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Arc Browser 1.0

arc.net

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Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#251

Post by pzo »

Chevalier wrote: post #228

Ctrl+F "Vivaldi" -- no relevant comments? Vivaldi is impossibly excellent. How is Arc getting so much more attention? Want vertical tabs? Vivaldi. Side bar? Vivaldi. Workspaces? Vivaldi. Mouse gestures? Vivaldi. Vertical space? Vivaldi. Customizable speed dial? Vivaldi. Keyboard commands? Popout mini-browser? Encrypted sync? Page tiling? Chrome extensions? Multiple types of tab groups? Excellent tools for inspection,…

Thanks, I used to use Vivaldi many years ago (switched by to Firefox eventually). I just tried it again and unfortunately their user inteface is very cluttered and not polished by default - comparing to Arc.

In Vivaldi

1. Everything is very very tiny. You have to google there is zoom ui slider - but after changing to 130% I finally have nice padding but it scales all UI so now I endup with very big and fat icons and fonts. What's worse those icons, font looks like are just rasterized and because of that not sharp

2. Default selected tab and tab colors are very cluttered

3. Their command panel cmd+e is very cluttered and need to learn about new shortcut (I don't want to create notes, search history, bookmarks, I want to only search current open tabs, search engine, execute command or open by url. This panel also very tiny

4. Trash button doesn't work for me - doesn't do anything. I expected it will nuke all open tabs - last time I used vivaldi many years ago this was the final straw for me - closing like 50 tabs was taking like 5+ seconds.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#252

Post by freediver »

bob778 wrote: post #217
wkdneidbwf wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but you can analyze the traffic from the app if you cared too. the point is that you absolutely can verify their claims.

I’ve worked on projects that logged locally and only transmitted every ~60 days when they detected the right network (eg public wifi). So unless you monitor it continuously and permanently this isn’t true.

Hopefully we can agree that even then, it still can be trivially caught by anyone serious into verifying the claim.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#253

Post by dlivingston »

jwells89 wrote: post #230
dlivingston wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To facilitate a Windows port, they’re building on existing community work to write a SwiftUI implementation for Windows. Can you expand on this? I haven't the foggiest idea how this would work in practice.

Well Swift already builds on Windows, but obviously that does not come with much of what you might use to write a Mac app. The biggest holes to fill are those not covered by the open source version of Foundation (which thankfully, Apple is working on filling) and those left by the absence of AppKit/SwiftUI. So most of their hole-plugging is going to be centered around SwiftUI and whatever bits of AppKit beyond SwiftU…

That's fascinating, thank you for the response.

I find programming user interfaces in SwiftUI to be an absolute joy, and if there were proper bindings to GTK and WinUI then it would be my go-to GUI framework for time immemorial.

The SwiftWinRT project looks interesting -- unfortunately, it seems to be abandoned (last commit was ~1 year ago).

Here's hoping they succeed. If they do, it could totally displace Qt as the standard cross-platform GUI framework (caveat - not for all use cases, of course).

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#254

Post by Chevalier »

pzo wrote: post #251
Chevalier wrote: post #228

Ctrl+F "Vivaldi" -- no relevant comments? Vivaldi is impossibly excellent. How is Arc getting so much more attention? Want vertical tabs? Vivaldi. Side bar? Vivaldi. Workspaces? Vivaldi. Mouse gestures? Vivaldi. Vertical space? Vivaldi. Customizable speed dial? Vivaldi. Keyboard commands? Popout mini-browser? Encrypted sync? Page tiling? Chrome extensions? Multiple types of tab groups? Excellent tools for inspection,…

Thanks, I used to use Vivaldi many years ago (switched by to Firefox eventually). I just tried it again and unfortunately their user inteface is very cluttered and not polished by default - comparing to Arc. In Vivaldi 1. Everything is very very tiny. You have to google there is zoom ui slider - but after changing to 130% I finally have nice padding but it scales all UI so now I endup with very big and fat icons and…

Not to argue with personal taste, but I think most of these problems are just becoming accustomed to a different UI. Vivaldi is easily the most customizable browser on the market, and it's not even close. I don't work for Vivaldi and I'm not getting paid by them, just a fervent acolyte.

1) I'm not sure I understand. You don't like how small the icons are, so you made them larger, but then you don't like they're larger? Like you, I also like nice big hitboxes, and I haven't noticed any issues. If you're just trying to scale the webpage zoom, look at the bottom right corner of the status bar -- there's a zoom bar you can drag.

2) Try the Human theme, which changes colors to complement whatever webpage you're looking at. I absolutely love it. I use vertical tabs, which aren't cluttered; maybe the horizontal tabs are? If you don't like square tabs, you can round the corners to squircles in the settings.

