i think we have enough asshole logos already guys
Helium Browser
331–340 of 561 posts
Re: Helium Browser
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tens of millions? That'd be just the palm-greasing before you are allowed to begin!
I think they meant tens of millions of people.
You mean tens of millions of consumers?
That would actually make sense. But it would also point at the larger problem (the one we're not actually looking into because we're too busy with solving the unsolvable a.k.a. with C++).
It goes like this: are "we" building a browser for it to be reckoned with, or are "we" building a browser in order to let people browse webpages?
Because only one of these two requires collecting tens of million of... pretty much anything where ten million is a large number I guess? Yet people conflate the two, thinking the same approach holds for both goals, so let's put it sideways:
Which exact problem does a new browser (engine) solve, besides people saying there are too few browsers? What's the purpose of having this problem, its underlying nature? Can we solve it a way that doesn't require reimplementing the last 30 years of computing history? Can we even go look for such a way or will someone show up to stop us?
If the goal is to become a browser vendor, obviously there's no workaround to building a browser (or rebadging one lol); if the goal is not that or not only that, anyone building a browser is gonna have to expound a little more on what exactly they're trying to achieve. That's complicated by how the vast difference between a new browser engine and, say, a new model of TV set, can't really be expressed in beancounts.
Re: Helium Browser
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox does that too and avoid this issue reserving a small space on right site of title bar. Not the end of the world.
Thanks for this reply. This comment chain sent me through an existential crisis. OP made it sound like tabs in the title bar was a new innovation. "The parent post is overly strongly worded, but I agree with the meat of it: tabs should not be in the title bar of the window. It's worse usability for a space savings that really isn't relevant because it's so small." I was nodding to this. But I'm also someone who cares…
I miss so much Safari's compact tabs that Apple introduced in 2021 and now removed on Tahoe. One more thing to dislike[1] in this macOS update…
Re: Helium Browser
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the controversial person behind Did I miss a controversy somewhere?
Scroll through his X account -- Charlie Kirk and DHH content are some recent entries. He is one of those people who thinks tech should be apolitical without really interrogating what apolitical means or how it affects people who have been marginalized by politics
Hmm, I see what you mean. That's a little disappointing. I don't think the contents of any of his recent comments are extreme enough to consider him "controversial" yet, but the language he uses definitely remind me of supposedly "apolitical" or even "centrist" rhetoric.
Re: Helium Browser
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently purchased Firefox relay because I thought it was a nifty service to start using to prevent spam and preserve my privacy, but also a driving factor in my purchase was giving money to Mozilla. I didn't really look into it beyond that internal thought process. Your comment made me wonder, are things so segmented at Mozilla that supporting something like relay doesn't actually help Firefox in general?
People have a lot of weird excuses for disliking Mozilla. There are definitely legitimate ones, but the point really is "what's the alternative"? Are the faults of Mozilla really so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead? Honestly, that seems silly to me. Can we just for once not blindly hate something for not being perfect and consequently strengthening an even worse option?
> so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead
Did you know that ~85% of Mozilla Corp's revenue comes from Google?
Re: Helium Browser
#336In the "choose a default search engine" page, it has a slightly amusing summary for each. > Google > Your personal data fuels its monopoly. Market-dominant due to anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices. > Qwant > Based in Europe. Uses Bing results. Sends tracking data to Microsoft. > DuckDuckGo > Privacy-focused. Relies on Bing results but never tracks or profiles you. > Ecosia > May plant trees for clicking ad…
> Kagi
should be changed to
> Openly and proudly collaborates with russian government
Re: Helium Browser
#337Yeesh, tough crowd in these comments. And yet everyone's excited for new Gmail skins. Anyway. I hope more people take ungoogled-chromium and create new interfaces. It's a shame that Servo's in an unusable state, I'd love to see more tooling around that. I just want someone to give me Opera 12...I suppose that's Vivaldi though.
I tried Opera a few months ago and could not stick to it. All the features they were pitching at me felt a little off. The various panel integrations were clunky and didn't seem to offer anything over just... tabs. Maybe not surprisingly, I'm currently on Vivaldi (although it has its own issues of not infrequent slowness or hangs).
Opera is the worse browser any one could give a chance in 2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39123477
Don’t let Opera cloud your judgement since it’s a poor choice to start with.
Re: Helium Browser
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support. Google learned it can be "standards compliant" if it submits a draft spec to WHATWG/W3C, and while the comment and revision process is still ongoing, roll out those features in Chrome and start using them in YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, and AMP. Now Firefox and Safari are forced to implement those draft specs as well or users will leave in droves becaus…
I don't mean this to doubt you, it is a sincere question. Do you have any examples of that happening? It sounds very believable, but it would be great to have actual sources for future reference.
Anytime you see someone on HN lamenting that Safari is the new IE because it doesn't implement something, 99.9% of the time it's Chrome-only non-standards.
- All of hardware standards. WebHID's timeline is especially egregious https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is...
- Most of standards advertised on web.dev as "new exciting opportunities you can try now". E.g. WebTransport https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/webt.... The status of that spec is "scribbled on a napkin", but somehow already released in Chrome.
- Other "standards" and "specs" here and there like web share target https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/
Can I Use had to create a special UNOFF tag for all the web APIs that Chrome (mostly Chrome) ships. If you go to MDN and look at all APIs marked as "experimental", you'll find that most of them are already shipped in Chrome: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API
Re: Helium Browser
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
push notifications, webgpu and webusb are examples of chrome being a reference implementation and using things for their services while simultaneously pushing the standard. Push for mail, webgpu for maps (iirc) and I believe WebUSB is used for Android flash/debug.
WebGPU is the only one of those I’ve really followed, but hasn’t that had a huge amount of input and changes due to other voices in the working group? That seems to contradict the simplistic picture painted above of Google just dictating standards to the industry.
Would webgpu exist at all if Chrome hadn’t just pushed through with an implementation?
Who knows.
Not us, we’ll never know.
Re: Helium Browser
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support. Google learned it can be "standards compliant" if it submits a draft spec to WHATWG/W3C, and while the comment and revision process is still ongoing, roll out those features in Chrome and start using them in YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, and AMP. Now Firefox and Safari are forced to implement those draft specs as well or users will leave in droves becaus…
I don't mean this to doubt you, it is a sincere question. Do you have any examples of that happening? It sounds very believable, but it would be great to have actual sources for future reference.
It happens every single time. This isn't some well kept industry secret