285.8 MB.[1] Which other browser is significantly smaller than that? I checked a few other ones and they were all within spitting distance of Chromium.

Also, that's not a useful comparison because web browsers are basically operating systems now, with how complex they are. Not to mention that Windows XP was released over two decades ago. So, again, I'm not sure what your point is.

[0]: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/firefox/

[1]: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/chromium/

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#158

Post by travisgriggs »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #156

I hate to be egotistical, I’m sure like many people before me, I had the idea of a reader only browser. Of course I never came through with the idea because well…look how much unpaid work goes into it. As others have said, I don’t think Electron is well suited for anything to be resource friendly. I think it’s well suited for apps on machines that can afford to run Electron, not something as general purpose as a brow…

> Writing a browser is very hard

And this pretty much sums up why I hate todays internet.

Writing a telnet client was super easy. FTP, a little harder, but doable. Writing an SVG renderer using any canvas like tech (Cairo, canvas, CoreGraphics) is moderate, but again pretty doable. The fact that the w3c has churned out spec after spec that layers more and more complexity on something that was supposed to be a document viewer with links and such that we find ourselves in a position where advancing the state of the art requires a small nations state worth of resources, just to come current, is profoundly depressing.

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#159

Post by password4321 »

callumprentice wrote: post #61

The Ladybird bowser - part of the Serenity OS - is another alternative I’m following with a mixture of astonishment, admiration and excitement - https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform... I suspect that for most people, it still has a way to go before it could be considered a daily driver, but the rate of progress is incredible and I’m sure it will get there.

What is the easiest way to use Ladybird?

Re: Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy

#160

Post by pipeline_peak »

travisgriggs wrote: post #158
pipeline_peak wrote: post #156

I hate to be egotistical, I’m sure like many people before me, I had the idea of a reader only browser. Of course I never came through with the idea because well…look how much unpaid work goes into it. As others have said, I don’t think Electron is well suited for anything to be resource friendly. I think it’s well suited for apps on machines that can afford to run Electron, not something as general purpose as a brow…

> Writing a browser is very hard And this pretty much sums up why I hate todays internet. Writing a telnet client was super easy. FTP, a little harder, but doable. Writing an SVG renderer using any canvas like tech (Cairo, canvas, CoreGraphics) is moderate, but again pretty doable. The fact that the w3c has churned out spec after spec that layers more and more complexity on something that was supposed to be a documen…

My biggest concern attempting to scrape out just the text and images. If this browser is anything like Safari Reader mode, it’s gonna fail to read all those modern pages that are entangled in template engine boilerplate snot.

The web is far too bloated, but it’s been consumer centric for a long time, this was only expected. It’s not just an HTTP document viewer, it’s a pop up tabloid viewer…

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