Hello, I’m Cameron and one of the two people working on the Bonsai web browser.
We’re focused on making a web browser for programmers to improve their workflow. It helps you look up docs and search information. You can toggle it on with a hotkey and it can overlay on your IDE. Tabs are grouped by domain for easy organization. The history data structure is a tree which shows how pages are back-linked to each other and to spatial workspaces. Both open tabs and pages in your workspaces are just pointers to a node in your history tree!
Initially we wanted to make a citation manager because myself and a friend had an unconnected workflow moving research articles from Chrome -> Zotero -> Emacs org-mode. After talking to some other PhDs/postdocs the takeaway was that everyone has very different ways of doing research. This would mean that it would be impossible to make a citation manager that everyone would want to use.
Later, a friend in industry mentioned that he had a hard time finding ‘cloud documents’ as part of his job. We then considered making a spotlight application to find and organize these documents. It turns out that this already been done and it seems that people actually just pull up their documents once at the beginning of the day anyway.
We now think that the main problem is that web browsers are actually not currently suited for doing research. The current mixing of research type browsing with web-documents creates a mess and makes people think they want a ‘cloud file search’.
What’s different?
Instead of an add-on solution to Chrome which would create more noise, we are creating a fully functioning, organized way of managing information overload and keeping you on task as you go through your work day.
What’s next?
We are fixing up our Linux and Windows versions for public use.
Some of these features look awesome and I can see how much thought went into them. The hotkey toggle looks like a viable alternative to splitting the screen with a console and pop out mode seems similar to how Firefox allows videos to be overlaid on other pages. I'll be honest, I don't really see the utility of some features like workspaces or the tree history, but then again I initially rolled my eyes at Gmail's pop out compose and clearly they knew what I wanted better than I did!
I have a few questions:
1. Did you code the engine from scratch, or is it based on Chromium or Gecko or something?
2. What's your sustainability, e.g., monetization, plan for the browser?
3. Do you have any estimate on how long until I can `apt install bonsai-browser` from an official distro repository?
We’re using Electron with all the UI done with HTML. The criticism against Electron is that you don’t need to bundle a fully functional web browser to distribute a your app but distributing a fully functional web browser is one of our goals! The other options were using CEF or actually recompiling Chromium. To have a sensible workflow with Chromium you would want to hook into it with a scripting language so you can develop the chrome [0] without recompiling. Electron already has done this with the BrowserView API accessible with javascript! We’ve already run into limitations of the Electron framework so we will be considering extending it or doing our own thing when it makes sense.
> What's your sustainability…
I really like the JetBrains perpetual fallback license so something like that at a price point of $50 makes sense. If we can provide some useful paid services that run on a server then we could make the browser free.
> Do you have any estimate on how long…
I’ll look into it! If it’s no harder than signing/notarizing the app for macOS distribution then the main work to be done is fix some bugs and make sure the windows play nicely with the host OS. This could be done in less than a month from now!
The whole concept of this browser is really great. It would solve a lot of my problems regarding where to properly store topics I'm doing research on (since I'm a student and knowledge junkie I tend to just dig for 10-15 resources and never get to reading them)
My main question is what's your businesses model? You monetization plan?
Thanks! Our plan right now is to do a perpetual fallback license for $50 when we can prove the browser is something people want. We could make the browser free later on if we can provide paid features that require us to run servers.
I'd buy a browser if it guarantees me privacy, is fast, and does the job. I use a browser every day for multiple hours per day, $50 seems very reasonable.
Some simple constructive criticism: I think you should find a more pleasing and modern color palette. The green and orange you’re using are, to my eye, quite ugly and distracting. A better color system will go a long way aesthetically and will make the site and UI feel more inviting.
[edit: typo]
I really like the tab view by domain. Seems like it could be handy to even display pages on the domain from history in those columns, sorted by most recently visited. Maybe also grayed out a little or under a "history" section
Looks really cool and I'd love to give it a shot! Is this intended to be open source? It looks like the associated repo [0] only has a README and some releases with the Mac installers in the assets.
