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iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

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Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#71

Post by saagarjha »

asveikau wrote: post #69
rched wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand why it might seem that way but it is actually evolving very quickly. Probably faster than any other time in history. There are a few things driving this evolution but I think the most important one is a desire to make the web a competitive platform for most types of software. This means lower level APIs, deeper integration with OS, and yes a large focus on performance. 3D graphics, offline support, p…

There are a small number of people pushing that, but where is the adoption, and is the web at large really inaccesible without it? One example, I see a lot of websites offering to send me push notifications, and I always click no. A browser could not implement that feature and I would not notice, in fact it would be an improvement in experience.

That’s how you get articles from angry web developers that break things in your browser and call it “the new IE”.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#72

Post by saagarjha »

asveikau wrote: post #70
IggleSniggle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my no. There's the plethora of Web APIs to attend to, with ever new things that require support in order for websites to work. And each of those creates complex security concerns. The js spec is ever moving, with new syntax and features. Accessibility concerns interact with all of these other parts. It's "normal" to ship complex desktop apps deployed to the browser now. And THEN, after all that, you need to mainta…

People who ship desktop apps as a web browser are already doing that with chromium built in. As far as I can tell a typical user reading the normal web isn't going to be locked out of it with a browser that's a few years old. Not everyone writing web content is an activist trying to disrupt desktop apps.

Yeah, but Chromium is doing that work for them.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#73

Post by snapetom »

Arsenije wrote: post #46
snapetom wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my God, I loved Camino so much! The browser scene for the Mac in the early Aught's was such a mess. Netscape was bloated, slow as hell, and wasn't keeping up with standards. IE was great, but you were always suspicious of MS's agenda. Safari was still a bit rough and lacked a lot of features. Camino was snappy, clean, and had very good standards compliance. Such a great little browser!

Do you remember Shiira? :)

I couldn't remember the name, but I looked it up and remembered the browser. I did try it out! It was nice, but wasn't enough to peel me away from Camino.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#74

Post by Frondo »

asveikau wrote: post #69
rched wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand why it might seem that way but it is actually evolving very quickly. Probably faster than any other time in history. There are a few things driving this evolution but I think the most important one is a desire to make the web a competitive platform for most types of software. This means lower level APIs, deeper integration with OS, and yes a large focus on performance. 3D graphics, offline support, p…

There are a small number of people pushing that, but where is the adoption, and is the web at large really inaccesible without it? One example, I see a lot of websites offering to send me push notifications, and I always click no. A browser could not implement that feature and I would not notice, in fact it would be an improvement in experience.

I think the unsatisfying reason why one should implement it is because it's a standard API now, and it is always better to implement standards.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#75

Post by tapoxi »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #65
userbinator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Netsurf, Dillo, as well as Links and the rest of the text-based ones. The monopoly should definitely be fought.

Are those actually usable as a primary/only browser in 2020? Unfortunately, I think the best way to fight the monopoly at this point is to use Firefox. As bad as 2½ browsers is, I'd much rather have 2½ than 1½. (On desktop, webkit is also fine, they need marketshare there. Anything that isn't Chromium.)

I still don't understand the "fight the monopoly" argument. Should I use Windows Server or FreeBSD to fight the "Linux dominance" monopoly?

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#76

Post by jonfw »

asveikau wrote: post #69
rched wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand why it might seem that way but it is actually evolving very quickly. Probably faster than any other time in history. There are a few things driving this evolution but I think the most important one is a desire to make the web a competitive platform for most types of software. This means lower level APIs, deeper integration with OS, and yes a large focus on performance. 3D graphics, offline support, p…

There are a small number of people pushing that, but where is the adoption, and is the web at large really inaccesible without it? One example, I see a lot of websites offering to send me push notifications, and I always click no. A browser could not implement that feature and I would not notice, in fact it would be an improvement in experience.

What industry are you in that people aren't adopting web apps? At my work we use a ton of web-apps. Chrome-books offer nothing but web apps and they're doing pretty well these days.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#77

Post by Wowfunhappy »

tapoxi wrote: post #75
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those actually usable as a primary/only browser in 2020? Unfortunately, I think the best way to fight the monopoly at this point is to use Firefox. As bad as 2½ browsers is, I'd much rather have 2½ than 1½. (On desktop, webkit is also fine, they need marketshare there. Anything that isn't Chromium.)

I still don't understand the "fight the monopoly" argument. Should I use Windows Server or FreeBSD to fight the "Linux dominance" monopoly?

The problem is that, the web isn't really an open standard if there's only one implementation of the standard. The standard just becomes "whatever works in Chromium".

It also gives Google the power to unilaterally add or remove anything from the standard as they think will benefit Google. Sure, Microsoft or Brave could choose not to go along with the change, but Microsoft doesn't want to spend resources maintaining a fork, so they're much more likely go go along with whatever Google does.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#78

Post by birdyrooster »

snapetom wrote: post #36
arkanciscan wrote: post #7

I used to use this in college before I switched to Camino!

Oh my God, I loved Camino so much! The browser scene for the Mac in the early Aught's was such a mess. Netscape was bloated, slow as hell, and wasn't keeping up with standards. IE was great, but you were always suspicious of MS's agenda. Safari was still a bit rough and lacked a lot of features. Camino was snappy, clean, and had very good standards compliance. Such a great little browser!

IE 5 is all you will ever need

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#79

Post by asveikau »

jonfw wrote: post #76
asveikau wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a small number of people pushing that, but where is the adoption, and is the web at large really inaccesible without it? One example, I see a lot of websites offering to send me push notifications, and I always click no. A browser could not implement that feature and I would not notice, in fact it would be an improvement in experience.

What industry are you in that people aren't adopting web apps? At my work we use a ton of web-apps. Chrome-books offer nothing but web apps and they're doing pretty well these days.

OK, sure. My point is: how many of them hard-depend (no graceful failover) on APIs introduced in the last 5 years though? You could build a pretty good web app 5 years ago, and many people did. Has the fundamental abstraction changed that much? I'm extremely skeptical of the claim.

If somebody does depend on something obscure like javascript APIs for bluetooth [like someone in this thread cited], are they doing that as a desktop app with chromium embedded or are they a more traditional webpage? Does it completely fall over and explode if you don't have bluetooth support in the browser? That would be pretty unreasonable for most developers.

What I'm saying is there is a difference between the bleeding edge stuff or things that push boundaries and common practice. And if you are coding against that other stuff, you also need a fallback for if it doesn't work.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#80

Post by neurostimulant »

superdisk wrote: post #8
captn3m0 wrote: post #3

Apparently it switched to Webkit a while back.

Why does this keep happening? Browsers sell their soul to just be another coat of paint on top of WebKit. I honestly don't get it. If you're working on a web browser as a personal or open source project, switching to WebKit is basically just replacing the entire project that you've worked on, and then writing your name on WebKit. There's not much more to a browser than a rendering engine. There really isn't a killer…

Is it really possible for a single developer to maintain feature parity with Chrome and Firefox (or even webkit)? If you're a single developer maintaining your own browser, you must choose between maintaining your own incomplete engine that lacks many html5 features the users want, or adopt blink/webkit/gecko and instantly gain feature parity with mainstream browsers.
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