This is a timely coincidence for me. I started using yesterday Shortcat [1] for the Mac, and I'm very pleased. It gives you access to pretty much everything with the keyboard, not just the browser. To be fair, Nyxt provides other features such as scripting. [1] https://shortcat.app/
I really wish it was open-source. I loved the concept and the app worked in most applications (though not the best with Slack). But I have reservations when it comes to granting full screen access to an app made by some unknown developer.
I was intrigued until I saw this in the FAQ: > What is Nyxt? > Nyxt is a browser with deeply integrated AI and semantic document tools that work as a second brain to help you process and understand more, more quickly. No mention of what sort of "AI", where it's run, etc. If nothing else, this sounds like a recipe for a warm laptop and unreliable results.
I was intrigued until I saw this in the FAQ: > What is Nyxt? > Nyxt is a browser with deeply integrated AI and semantic document tools that work as a second brain to help you process and understand more, more quickly. No mention of what sort of "AI", where it's run, etc. If nothing else, this sounds like a recipe for a warm laptop and unreliable results.
The AI plug is obligatory. They have to ride the hype train too.
This browser was around before AI was popular and when I used it, it was great. The only downside is the lack of ability to run extensions, like bitwarden.
The one thing holding me back from this is not being able to run UBlock origin on it yet. I keep telling myself that eventually I'll have the spare time to change that myself....
So why this over qutebrowser [1] ? (Which has been my go-to keyboard-first browser for a long time.) This isn't mentioned in the FAQ despite I think being the natural comparison. [1] https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser
As someone who used Qute for a long time: * Python is much slower than SBCL (yes, even if rendering is done by Blink); including the lack of threading * Bookmarks are pure crap, they don't have tags nor directories to sort them better * Less hackable (e.g. something that should be possible in Nyxt: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/3933 ) * Massive gaps: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issu…
> My impression is that it has been stuck in bug fixing/dependency churn for a long time now
I don't think it's just your impression: it's exactly what happened. Depending on Qt for the rendering engine means the browser has been tied to the painfully long release cycle of the whole of Qt. Quickly fixing bugs or implementing new features is hard, they have to hack around limited APIs, beg for more and continually fix new bugs introduced by upstream (both Qt and google).
For text editors or IDEs, basically contexts where we expect a lot of typing, I get why sticking to the keyboard is desirable. I don't get how it's better to browse the web without using the mouse. Most of the time on the web I just read, not type.
For me, I’m often using the web as a reference while programming. It’s nice to be able to flip over to it (using the keyboard) and use the same familiar key bindings I’m using while in my workflow.
That's indeed a nice use case. In general keeping to the keyboard can be helpful in the context of typing, but if I'm just reading news or blog posts or watching videos I'd go with a mouse.
Not sure why arguing is needed? You like a mouse, I think it sucks. If we meet up, we can trivially measure what is faster. What is there to argue?
Or we can not measure which is faster and just respect that everyone has their own preferences.
The irony is that the side accusing keyboard users of elitism is asking them to respect everyone's preferences! Sure, but the keyboard users didn't start this discussion either.
For text editors or IDEs, basically contexts where we expect a lot of typing, I get why sticking to the keyboard is desirable. I don't get how it's better to browse the web without using the mouse. Most of the time on the web I just read, not type.
>Most of the time on the web I just read, not type. This is kind of why it works. In vim you spend most of your time in normal mode, reading, moving around, making quick edits. It takes good advantage of the whole keyboard even when you're not writing new text. I use qutebrowser, which has default vim-style bindings for everything and an emphasis on the keyboard. It works very well.
I think an important difference between how I use vim and how I use a web browser is that in vim I need to type frequently. Though I may spend most time in normal mode in vim, I still need to switch to insert mode to make edits very frequently. With my normal web browsing it's not the case, so I'm more comfortable with a mouse for that. But I realise that this depends largely on the specific use case for web browsing. Reading blog posts is quite different from reading some documentation where one needs to search and backtrack frequently, for example, although both are done on a web browser. The latter involves the keyboard more frequently so would benefit from a keyboard-centric interface more.
I was intrigued until I saw this in the FAQ: > What is Nyxt? > Nyxt is a browser with deeply integrated AI and semantic document tools that work as a second brain to help you process and understand more, more quickly. No mention of what sort of "AI", where it's run, etc. If nothing else, this sounds like a recipe for a warm laptop and unreliable results.
The AI plug is obligatory. They have to ride the hype train too. This browser was around before AI was popular and when I used it, it was great. The only downside is the lack of ability to run extensions, like bitwarden.
Nyxt is supposed to be as extensible as Emacs and way more extensible than mainstream browsers that use WebExtensions. The lack of extensions is likely due to its miniscule market share.