I'm using that repo to distribute the app since it works well with our CI. We could make the browser open source if we can find some paid services to run on a server and more importantly there is a potential community that is interested in its development.
For many of us switching to a closed browser in 2021 is a difficult proposition because of the security, trust and longevity issues. The value trade-off would have to be pretty extreme to even consider it.
Have you tried KDE? It has tiling shortcuts (not enabled by default) and an always-on-top feature for windows.
Also, I once set up KDE 4 to put different apps into tabs of a single window. I'm not sure if KDE 5 can still do that, but it sounds like something that you would be interested in.
You're going to love KDE 5, if your last experience with KDE was back in the early 4 days when it was a memory and CPU hog. Today I don't even notice it at all. Just be sure to disable the File Search feature in System Settings. And it really is called File Search now, not some cryptic name that changed every other version.
Hey Cameron. Here's another vote for PDF. With regards to additional applications I can strongly recommend adding as a first-class use case electronics design where summoning, displaying, comparing and extracting data from electronic parts datasheets is a huge part of workflow. Specific parts of these documents are typically the focus - eg. schematics, physical package drawings, tables. Adding a local (non-cloud) feature to auto-identify or quick scroll-through those to show them larger without manual zoom/repositioning as per current PDF viewer workflows would win many loyal users and should be feasible to build based upon open source OCR layout analysis engines such as tesseract. You may also consider for UI/UX purposes creating either voice input datasheet <MPN> and/or a popup search box with bangs: !datasheet <MPN>, !diagram <MPN>...
Bonsai browser looks great! Especially Spatial Organization.
Is it possible to have nested subfolders?
This could be for browsers (tabs in [project] in [work]). Also in spreadsheets (Excel Sheets inside folders - anyone from Microsoft here?). Also in music (iTunes has playlist folders!). Also in Contacts (people in [social group] in [country]).
The way I imagine the user interface is similar to existing tabs or bookmarks, but with a drop-down menu, and to be able to easily access all sub-items by clicking the folder.
If you have awesomewm you can already build things like this
Albeit with a bit of scripting
I combined the floating mode with the tiling mode to make one window draggable and shrinkable.
Let me know what tilingwm you use (just comment i’ll check later) ,
I’ll try to find a tutorial to help with it.
You can already do this with firefox and chrome , just need a bit of scripting
Lots of great stuff in here! Tried it out for a spin and it's very snappy, and I love all the mgmt features!
Two quick things:
1. I don't think there's gesture support for the mac touchpad or a ton of keybindings. Adding those would be great b/c I try to avoid the mouse :) and it's easier on Chrome for the moment.
2. Do you guys have some kind of social presence we can follow to track your progress ? Could def see myself buying this in the future. EDIT: Checked out your site again and saw your discord.
This is fantastic. Seconding the comment that this isn't only for developers—optimizing all user experiences for ease of use has become an antipattern and what's needed is UX that optimizes for preserving the user's brainspace.
I was sceptical from the article title, but was immediately sold on the idea when I saw it in action.
A good sign to me is that you have solved problems I didn’t realise I had. I like the floating window concept - can definitely see how that would be useful for having documentation front and centre while working on something. The spatial organisation thing is very nice too.
Looks like it’s early days still for the project but I think you’re onto something. Good luck with it!
The big thing I'm missing most is LastPass. Without access to my passwords, I can see myself falling back to Chrome. In fact, I need to keep Chrome running so I can look up my login names and passwords there in order to copy them over to Bonsai when I'm being asked to log in. If you could support popular password managers inside your browser, that would help a lot!
You assume most people have the patience to copy paste passwords from Bitwarden rather than the ease of Lastpass - just doesn't work for 99% of the population.
I don't know about Keywarden, but KeePass just uses a global hotkey that can be used to type in your password in a context-dependent fashion (figures out the relevant password from the page you're on). No browser integration required, yet no UX hit. (Edit: But I have no idea if its "figure out what page you're on" functionality would work with Bonsai.)
A password manager integrated with a browser can offer more security, because it can verify the domain to prevent copy-pasting the password into a phishing site.
