Seems pretty cool, but I wonder at the claim that it will use less battery power. From the specs, it is built on Electron, and from my understanding to date, even the basic Electron framework shell is fairly resource hungry in its own right, which could impact power usage on a laptop?
Perhaps it could have been a better initiative to build it using native code and utilising WebKit as the rendering engine? Much like the Vivaldi browser (which I use a lot of these days)
I wouldn't think that the browser part of Electron is significantly slower than Chromium, which it's built on. From what I remember, the Node part of Electron runs in a separate process.
It's not like they're trying to cram in a music player or IDE in to an Electron app. This is a browser so I wouldn't expect the load to be substantially worse than running Chrome.
Ignoring the general 'Electron seems a waste of resources' (with which I partially agree with) comments: Requires 'Ubuntu' or 'macOS'? I seem to know a lot of Electron based apps that run on other Linux distributions or - gasp - even Windows.
Clicking on the 'Download anyway' link brings up the GitHub release tab. With, among others, a file called 'Min-v1.6.3-win32-x64.zip'.
That ignores the "We target one random Linux distribution" thing and kinda doesn't address the point that Electron is cross-platform already. I would expect an Electron app to work where Electron works, but admit that I haven't targeted it. Any input on why that might not be the case would be appreciated.
and is so flat that it doesn't offer any directional hinting at all.
These featureless, "wide expanse of pure white" UIs are one of the things that most irritates me about "modern" software today. They give the impression of being unfinished and opaque.
That site looks pretty awful to me, while I can clearly make out the buttons from other elements it looks like a old stock Drupal theme or something along those lines.
To be fair, Brave uses Muon, which is not really electron[1].
Muon is similar to Electron, in that it uses Chromium, but different as in, it's really pretty much Chrome[ium], not some hacked together fork, avoiding branches like 'upgrade-to-chrome-61' [2]. It also puts back in the security features from Chromium (ie, the Sandboxes[6]) and allows for Chrom(e|ium) extensions to run inside Muon directly.
The Brave team have been working[3] pretty hard to re-unify Chrome[ium] into Electron.
You could make the case that the UI is written in Javascript for Brave, but then again[4], Chrome calls Javascript code when you open a new tab[5], and renders out the New Tab content as HTML, so, what's the diff?...
Aside from fuzzy search, all of this is already possible.
> Effortless tab management
All the things in here are already possible in firefox using addons.
> Built-in ad blocking
I honestly don't care if ad-blocking is built in. It's not like it's a chore that affects my day-to-day use of a browser to install an addon once for adblocking.
> Fast and efficient
It literally uses the same engine as chrome so it won't be any different from it.
It seems like this comment is a little understated. Maybe the commenter could think more about how to catch the attention if the persons he/she wishes to target. /s
Why shouldn't they be? If scoped correctly to the resources of the maintainers there is no reason that open source software can't be just as good as "big-bucks closed software".
Yes, this means more focused product, that doesn't do ALL THE THINGS!!! but does a few things really well. That type of software is exactly why I use the Mac. There's a ton of indy developers out there making absolutely kick-ass focused software for it, and they do so on incredibly tight budgets. There's no reason OS software can't or shouldn't be held to high standards.
There's literally no reason the quality of the core functionality of any project can't be as good. In fact it's probably easier for an open source dev to guarantee high quality stuff if they only get off their asses and write tests. This is their passion project after all. They _should_ care about the quality of the code more because it's their baby, not just a paycheck.
Most of the open source projects out there have crap UI & UX but it's not like it's terribly hard for a geek to find a friend with decent UI skills (UX is a bit harder) and ask them to mock some stuff up for them, and then implement it. Or you know, use the $$ programmers get paid (relative to most everyone else) to hire a professional to design it.
Note: to be clear, there are many OS things out there that are just some quickie tool someone threw together and are being kind enough to share. I've got a pile of these and I have NO problem with stuff like that being somewhat rough. There's a difference between quick and dirty scripts and things that are trying come across as, and be treated as a polished product.
They're mostly reacting to the title, because that's all that most HN comments react to. This is a much stronger effect than I think people realize.
Had the title said "Min, a first attempt at a minimal browser that we hope might have some value someday, perhaps you could take a look", commenters would bend over backwards to find nice things to say, because that would be the only way to contradict the title.
Actually the nice comments mostly come up for the same reason as the harsh ones—contradicting what someone else said. First the harsh comments contradict the title and then the nice comments contradict the harsh ones. Contradictions R us.
For example, a popular German radio moderator and podcaster once said:
"If I want to learn something about a topic, and ask a question on air, almost nobody answers. But if instead I make a false (or naive) claim about that topic, I receive lots of replies correcting me, and might even get an interview with an actual expert on that topic."
You're right about most generalizations about HN; I've noticed they're either false or "too true", as in they apply to much larger sets and therefore say little about HN specifically.
Yeah, it's all about framing. Subconsciously, I want titles and comments to reflect the world as I see it. I'll comment if I feel that the title is overly generous, or overly critical.
