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Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

polypane.app

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Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#11

Post by herpdyderp »

mdaniel wrote: post #7
tonijn wrote: post #3

Any free alternative?

The top comment from the last time this was submitted pointed to an open source (AGPLv3) implementation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29340887 > but I don't know how they compare feature-wise

Wow this is great!

> Responsively App is built on top of Electron and uses Chromium as its rendering engine.

Now I want an app that shows Firefox, Chrome, and Safari side-by-side (besides manually opening them all side-by-side of course).

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#12

Post by kilian »

herpdyderp wrote: post #8

I wish such a browser could accurately emulate a mobile device's browser, not just change screen size, but even Apple's iOS simulator fails at this.

There's a huge list of things Polypane emulates beyond the screen size.

For devices:

  - user agent
  - reported platform
  - device pixel ratio
  - rendering mode (mobile rendering and desktop rendering respond differently depending on your viewport meta tag)
  - default input device
  - orientation APIs
Beyond that it can also emulate reading direction, page language, browser locale, user-configured default font-size, different network settings and a whole range of different media queries like color-scheme, reduced-motion reduced-data, reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast, forced-colors (windows high contrast mode) and color gamut. I'll be adding even more device browser-specific emulations later this year.

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#14

Post by sam_goody »

I totally get why you do subscription. I totally get why I don't do subscription.

Is there some sort of middle ground? Say, minimum purchase cost is the same price as six months, but it keeps on working afterwards sans updates. When the dev realizes that such a tool is only 80% effective unless it is totally updated, they can subscribe.

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#15

Post by haukilup »

rckt wrote: post #13

A browser with a subscription. I have no words. People try to make money out of anything. And they succeed in this. The world is an insane place, really.

Do browsers not make money though? Through leveraging their market share they generate revenue.

This is just a different approach. Provide a product (a browser), charge people that want that product.

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#16

Post by kspacewalk2 »

rckt wrote: post #13

A browser with a subscription. I have no words. People try to make money out of anything. And they succeed in this. The world is an insane place, really.

Looks more like a browser-centred IDE to supplement (not replace) the regular codebase-centred IDE to improve front-end development productivity. That productivity increase is what's very valuable if it actually materializes. The goal obviously isn't to improve your Youtube-viewing experience or whatever, so it's not really comparable to Chrome or Firefox.

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#17

Post by kilian »

sam_goody wrote: post #14

I totally get why you do subscription. I totally get why I don't do subscription. Is there some sort of middle ground? Say, minimum purchase cost is the same price as six months, but it keeps on working afterwards sans updates. When the dev realizes that such a tool is only 80% effective unless it is totally updated, they can subscribe.

Happy to answer this. Polypane is a browser. If you don't keep your browser rendering engine up to date, you're opening yourself to a whole host of security issues (not to mention just generally diverging from what your end users use). Keeping that rendering engine up to date means dealing with a slew of potentially breaking changes with each new chromium version.

So there's two reasons:

1. The only way to do that continuous upkeep of the rendering engine that I have found to be sustainable is with a subscription.

2. I definitely don't want to be responsible for people using years-old versions of Chromium.

Re: Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

#19

Post by bogwog »

rckt wrote: post #13

A browser with a subscription. I have no words. People try to make money out of anything. And they succeed in this. The world is an insane place, really.

I see this more of an IDE/dev tool than a web browser. I'm not a web developer, but I could see why someone would pay for this to get more features than what you get in Chrome/Firefox/Safari.
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