Having your password manager tied to your browser is more secure because the saved password doesn't show up unless you're in the correct domain, preventing phishing attacks.
I’d love for a web browser to have first-class integration with a universal personal search system like Monocle [0]. I find if I want to learn something new I am searching externally, but if I am attempting to recall something, being able to search through all my indexed notes in the same interface I’m building, researching, and planning in has potential.
I didn't think much of the Bonsai Browser when I saw that it was MAC only. I decided to check out the comments anyway, and I'm glad I did. The Monocle personal search engine that you referenced looks like an exceptionally useful tool, and I will definitely give it a try.
Yes, I did notice the comment about a Windows and Linux version coming. I'll check out the Bonsai Browser when the Linux version is available. I suggest that the developers post on HN again to announce when the other versions are available.
Really cool idea, looking forward to trying it out! My only complaint is that the default hotkey is the same as Alfred -- Is there any way to customize it?
This looks really great, something I could use and would pay for when polished but there's definitely a few issues for me at the moment:
* Why go fullscreen and modal? I want to drag in links from docs, email, other browsers, have it side by side while reading PDFs etc. etc. this stops me from doing any of that
* Please let me change the shortcut! I already have Option-Space bound.
* Let me put the browser window anywhere I want when it's in the single page non-fullscreen mode, don't levitate it to where you think I want it
* Unless I'm missing something the process of opening a page then adding it to a workspace seems to be three clicks - open page, hit + (plus) button, select workspace, select workspace/inbox - need to make this one click, maybe just show the inboxes? This also seems clunky, I'd much rather browse, drag that page to the workspace/inbox, continue browsing and adding further pages, then arrange all the pages in the workspace after i've added all the links. Seems a faster workflow.
I agree with everything, except that this is something that can be polished into sth. usable. After trying Bonsai, I think it's a promising proof of concept that demonstrates what should now be implemented properly. A ‘quick’ hack on top of Electron is just really slow and clunky compared to a ‘real’ browser.
I know this is asking a lot, but as an end user with an unlimited budget for big dreams, I'd like to see something like this as a fork of Firefox that eventually gets enough of its changes upstreamed so it can become just an extension for the browser I'm already running anyway.
Anyway, a little addendum:
> Why go fullscreen and modal?
And for when I want it full-screen and modal, at least do it right, please. E.g. it shows up in the cmd-tab task switcher, but that can't actually be used to switch to Bonsai, nor away from it (!!). And, again, it's too slow. (What's with the dramatic fade-out animation?)
Btw., you can drag a link on top of it (at least when option-space doesn't do something else already ;) and the cursor changes to identify a valid drop target, but when you drop, nothing happens.
One of the things that I found interesting was that as you become more expert in a field you take less notes. At the start of your PhD everything is new but by the end you know the name and research group of everyone in your field.
What does not go away is the need for a flexible and low friction way to collect and organize things like journal articles. Some sort of mental ontology about your field replaces the need for actually writing lots of stuff day to day.
Could you mention what? As they said, the shortcut to bring to front is OS configuration and spatial organization is in tab groups addons (though without arbitrary spatial locations), and the fuzzy find seems similar to what Vimium provides. I'm open to the idea that there's value in grouping such features together - but unless I'm missing some other feature, this seems much better implemented (and has a better chance to be long term supported) as a Firefox profile with those addons installed and perhaps a tiny program to capture the shortcut and execute that Firefox profile.
Very compelling demo. I like how this is basically a tool for grouping, labeling, and connecting webpages - it feels like it gets at the heart of 'the web', (or at least the part a lot of us interact with forums), a big connected graph that we have to manage in this disconnected tabular manner due to browser UX.
This looks like one of the many grouping-addons that firefox has, just a better look. It doesn't seem to say anything at all about the actual features besides those three animations? Or is my adblocker just removing something important?
Anyway, as someone who has used all kind of flavors of grouping in firefox (and still is using it with tree style tabs now), I can say that grouping is nice, but on the long run not nice enough. It helps to organize your mess, but the lack of effortless integration into something outside your browser is a real problem for serious work.
