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Thoughts on Arc Browser

chrishannah.me

51–60 of 87 posts

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#51
I've been trying on and off to give Arc a try for the past few months. I've had trouble for all the reasons that the linked article names.

What brought me around was the Easel feature for scrapbooking pieces of multiple web pages onto a single page. For some kinds of research, being able to see everything at once beats anything I've been able to do with multiple tabs or window arrangements. I used to arrange screenshots onto a photo editor's canvas, but doing it in-browser is an easier workflow, and Arc makes it easy to get back from the clipping to the source.

I believe that Beam is similar to this feature, except (pro) better support for daily notes, and (pro and/or con) clippings are in a list instead of arranged in 2D.

That fact that these blocks can optionally be live also makes it useful for constructing ad-hoc dashboards.

[1] "Arc | Collect Your Internet with Easel" https://youtu.be/ukquBSOpmTk

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#52

Is there interest in a similarly innovative/functional browser that wraps WebKit for iOS/iPadOS/macOS? I see people complain about wrapping Chrome but don't know if the Apple ecosystem community values this.

As I understand, everybody shipping a browser for ios and ipados is wrapping webkit because apple requires that it be that way.

yes but all the popular ones i've seen which have both macos and ios treat ios as an unfortunate 2nd class citizen rather than a flagship experience

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#53
post #31

Is there interest in a similarly innovative/functional browser that wraps WebKit for iOS/iPadOS/macOS? I see people complain about wrapping Chrome but don't know if the Apple ecosystem community values this.

You’re looking for Orion: https://browser.kagi.com/ https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features/

Thank you, maybe there is a market for this

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#54
It seems like another Flock browser - interesting but meh.

Chrome has won the wars, even Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and making it better (I personally like Edge) - it is time to move on to solving interesting problems and not the same low hanging fruit like crypto blockchain, another overcomplicated JS framework or another replacement for C++.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#56
post #33

I keep waiting for the invite... it's becoming pathetic, honestly! Why would desktop software want to use an invite system?! It makes zero sense! And worst of all, to make people wait for months!

I have some invites, let me know how to DM you and I'll send one right away

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#57
Got invited this summer and was a bit skeptic at first (been trying different browsers on and off for the last couple of years). I knew nothing about the browser and had no real expectations. I have to say I was a bit impressed by the onboarding, the UX, and the attention to detail. (Perhaps because I work in UX)

Thought I'd try it for a week before eventually switching back to Chrome because of some missing feature or functionality – in reality it has been the opposite. I dread using Chrome again, and whenever I'm forced to, it feels like going back in time, but not even in a nostalgic way. Just a sense of "this is what we used before?"

Anyway, I have 5 invites if anyone wants to try it out.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#58
post #33

I keep waiting for the invite... it's becoming pathetic, honestly! Why would desktop software want to use an invite system?! It makes zero sense! And worst of all, to make people wait for months!

I have some invites, let me know how to DM you and I'll send one right away

You can email me at my username here at hey dot com.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#59

Got invited this summer and was a bit skeptic at first (been trying different browsers on and off for the last couple of years). I knew nothing about the browser and had no real expectations. I have to say I was a bit impressed by the onboarding, the UX, and the attention to detail. (Perhaps because I work in UX) Thought I'd try it for a week before eventually switching back to Chrome because of some missing feature…

I’d like to try it. Signed myself up, but I’m still waiting for the invite to arrive.

Re: Thoughts on Arc Browser

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's even less so when I would lose adblocking due to Manifest v3 You don't lose adblocking with MV3. I have been using uBlock Origin Lite since it came out and I have not noticed any difference in actual blocking. I like having adblock extension that has significantly less security or privacy exposure, and I like MV3 provides that.

You already lost some adblocking with MV2 because you are using Chrome where uBO doesn’t support CNAME uncloaking.

EasyPrivacy gets a lot (most?) of the CNAME-cloaked stuff even on Chrome and MV3 because of efforts to detect and incorporate the subdomains into filter lists. AdGuard's public DNS server watches for CNAME cloaking and the subdomains get pushed to a list [1]. Or one could set their DNS to AdGuard and get the CNAME blocking in real time without filter list updates. uBO on Firefox is of course the more flexible solution but along with cosmetic filtering, this kind of thing would make it hard to notice the difference between a really good MV3 blocker and uBO on Firefox.

[1] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/cname-trackers

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