Show HN: Composable (as in iGoogle, but modern) privacy-friendly new tab (anori.app)
I spent quite a lot of time working on this one over the last 1.5 years. It started as a small project for my personal use because I wanted to keep all my self-hosted services visible so I wouldn't forget they existed lol. Using a web page wasn't ideal because of the white flicker every time I opened a new tab, so I decided to make this into a browser extension. From that time on, it became a lot bigger and got some traction (which I'm very happy about).
It's made with React, but I tried to squeeze maximum performance (limited by my skills and desire to keep it somewhat readable, though) out of it. UI/UX was a big priority for me in this project, so I also tried to streamline it as much as possible and make Anori a joy to use. If you decide to try it, let me know how good I did!
Oh, and it's open source [1] and the process of adding new widgets is documented [2], so you can make your own!
[1]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori
[2]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT_AN...
42 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 92.6 ms ] threadThough replace "Google" with "mainstream search engines" and you are closer to my actual thought.
I've immediately noted a white flicker when opening a new tab though. This is unfortunately a big issue for me.
- Display the widget type somewhere, maybe in the Edit Widget modal title
- The ability to adjust/disable the grid snapping would be cool
- Some simple color themes alongside the pictures
> Some simple color themes alongside the pictures
You can create a custom theme and upload solid color picture as background.
[1]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori/issues
Also a good list of alternatives when iGoogle was shut down in 2013, https://www.computerworld.com/article/1521275/there-s-no-pla...
There was similar product from Google 15 years ago which allowed to create personalized start page with different widgets, but it was closed long ago. I wasn't familiar with it first-hand, but I found it funny how similar concept Anori had to iGoogle when I finally learned about it
1. The slider for the blur on the custom theme bg image should have some sort of label - I had no idea what it did until I tried it while trying to figure out why all the images I uploaded looked like blurry shit (my fault for picking images with a lot of detail, but hey)
2. For the time widget, there should be a 12-hr time option that omits the AM/PM. I know what half of the day I'm in, and I want the time as big as possible.
3. For that matter, let us resize the clock widget, and the rest of the widgets where feasible (top sites especially)
4. Bug: the iframe widget worked at first and then... just stopped displaying anything for me. Not even an iframe tag in the div. It's a github pages site of my own, so it shouldn't be blocked. (I'm using Edge on Windows 10)
5. If feasible, let us resize the page INSIDE that iframe to make it smaller, or at least hide the scrollbars.
6. A bunch of the substack feeds in the RSS just have "..." for the second (preview?) line. It'd be nice if I could hide those (Or have a mode in between default and "compact", since I want to see authors for each post in the feed)
7. Having humidity on the weather widget would be nice (also maybe default to F/mph if the locale is USA? :P)
8. For tab groups I'd like a (2x2?) grid of the favicons it contains, but I suppose I can use a custom icon for that.
Feature requests aside, this is actually really well put-together in general.
In one specific linguistic context. In others, 11:00 for 23:00 is perfectly fine and expected. Yes, it is ambiguous; no, it is not “lying”.
No, in all of them, including the 12 hour time default places. That’s what the “AM” or “PM” is for; if it isn’t there then it indicates it is 24 hour time regardless of the number displayed.
They use 24 hour time in most contexts, but often use 12 hour time informally and the actual time is understood in context. You might not believe it, but this happens.
It is, in fact, not unreasonable to ask for an option to format time in 12 hours without letters after. (I am not saying the author should do it; they are the one to choose what to do in their free time).
Settings like date and time formatting and physical units should ideally be changed by the user. You cannot expect a single setting to work all the time.
(Also, for what it's worth, you're objectively incorrect about it being lying; time is measured in 12 hour cycles in most locales, with further bits of information for time zone, before/after noon, day, month, and year. 23:00 is still "ambiguous", missing almost as much of that context, but it's not "lying" if you have the required context)
1. This issue is fixed (but not released yet)
4. Iframe unfortunately works quite unreliably, especially on Chrome. It uses declarativeNetRequest API and that seem to be hella unreliable for some reason. Usually disabling and then enabling Anori back fixes this issue.
5. If you mean iframe widget which open on click, you can 'detach' this window (button to the left of close button) and then you will be able to resize it or move around the screen. Ordinary iframe widget should be resizable as is (though scrollbar is shown inside the iframe itself, Anori doesn't have access there and can't do anything about it).
Thanks for the suggestions, some of them look really interesting!
[1] https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard/
I wonder if I've still got some screenshots around from that time.