Maybe MacOS can offer some ways there, I remember in the past they had good options via applescript.
Just a suggestion - I tried to look this up in HN search (there is an unrelated YC company, Bonsai, that I thought this was connected to) and didn't get a hit as the title doesn't include the name of the project - so please consider including it next time. I love the direction you're going here!
I’m impressed. I could see using this browser in addition to keeping FF as my main daily driver.
I would use it specifically for programming or my security engineering work. Do y’all envision the product being used to fill this specific research niche? Or do you intend to create a browser to replace chrome/ff/safari?
233 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 330 ms ] threadWe’re focused on making a web browser for programmers to improve their workflow. It helps you look up docs and search information. You can toggle it on with a hotkey and it can overlay on your IDE. Tabs are grouped by domain for easy organization. The history data structure is a tree which shows how pages are back-linked to each other and to spatial workspaces. Both open tabs and pages in your workspaces are just pointers to a node in your history tree!
You can watch a 2 minute video walkthrough here https://www.loom.com/share/93c7c0012f514c37b58a42fa65badc88 or download it from our website
How did we end up here?
Initially we wanted to make a citation manager because myself and a friend had an unconnected workflow moving research articles from Chrome -> Zotero -> Emacs org-mode. After talking to some other PhDs/postdocs the takeaway was that everyone has very different ways of doing research. This would mean that it would be impossible to make a citation manager that everyone would want to use.
Later, a friend in industry mentioned that he had a hard time finding ‘cloud documents’ as part of his job. We then considered making a spotlight application to find and organize these documents. It turns out that this already been done and it seems that people actually just pull up their documents once at the beginning of the day anyway.
We now think that the main problem is that web browsers are actually not currently suited for doing research. The current mixing of research type browsing with web-documents creates a mess and makes people think they want a ‘cloud file search’.
What’s different?
Instead of an add-on solution to Chrome which would create more noise, we are creating a fully functioning, organized way of managing information overload and keeping you on task as you go through your work day.
What’s next?
We are fixing up our Linux and Windows versions for public use.
I have a few questions:
1. Did you code the engine from scratch, or is it based on Chromium or Gecko or something?
2. What's your sustainability, e.g., monetization, plan for the browser?
3. Do you have any estimate on how long until I can `apt install bonsai-browser` from an official distro repository?
> Did you code the engine from scratch…
We’re using Electron with all the UI done with HTML. The criticism against Electron is that you don’t need to bundle a fully functional web browser to distribute a your app but distributing a fully functional web browser is one of our goals! The other options were using CEF or actually recompiling Chromium. To have a sensible workflow with Chromium you would want to hook into it with a scripting language so you can develop the chrome [0] without recompiling. Electron already has done this with the BrowserView API accessible with javascript! We’ve already run into limitations of the Electron framework so we will be considering extending it or doing our own thing when it makes sense.
> What's your sustainability…
I really like the JetBrains perpetual fallback license so something like that at a price point of $50 makes sense. If we can provide some useful paid services that run on a server then we could make the browser free.
> Do you have any estimate on how long…
I’ll look into it! If it’s no harder than signing/notarizing the app for macOS distribution then the main work to be done is fix some bugs and make sure the windows play nicely with the host OS. This could be done in less than a month from now!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_...
My main question is what's your businesses model? You monetization plan?
prove the browser is something people want for free
Link: https://www.mightyapp.com/
Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215
The rest of the UI looks really nice from the screenshots but the blocks of colours stood out to me too.
[0] https://github.com/hyferg/bonsai-browser-public
Also, I once set up KDE 4 to put different apps into tabs of a single window. I'm not sure if KDE 5 can still do that, but it sounds like something that you would be interested in.
Is it possible to have nested subfolders?
This could be for browsers (tabs in [project] in [work]). Also in spreadsheets (Excel Sheets inside folders - anyone from Microsoft here?). Also in music (iTunes has playlist folders!). Also in Contacts (people in [social group] in [country]).