Who are you to judge what belongs in a raw browser? What belongs in a browser is simply what the developers want. A "raw" browser as you say, would just be the HTML and JS engine? No need for any navigation!
But at least the smart part may be of merit.
And we all know what HN thinks of electron, but at least bundling chrome with a browser seems reasonable.
Not for a minimalistic browser though, I think hence the branding as "a smarter browser".
Oh boy, I actually set out to defend the project, but now I realize while there's clearly been some work put into it, some areas haven't been thought out too well...
At least it looks nice and clean, that's something.
I wasn't implying that 'right click == bloat', only that there are two meanings for "minimal": a minimal amount of code, or a minimal UI.
surf doesn't have a minimal amount of code, since it wraps WebKit; although it seems to have a minimal UI. My point about right-click, etc. is that much of the (GTK?) WebKit UI might still be lurking there.
I agree that dillo is really nice. Not minimal in the UI sense though (tabs, toolbar, search box, etc.)
so its basically chrome-headless with a different UI and 20% slower because it is running via an interpreted nodejs rendering that is then compiled into a binary. why not just use chrome? If you're going to use an existing browser, why not use Dillo or Lynx as the backend, which really are minimalist in terms of memory usage.
I tried this a while back, and the only thing I liked better than the mainstream browsers was that it doesn't waste space at the top of the browser and thus would theoretically be a good fit for e.g. watching something in a small window in the corner of your screen while doing work. But in practice, there is some crazy minimum window size limitation and thus it's useless for the only use case I would have for it.
I think there is a dissonance between smart personalized suggestion and being against tracking.
Which is the main downfall of DuckDuckGo they use as the smart bar search engine.
If you want good suggestions and smart personalization you need to track your user.
If you don't want to track your user for privacy concern, it's all good but then don't give user a product like suggestions that will always be subpar compared to someone else that is for user tracking.
I think it's very telling that you don't consider what the user might want.
As a user I don't want to be tracked, but I want suggestions, and I'm willing to give up a little accuracy. Example: on DuckDuckGo, if I search for "int ball", it includes results for "int-ball". It doesn't need to know anything about me personally to do this.
Just so I don’t get this comment killed, here’s some text calmly explaining that electron is based off blink, and implementing a browser in it is like using a text editor’s scripting feature to reimplement the cursor.
More like using the cursor to reimplement the UI. Like... vim and a million other editors?
Firefox has been switching from their custom markup (XUL) to HTML for its UI, and you’ll find that the web inspector in Chrome, Safari and Firefox are already implemented in HTML/CSS/JS (don’t know about Edge).
Isn’t Vivaldi basically that as well? If you do not care about the rendering (as in, making a new engine isn’t your purpose). Then electron seems like a good way of developing a browser.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadPerhaps it could have been a better initiative to build it using native code and utilising WebKit as the rendering engine? Much like the Vivaldi browser (which I use a lot of these days)
Clicking on the 'Download anyway' link brings up the GitHub release tab. With, among others, a file called 'Min-v1.6.3-win32-x64.zip'.
* Lack of a windows machine to test on
* Forgetting to update the site when a Windows build became available.
"If it compiles, it is good; if it boots up, it is perfect"? Just because the build has a Windows target doesn't mean it's a supported platform.
Having it only Ubuntu/macOS seems counter-intuitive.
- The UI seems clumsy and is so flat that it doesn't offer any directional hinting at all.
- It's the same size as Firefox (160MB) despite offering significantly less features.
- It's resource consumption seems to be about 25% more than a fresh Firefox instance.
These featureless, "wide expanse of pure white" UIs are one of the things that most irritates me about "modern" software today. They give the impression of being unfinished and opaque.
Part of that is because of Electron.
From the day Electron was released, I knew somebody will build a Web Browser upon it. Now that day finally came, again. LOL
Muon is similar to Electron, in that it uses Chromium, but different as in, it's really pretty much Chrome[ium], not some hacked together fork, avoiding branches like 'upgrade-to-chrome-61' [2]. It also puts back in the security features from Chromium (ie, the Sandboxes[6]) and allows for Chrom(e|ium) extensions to run inside Muon directly.
The Brave team have been working[3] pretty hard to re-unify Chrome[ium] into Electron.
You could make the case that the UI is written in Javascript for Brave, but then again[4], Chrome calls Javascript code when you open a new tab[5], and renders out the New Tab content as HTML, so, what's the diff?...
1: https://github.com/brave/muon
2: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/10213
3: https://github.com/brave/muon/commit/5e32814490ae33eee08589e...
4: https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab
5: https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab-serviceworker.js
6: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/brag-sheet
Aside from fuzzy search, all of this is already possible.
> Effortless tab management
All the things in here are already possible in firefox using addons.
> Built-in ad blocking
I honestly don't care if ad-blocking is built in. It's not like it's a chore that affects my day-to-day use of a browser to install an addon once for adblocking.
> Fast and efficient
It literally uses the same engine as chrome so it won't be any different from it.
> Open-Source software
Like most other browsers today
What's your point? It's just as good as any other browser
The only pull it has... is that it might be adequate.
