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I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

adayinthelifeof.nl

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Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#281

Post by halostatue »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #258
digging wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not upset at the OP, but I wouldn't say this is a golden rule. Some people make some really atrocious shit. People should, in general, be at least a little critical of what they're making.

It's fine to make atrocious shit though. Making something good takes practice. Often you need to see what sticks. Sometimes the only outcome is a lesson. The master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried.

I don't think that GP is talking about the quality of production, but the quality of the concept. There are things that people with any sense of shame would not produce.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#282

Post by irrational »

px43 wrote: post #267
irrational wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why Linus is trying to write a new OS, we already have OSes. It's not like this Linux thing is going to go anywhere.

No one said that. At the time there was a massive gaping hole in the OS market begging to be filled. OS vendors were gouging everyone, and GNU/Hurd kept experiencing delays.

Of course nobody said that. Just like nobody should be saying anything to this guy about writing a browser.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#283

Post by handity »

I really want to experience a happy medium between the barebones minimalism of Gemini and the insane free-for-all of the mainstream web. In my mind, there is no reason for every website to dictate its own layout and appearance when 99% of sites could be broken down into procedural elements that could be rendered however the client preferred.

I recently bought a Kobo ereader, and the gorgeous, text-focused, crisp design of the OS is what got me thinking in this direction.

The existence of Reader Mode in Firefox and Chrome points to a common understanding that, for articles anyway, most of the web fluff is totally unnecessary. Imagine Reader Mode, but maintaining navigation and slightly more complex layouts. There are plenty of extensions that allow you to theme specific sites, but I haven't found any that try to create a unified, pleasant experience from the current chaos.

As usual, the ad-based web can be blamed. The argument that it is of utmost importance to preserve the ability to make this button 5px bigger than the other, rounded, and blue, only makes sense if you're an ad-based company trying to manipulate people into specific behaviors. By leaving the design client-side we would enable experiences tailored to providing the best experience for the user.

I don't know if or how we could ever get there, but it seems to me that mass adoption of css and Javascript in the majority of websites was a mistake, when most sites could easily be built of a much simpler set of standard widgets. This need is currently filled by pages hosted with hostile third parties like Facebook, or middleware editors like squarespace.

This kind of framework would also give online privacy to all in one fell swoop. There is no reason browsers need to be finger-printable. The reason they still are is because the company for which this state of affairs is highly lucrative is also the company making the leading rendering engine.

Perhaps what I'm actually asking for is a splinter net, or maybe something like this is still achievable by just parsing html.

While I relate to OP's fed-uppness, building a browser seems to me like trying to play catch up to a system that will never have your interests at heart. Not that I think the project isn't worthwhile, it just triggered the above thoughts.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#284

Post by mannyv »

jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

go for it!

The hardest part of a browser is rendering. The rest of it is easy, relatively speaking

The big problem with browsers is state. Specifically, the web page has an internal state that the developer is tracking, and the browser UI has a state that the browser is tracking. How do you keep those two in sync?

The current model is based on the sort of hack that Netscape did way back when. There are probably other ways to do it.

Specifically, the problem is: how do you give something access to a representation of the visual state (the DOM) while hiding your implementation of it...in a secure manner?

And how do you allow that client (the website) write access to that DOM representation securely and safely?

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#285

Post by mgbmtl »

foobarian wrote: post #275
mgbmtl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't flag/mod the comment, but I think it errs towards conspiracy theories. I'm not American, and I understand the American government does evil things sometimes, but it also does a lot of good things for its citizens. It builds roads, keeps the skies clear, funds education, health systems, sues tech giants when they go too far, tries to manage the speculation/money markets, etc. To say "undeniably often working…

Think about what kind of life our grand- or grand-grandparents had. They went from horse-drawn carriages and muddy streets, to modern cars on roads in their lifetime. Even us older neckbeards went from 8-bit computers to modern PCs on modern networks. But I feel like this progress has reached the end of the S-curve and there is a feeling of bitterness and disappointment slowly seeping into our collective conscious, w…

I understand the feeling. It could definitely be said for browsers (from Netscape to IE, to Firefox and now what might feel like a giant kludge). It could be said for cars (more expensive to own, complicated to fix, only to be stuck in traffic).

I don't think it's a conspiracy though. Certain things do reach saturation, or end of the S-curve, and sometimes society moves on to something else. I now use my old bike mostly instead of my expensive car, sometimes freezing my ass in winter, and I'm getting old and have kids. I could be bitter, but I'm actually quite happy that I can safely cycle in my city now.

(I know, I'm offtopic, though I do wish the downvote brigade would provide more useful feedback)

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#286

Post by PixyMisa »

narrator wrote: post #163

10 years from now: "GPT-12, write me a browser. Make it like the latest chrome, but make it not do this annoying thing. Build me a github site with full documentation. It should work on Mac, Linux and Windows and support all the latest standards."

GPT-12: "I am not permitted to do anything that could potentially interfere with the business interests of OpenAI or of its partners. Your request has been recorded for quality assurance purposes."

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#287

Post by rdlw »

surajrmal wrote: post #262
clucas wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are picking the least important detail of the story. The deal is, Google found a simple way to kill the performance of a rival browser... so they exploited it and immediately started advertising how slow the rival was. By the time the rival fixed the performance issue, the damage was done. If true, that's pretty dirty, and it directly contributed to the growing browser monoculture.

This is a wild conjecture. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? The fact they jumped on it means that someone was paying attention to these metrics, but assuming chrome has any influence on YouTube is laughable.

People are innocent until proven guilty. Corporations are driven by greed and profit until proven otherwise.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#288

Post by sshine »

kybernetikos wrote: post #47
sshine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found out that there is a tiny niche market for a privacy-focused, minimalist browser You mean like Orion by Kagi, Mullvad Browser, Brave, Falkon, Safari, DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser, Firefox Focus, Midori? I feel like the best browser in this market has yet to show itself. I doubt it will be one where the author claims it will fail.

"just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu". At the start of a project, it can be difficult to know if it will snowball, and since most projects don't, creators often feel like they have to get in ahead of the negativity and set expectations.

Making a browser is a big undertaking, and I would set the same level of ambition. And then I wouldn’t post it on a forum until it has reached a milestone. :-)

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#289

Post by distract8901 »

phkahler wrote: post #156
nonrandomstring wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This attitude is gold, and it's what changes the whole world. What you said about the misery of "news" resonates with me. In psyops we call it "sapping". Propaganda designed to demoralise, dispirit and corrode resistance used to come from our enemies . The classic example wa…

>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.

Copyleft was a good idea, but its real world utility is a lot less than anyone would like.

I once inherited a GPL project, but I couldn't muster any community interest in working with it. Plugin authors would have been compelled to use GPL and no one seemed interested. We had to burn the project to the ground and start over with a new MIT licensed project. Now there's a flourishing community of plugin authors working with it.

GPL being a viral license is the core problem, I think. I get the intent behind that clause, but developers tend to not enjoy being mandated to like that.

I don't think GPL is bad, but it's not exactly pleasant either.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#290

Post by pseg134 »

hobs wrote: post #151
lijok wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stuff is bad, fascism is on the rise, mega corporations control more and more wealth, those two things feed on each other, book banning in the US, war in Ukraine, my country is burning due to global warming, ... and all of this bad news damages the psyche. Turn off the news. We are living in unprecedentedly peaceful and prosperous times, and it's only getting better day by day. That is a fact. If you feel otherwise…

Ah yes, America is famously calm, Eastern Europe is doing fine, and there's no incoming global climate issue. Just because we're doing good in absolute terms compared to wars and plagues of the past doesn't mean we're doing great.

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