The way I imagine the user interface is similar to existing tabs or bookmarks, but with a drop-down menu, and to be able to easily access all sub-items by clicking the folder.
Let me know what tilingwm you use (just comment i’ll check later) , I’ll try to find a tutorial to help with it.
You can already do this with firefox and chrome , just need a bit of scripting
Two quick things:
1. I don't think there's gesture support for the mac touchpad or a ton of keybindings. Adding those would be great b/c I try to avoid the mouse :) and it's easier on Chrome for the moment.
2. Do you guys have some kind of social presence we can follow to track your progress ? Could def see myself buying this in the future. EDIT: Checked out your site again and saw your discord.
I was sceptical from the article title, but was immediately sold on the idea when I saw it in action.
A good sign to me is that you have solved problems I didn’t realise I had. I like the floating window concept - can definitely see how that would be useful for having documentation front and centre while working on something. The spatial organisation thing is very nice too.
Looks like it’s early days still for the project but I think you’re onto something. Good luck with it!
The big thing I'm missing most is LastPass. Without access to my passwords, I can see myself falling back to Chrome. In fact, I need to keep Chrome running so I can look up my login names and passwords there in order to copy them over to Bonsai when I'm being asked to log in. If you could support popular password managers inside your browser, that would help a lot!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/lastpass-for-windows-deskt...
Tavis Ormandy: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/passmgrs.html
An authority on the topic suggests users avoid using browser extensions with their password managers:
https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/passmgrs.html
[0] https://github.com/thesephist/monocle
You’ve got me thinking…
Yes, I did notice the comment about a Windows and Linux version coming. I'll check out the Bonsai Browser when the Linux version is available. I suggest that the developers post on HN again to announce when the other versions are available.
- it would be nice to not have to use Google for search.
* Why go fullscreen and modal? I want to drag in links from docs, email, other browsers, have it side by side while reading PDFs etc. etc. this stops me from doing any of that
* Please let me change the shortcut! I already have Option-Space bound.
* Let me put the browser window anywhere I want when it's in the single page non-fullscreen mode, don't levitate it to where you think I want it
* Unless I'm missing something the process of opening a page then adding it to a workspace seems to be three clicks - open page, hit + (plus) button, select workspace, select workspace/inbox - need to make this one click, maybe just show the inboxes? This also seems clunky, I'd much rather browse, drag that page to the workspace/inbox, continue browsing and adding further pages, then arrange all the pages in the workspace after i've added all the links. Seems a faster workflow.
I know this is asking a lot, but as an end user with an unlimited budget for big dreams, I'd like to see something like this as a fork of Firefox that eventually gets enough of its changes upstreamed so it can become just an extension for the browser I'm already running anyway.
Anyway, a little addendum:
> Why go fullscreen and modal?
And for when I want it full-screen and modal, at least do it right, please. E.g. it shows up in the cmd-tab task switcher, but that can't actually be used to switch to Bonsai, nor away from it (!!). And, again, it's too slow. (What's with the dramatic fade-out animation?)
Btw., you can drag a link on top of it (at least when option-space doesn't do something else already ;) and the cursor changes to identify a valid drop target, but when you drop, nothing happens.
Love the concept and from the demo it looks well executed, defintely will try when I hop on a mac.
What does not go away is the need for a flexible and low friction way to collect and organize things like journal articles. Some sort of mental ontology about your field replaces the need for actually writing lots of stuff day to day.
Why an entirely new browser?
If you want something more polish, a firefox add on or some OS service would be less work and benefit from the ecosystem.
Or is it a case of FTP vs Dropbox and I'm nerding out?
Curious to see more in the future.
Anyway, as someone who has used all kind of flavors of grouping in firefox (and still is using it with tree style tabs now), I can say that grouping is nice, but on the long run not nice enough. It helps to organize your mess, but the lack of effortless integration into something outside your browser is a real problem for serious work.
Maybe MacOS can offer some ways there, I remember in the past they had good options via applescript.
I would use it specifically for programming or my security engineering work. Do y’all envision the product being used to fill this specific research niche? Or do you intend to create a browser to replace chrome/ff/safari?