Live data from Hacker News

Helium Browser

helium.computer

431–440 of 561 posts

Re: Helium Browser

#431
post #383
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is revisionism, IE only stagnated because they kind of wipedout the competition, like Chrome is today, and Microsoft withdraw most of the development resources from the team. WPF XAML was originally designed by ex IE team members, and they were the same that a few years later proposed XAML Grid concept as CSS Grid initial design. Many JavaScript devs have to thank their abuse of JavaScript in the browser to XMLH…

What do you expect from browser itself? It loads html + js . It’s no longer center of innovation.

Support for PNG alpha channel

Re: Helium Browser

#432
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already did, Safari is the only one left standing, by the market share. Plus all the Electron crap that gets shoved as "native".

The only reason Safari has any market share is because it's the default on every iPhone. 4/5 top browsers by market share are there because they are preinstalled on millions of devices and none of them are terrible enough for an average person to look for an alternative.

But chrome is not default and people still go to install it

Re: Helium Browser

#433
post #272

Earlier 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.

Not true about webgpu, but true about some APIs in Google's project-fugu

We had very few products that use the fugu apis., and I don't believe we were the first to ship them either in a production website.

If you're looking at fugu in particular (especially in the latter stages) we had external developers or businesses wanting the features.

Note: there are some apis that a Google customer wanted to use first.

Re: Helium Browser

#434
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing about collaborating with Russian government in the post. They merely make use of a Russian-based search engine to provide better search results. I won't argue if this is good or bad, but from your statement it sounds like they collect all the users' data and sell it directly to Federal Security Service.

Yandex is russian government

That's as shallow as " is Russian government". Russian government certainly established strong leverage over Yandex (and every other major business for that matter), but they don't exactly own the company.

Such blanket statements really don't bring anything to the table.

PS: I think you might be confusing Yandex with VK. VK are known to be loyal to government and provide users' data to law enforcement at a whim, without proper procedures.

Re: Helium Browser

#435
Back about 20 years ago there was a lightweight Gecko-based web browser called 'Camino' that was a delight compared to Firefox or other 'full' browsers. It was fast, simplified, and still rendered pages well. I didn't always use it, but it was a joy to use.

I downloaded Helium and gave it a spin and my first impression was "Ah, it's like Camino all over again". I can't use this for my job where I need to use stock {Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge} because our customers do - but for personal browsing I'm currently using Arc which is very comfortable but heavy, I might try to use Helium for quick simple things when I want less overhead! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Helium Browser

#436
post #369

> Helium is based on Chromium > Best privacy by default Sorry, pass... Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition. So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko), Safari (WebKit), and Ladybird? Personally I go with Firefox on most devices and Orion (WebKit) on my iPhone and iPad. > Heli…

Naive question — why is everyone building chromium-based browsers as opposed to using Gecko? Is it difficult to integrate?

That's my (admittedly extremely limited) understanding. The Mozilla/Firefox people de-prioritized making Gecko a separate linkable library years ago, and it's no longer a straightforward thing to do. Which is a real bummer.

Re: Helium Browser

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subscription thing is key, although maybe a generational thing. I would happily pay a flat $60-100 for each major version upgrade I choose to adopt, but I won't just give them a direct monthly tap into my bank account.

So do you donate that amount every major release?

Last I checked, you can't donate to fund firefox development.

You can donate to Mozilla, who then go on to spend their money on things other than firefox development. Or development in general.

Re: Helium Browser

#438
I'm not sure why I'd bother using this when it's just another Chromium browser.

As it currently stands, I'm leaning more into WebKit-based, but for daily use it's Firefox. I'm not happy with any of them, but I'd struggle to pick just one right now.

Re: Helium Browser

#439
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Zen, as Arc is dead

Arc works fine; Orion (Kagi's browser) is like an Arc built on WebKit.

I really don't see many similarities between Orion and Arc but I also didn't use Arc very much because I was pessimistic that it would stay free and consistently updated without annoying monetization features. I didn't expect them to switch to a brand new browser though lol.

Re: Helium Browser

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making assumptions about me which are not correct. I am not using Firefox because it has bugs which made it stop working as web browser for me. I have had breaking problems with Firefox on every platform I've used it on. On desktop (multiple Linuxes, Windows 7 and 10, and MacOS) I run into problems which I spend hours trying to fix, until I give up and go back to a Chromium browser. On iPadOS and iOS, it woul…

> On desktop (multiple Linuxes, Windows 7 and 10, and MacOS) I run into problems which I spend hours trying to fix, until I give up and go back to a Chromium browser. On iPadOS and iOS, it would crash when using arrowkeys to navigate URL history(or something like that, if I remember correctly. Been awhile). I had another issue with it on Android, the details of which I'd forgotten. I don't even use the sync features-…

> If it's only breaking for you, and you alone, you can see why the rest of us are skeptical that it really is that broken.

There are several problems here.

Before anything, I want to note that we don't have to fight, we aren't enemies. We're on the same ideological side, even. This tastes like an angry and bitter internet argument. Do you taste it too?

We're just two people talking about web browsers. We don't need acrimony for each other. My bitterness is for the browser ecosystem. I am very sad about the browser ecosystem.

On that note, who are you speaking for, other than yourself, when you talk about "the rest of us"?

You are only you, and I am only me. The difference here is that you have good experiences with Firefox, and I have had bad experiences with Firefox.

Second, your skepticism is part of the problem with Firefox. In trying to find support for these issues, I mostly found people who did not believe me (or that I'm using it wrong, etc.)

The way you engage with people is common in the Firefox community, which is deleterious to the goal of having more people use Firefox. I think it's actually really important that we have a good non-Chromium non-corporate browser which people want to use, and Firefox is still the most promising one in the running.

Third, it's just incorrect to think I am alone in my issues. Some of these issues I could confirm were unfixed bugs, by finding them in the issue trackers. Others I could find with my issues in threads on Reddit, for example. Others are in this same thread we're commenting on. You can see people here talking about issues with Firefox, or needing to "Frankenstein" their install to get it to a usable state (a relatable experience for me, except I couldn't get it back into a usable state. I never want to touch user.js again.) My experience is lonely, but I am not the only person with my experience.

There is also the 94% to 98% of people on the internet who do not use Firefox. Some of those must be because they wanted to use Firefox, but had a breaking issue and went to Chrome.

People use software with bugs all the time, and Chromium and Safari's dominance is mostly because of years of costly domination from Apple and especially Google. But part of it is also things simply not working in Firefox. (Which is, also, partially due to Google expanding on Microsoft's IE-era standards playbook).

Finally, what is your position exactly? That Firefox can't possibly have the bugs I had? Or that I am lying about wanting a viable non-Chromium browser? I think you might be responding with a knee-jerk defense of Firefox, and you might assume I'm arguing in bad faith, which is fair, given this is the "Forum for Bad Faith Arguments About Computers with Some Amount of Financially-Motivated Arguments".

But I am ideologically motivated to be on Firefox's side. It's the largest browser engine not owned by a FAANG. Ideological motivation is the reason why I tried to use Firefox several times over several years, and why I spend time talking on the internet with strangers about web browsers.

Post reply on HN