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

Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 250 posts

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#101

Post by therealunreal »

brador wrote: post #91
beefman wrote: post #67

Tree-style tabs and the bookmark model to go with it (a bookmark can have a parent, so you can restore subtrees of tabs, each with its history intact).[1] Scroll below bottom of page as necessary when navigating to anchor links.[2] Put focus in urlbar when switching to a tab unless the user has already moved it onto the page. Continue to allow bookmark keywords for custom searches from urlbar (e.g. "w fun" to search…

Why ad blocking? You know the internet runs on ads right? Without the ads all you'll see is paywalls and backchannel press releases.

That's debatable. The internet was without ads once so I'd say you'd lose some, win some.

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#102

Post by probably_wrong »

beefman wrote: post #67

Tree-style tabs and the bookmark model to go with it (a bookmark can have a parent, so you can restore subtrees of tabs, each with its history intact).[1] Scroll below bottom of page as necessary when navigating to anchor links.[2] Put focus in urlbar when switching to a tab unless the user has already moved it onto the page. Continue to allow bookmark keywords for custom searches from urlbar (e.g. "w fun" to search…

> Built-in ad blocking.

I read this and thought "that's dumb", until I realized that's because I already take for granted that every browser will provide an ad-blocker.

This has not proven true for my mobile browser, and it's driving me crazy.

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#103

Post by rndn »

Per-tab CPU and memory profiling and volume control.

Never remove old history items when revisiting a page, but leave the history intact.

Treat tabs more like temporary bookmarks (and thus allow bookmark actions to be used with them like search (full-text), (batch) re-naming, arranging in folders, sorting).

Notes that can be attached to tabs and to websites.

A history of closed tabs.

Scripting support with REPL that allows to quickly process content of multiple tabs at once.

Transparent access to cookies and localStorage.

Something like Privacy Badger included.

Place dialog boxes always near the cursor, not in a tiny bar or in a pop-up near the top.

Bandwidth stats during page load.

Speed: No full-screen transition animations, lazy tab loading, smart tab unloading, ability to quickly and temporarily disable img, embed, video, script etc.

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#104

Post by tymbaka »

beefman wrote: post #67

Tree-style tabs and the bookmark model to go with it (a bookmark can have a parent, so you can restore subtrees of tabs, each with its history intact).[1] Scroll below bottom of page as necessary when navigating to anchor links.[2] Put focus in urlbar when switching to a tab unless the user has already moved it onto the page. Continue to allow bookmark keywords for custom searches from urlbar (e.g. "w fun" to search…

Why are ads addressed as browser related? If the question would be about "the perfect internet as medium" then yes, I would love to see an internet without ads. Built-in ad blocker would just create a challenge for marketers to create a new solution and I doubt that they would come up with something that we would like to see.

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#105

Post by lhecker »

varlock wrote: post #99

My 2c: - It must be ultra lightweight: fast when starting up, fast when handling load of tabs, just fast. - Doing _one single thing_ exceptionally well: enable the user to browse. Built-in modularity means add-ons/plug-ins/etc can optionally be added to expand the browser capabilities.

If I could I would upvote this twice.

So yeah: IMO a browser really should be just the browser with a good Addon-On API. That's why I would add a third point to your list:

- The Browser Team should provide (optional) Core-Plugins which are easy to install and in turn provide basic but useful features. For instance those mentioned in other comments here (e.g. uBlock, MAFF-Support, Mouse-Gestures, ...)

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#107

Post by wingerlang »

iveqy wrote: post #50

Skip all those features, just give me speed, a lot of it. Plugins would be great (I love vimperator) but speed and efficienty is the real deal here.

Chrome with Vimperator would be great.

(And yes, I've tried all the Chrome alternatives and they are not as good)

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#108

Post by barnacs »

ronreiter wrote: post #73

The web needs to split into two: * Reader browser * Application browser The reader browser should show you the "web" in a kindle-like readable experience, just as it does today. However, the application browser, although it does receive a URL, should not have any HTML page as a default view. Instead, a JavaScript should be first loaded, and from there, following the permissions it requests, it can open new windows, n…

Reader browser: I would argue that it should be a reader/writer browser, where authoring, changing and interlinking documents is just as trivial as browsing them.

Application browser: but then why limit it to JavaScript?

Re: Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?

#109

Post by kenOfYugen »

panic wrote: post #94
kenOfYugen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't WebKit the rendering engine itself? The "ideal" core I was talking about should be able to use WebKit as a rendering engine.

If no 'browsing' features are included, isn't what you're left with the rendering engine itself? It seems like WebKit's WKWebView (or WebKitWebView on gtk, or ewk_view on efl) is pretty much what you're asking for. Edit: WKView should be WKWebView, sorry

By no "browsing features" I mean something closer to a headless browser. Just a library. Is that what WKView is about?
Post reply on HN