Yes, this means more focused product, that doesn't do ALL THE THINGS!!! but does a few things really well. That type of software is exactly why I use the Mac. There's a ton of indy developers out there making absolutely kick-ass focused software for it, and they do so on incredibly tight budgets. There's no reason OS software can't or shouldn't be held to high standards.
There's literally no reason the quality of the core functionality of any project can't be as good. In fact it's probably easier for an open source dev to guarantee high quality stuff if they only get off their asses and write tests. This is their passion project after all. They _should_ care about the quality of the code more because it's their baby, not just a paycheck.
Most of the open source projects out there have crap UI & UX but it's not like it's terribly hard for a geek to find a friend with decent UI skills (UX is a bit harder) and ask them to mock some stuff up for them, and then implement it. Or you know, use the $$ programmers get paid (relative to most everyone else) to hire a professional to design it.
Note: to be clear, there are many OS things out there that are just some quickie tool someone threw together and are being kind enough to share. I've got a pile of these and I have NO problem with stuff like that being somewhat rough. There's a difference between quick and dirty scripts and things that are trying come across as, and be treated as a polished product.
Had the title said "Min, a first attempt at a minimal browser that we hope might have some value someday, perhaps you could take a look", commenters would bend over backwards to find nice things to say, because that would be the only way to contradict the title.
Actually the nice comments mostly come up for the same reason as the harsh ones—contradicting what someone else said. First the harsh comments contradict the title and then the nice comments contradict the harsh ones. Contradictions R us.
Edit: I started calling this the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
For example, a popular German radio moderator and podcaster once said:
"If I want to learn something about a topic, and ask a question on air, almost nobody answers. But if instead I make a false (or naive) claim about that topic, I receive lots of replies correcting me, and might even get an interview with an actual expert on that topic."
[Holger Klein, paraphrased, rough translation]
You're right about most generalizations about HN; I've noticed they're either false or "too true", as in they apply to much larger sets and therefore say little about HN specifically.
Find anything instantly -> Chrome does this already.
Effortless tab management -> Someone's favorite plugin gone native, I don't need or want this. Does CERTAINLY not belong in a raw browser.
Built-in ad blocking -> A very little bit useful. Does not belong in a raw browser though.
Fast and efficient -> Dubious claim. How did you measure it?
Open-Source software -> I don't care.
It sounded reasonably nice (beyond the point that Firefox is all this with a few addons), but Electron? Again?
Should stick with its original goal. I think they created it as a "minimal" browser, hence the name.
https://surf.suckless.org/
But at least the smart part may be of merit. And we all know what HN thinks of electron, but at least bundling chrome with a browser seems reasonable. Not for a minimalistic browser though, I think hence the branding as "a smarter browser".
Oh boy, I actually set out to defend the project, but now I realize while there's clearly been some work put into it, some areas haven't been thought out too well...
At least it looks nice and clean, that's something.
edit: corrected my wording in the first sentence.
> https://surf.suckless.org
Minimal UI maybe (or maybe not; is there still a truckload of stuff when right-clicking, or pressing hotkeys, or visiting `about:something`?)
I'd say lynx, w3m, links, dillo, netsurf, etc. are all more minimal in general.
Links has right click, even Netsurf has that.
About general minimalism, dillo is perfect.
For cli, w3m and links are NOT minimal. That is netrik.
I wasn't implying that 'right click == bloat', only that there are two meanings for "minimal": a minimal amount of code, or a minimal UI.
surf doesn't have a minimal amount of code, since it wraps WebKit; although it seems to have a minimal UI. My point about right-click, etc. is that much of the (GTK?) WebKit UI might still be lurking there.
I agree that dillo is really nice. Not minimal in the UI sense though (tabs, toolbar, search box, etc.)
――――――
¹ — https://qutebrowser.org/
As a user, that would make me nervous at least.
That's Min.
I really don't want that!
Which is the main downfall of DuckDuckGo they use as the smart bar search engine.
If you want good suggestions and smart personalization you need to track your user.
If you don't want to track your user for privacy concern, it's all good but then don't give user a product like suggestions that will always be subpar compared to someone else that is for user tracking.
As a user I don't want to be tracked, but I want suggestions, and I'm willing to give up a little accuracy. Example: on DuckDuckGo, if I search for "int ball", it includes results for "int-ball". It doesn't need to know anything about me personally to do this.
EDIT: It also claims less battery consumption. May I ask some proof?
Just so I don’t get this comment killed, here’s some text calmly explaining that electron is based off blink, and implementing a browser in it is like using a text editor’s scripting feature to reimplement the cursor.
Firefox has been switching from their custom markup (XUL) to HTML for its UI, and you’ll find that the web inspector in Chrome, Safari and Firefox are already implemented in HTML/CSS/JS (don’t know about Edge).
The difference from chromium is that the browser ui is implemented using the web tech, instead of native, which is not unusual either.
Firefox have been using slightly modified version of html and javascript to implement the browser ui forever.
Vivaldi and brave browsers use the same method as well.
Thanks very much for the implementation idea and the source. I'm certainly gonna play with both the product and the code.