3) The command panel works flawlessly for me to search current open tabs, bookmarks, etc. Maybe it's just a different implementation than Firefox?

4) The trash icon at the bottom of the vertical tabs isn't to close all tabs -- if you want to do that, just right-click any tab and select "close all tabs below." The trash icon is a SUPER useful recovery tool that stores your browsing history, essentially. If you accidentally close a tab or a window, you can just restore it by clicking the trash icon and selecting the closed tab/window in reverse chronological order.

Vivaldi today is what Firefox was twenty years ago -- just outstripping all competition and being an absolute joy for the end user. You can customize Vivaldi to be whatever you want it to be, and I think you'd really enjoy it as your default browser.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#255

Post by fragmede »

toyg wrote: post #167
basisword wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a fully functioning publicly released product. That’s the opposite of vaporware.

They started raising in 2020 for a browser , a no-hope project in a commoditized consumer market dominated by giants with strong network effects. The software might not be vapor but the money will definitely be.

Opera Browser had revenues of $87mm last quarter. You and I might get buy with Chrome for free, but it's not zero hope.

https://investor.opera.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#256

Post by fragmede »

fevangelou wrote: post #104

As YouTuber Chris Titus would very eloquently say, "it's pointless". Chrome with a bunch of plugins could probably replicate the same experience. It's also kinda patronizing to say "here's how the browser should work" as if people are morons in 2023 and have no clue how to use a browser, let alone their supposed target audience. I'm not even touching the "sign up to continue" issue others mentioned... The news should…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#257

Post by st380752143 »

Terretta wrote: post #126

In case you are interested in a wrapper for WebKit instead of for Chromium, but one that lets you use your favorite Chrome and Firefox extensions: Orion Browser by Kagi: Very fast. Zero telemetry. Lightweight, natively built with WebKit, made for you and your Mac. Industry-leading battery life, privacy respecting by design and native support for web extensions. Orion supports Firefox and Chrome browser extensions nat…

I use both actually, Arc and Orion. I love its support for tree-view of tabs and Chrome/firefox extensions. Arc is my main browser now.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#258

Post by wkdneidbwf »

bob778 wrote: post #217
wkdneidbwf wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but you can analyze the traffic from the app if you cared too. the point is that you absolutely can verify their claims.

I’ve worked on projects that logged locally and only transmitted every ~60 days when they detected the right network (eg public wifi). So unless you monitor it continuously and permanently this isn’t true.

i mean, sure... but lets ignore whatever malware project you were working on. :)

lot of businesses live or die on the trust of their customers. don't they? arc's product is aimed at power users. surely if they were collecting telemetry and then trying to hide the fact they were transmitting it would be a critical blow when discovered.

so while i totally agree that they _could_ operate like that, in most cases there is very little to be gained and a lot to be lost by being intentionally deceptive.

so this will kind of diverge on what we consider as "proof", but i don't think that the software would need to be permanently monitored for a reasonable assurance.

the bar for proof would certainly vary though.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#259

Post by DavideNL »

bloopernova wrote: post #247
DavideNL wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, so when you use it on the Macbook, do you use a second screen for it also? I often use my iPad as a secondary screen to show the TST window when using my Macbook... but find it hard to use with only the Macbook screen. So curious how you'd do that / set it up when only using the Macbook screen.

When only using the MacBook, I make use of ctrl-uparrow to switch between browser and VSCode. I have tree style tabs in the Firefox sidebar, not a separate window.

Thanks for your feedback, i'll have to give TST in the Firefox sidebar another try...

> "I make use of ctrl-uparrow to switch between browser and VSCode"

I use the Contexts app (Fast Search) for that - https://contexts.co/

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#260

Post by pzo »

presbyterian wrote: post #10
jeron wrote: post #2

I’ve been using Arc as my main browser for the last few months and it is phenomenal. Congrats to the team

Have they added proper bookmarks yet? That was a deal breaker when I used it last. You could pin/favorite tabs and such, but I could never find a way to store the bookmarks that are not regularly used, but I may need to bring up from time to time. I assume this is just a philosophical disagreement between myself and the Arc devs about how one should use a web browser

This was also the only reason that made be almost to bail until someone on reddit mentioned they are using raindrop.io extension as a bookmark manager that is cross platform. I pinned raindrop.io so that i can easily access it with a button and search in similar way as in firefox.

Otherwise without it Arc experience is bad: 1. importing ~5k of bookmarks (yes I use bookmarks as some link I might potentially find useful 1 year later and just tagging them like: "ml, model, ai stable, diffusion" so I can easily search for it even few years later) take very very long time 2. they all endup in folder as tabs and such big amount of bookmarks keeps left bar very slow 3. arc seem not to import tags from firefox 4. there is no bookmark manager were you can easily search by title, keywords, tags or sort by date

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