Blisk – a browser for web developers | Hacker News Reader

Blisk – a browser for web developers

blisk.io

81 pointsnamanyayg79 comments

I love the idea of this but I have no reason to trust the browser. Just installed it to give it a test run. Tabbed to the history tab and it is showing files and locations I've accessed outside of the browser prior to installation. Add the lack of information on their site about who they are and what they do with data, this doesn't inspire confidence.

Will wait for the Mac version and Little Snitch will do the blocking! Always trust the little snitch!

Same. I may actually download this and do exactly that!

"Hands Off!" is also worth a look too. Fairly comparable to to Little Snitch but can also does file access.

They say it's based on Chromium so it could be it's accesing your Chrome/Chromium history?

I think it's because of the internet explorer history he may import its file history and made u think that it's storing or recording your files. just clear ur browsing history the first time and everything will be good,I think :)

It doesn't have the one thing I really want: true browser emulation. I want an IE tab, a Safari tab, and a Chrome tab, so I can compare them side-by-side and know that my site works in all browsers.

https://www.browserstack.com/

Lunascape has something like that. It's not smooth transistioning and has imperfections but it does what you want for trident, firefox and webkit.

You might want to look into http://www.browseemall.com which does something like this.

HN's very own https://www.browserling.com/ is also quite simple. Free to use for a few minutes.

Also https://www.browserling.com is a good bet

If it's for web developers, why does it only run (for now) on Windows? What developer, who works on the web, uses Windows?

You're so filter bubbled that it hurts. Maybe just another random anecdotal data point helps: Most developers I know use Windows.

You too seems too bubbled. Maybe just another random anecdotal data point helps: Most developers I know do not use Windows.

So we have lots of bubbles everywhere!

I have a Linux box and a Windows machine.

Since I do a lot of .Net stuff my work is done on a Windows machine for obvious reasons. The rest of my front-end work is usually done on my Linux box.

Most corporate places I've worked at are Windows shops. Even in those big corporate places, there are only around 1% who use Macs.

Most of my development is cross platform. I switch every day from Windows, to Mac, to 64 bit Linux, to Linux on ARM and then back around every 4 days of work. I also test every day on iPhone, iPad and 3 different Android systems.

Agreed. I think the real bubble is junior devs that care passionately about which OS they use, like it really matters.

I think Stack Overflow Developer Survey provides a good picture of what is used more.

For the lazy:

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...

OS X: 26.2%

Windows: 52.2%

To be fair, this figure includes all developers, rather than just web developers. But Windows is probably still the majority if you include the whole world, as opposed to those working at startups in rich countries.

Isn't that for all developers though, and not just for the web?

No, I'm not bubbled, because I'm well aware that in other places and subcultures, it's considered insane to prefer Windows for dev.

I've been on OSX for five years but this year switched back to Windows 10 with a new surface book. Yes took some adjustment, but now I find it just fine for building python webapps with posgresql backends. Cygwin using mobaxterm pro is nice, all the jetbrains IDE's work fine on windows, and even powershell ISE is interesting.

Surely the person who stated that they were basically unaware that web developers use Windows are ignorant though, right?

The people responding certainly aren't ignoring the fact that at least some web devs use Macs...so you can't really apply the same label to everyone here, can you?

Is there any data regarding to this? Does github, npm, etc. release any web stats? Atom collects some telemetry I guess, it might provide good insights. Anything public?

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech... gives a good indication; over 50% of respondents use a version of Windows, vs 26.2% OSX. Mind you, that comparison is a bit skewed given how it counts Windows differently (broken up in versions) compared with OSX (which has been OSX for like ten years)

Most developers I know use windows, most of them don't know what SASS is though. I think its fair to say that the majority of front end developers prefer OSX.

According to the SO survey, 50% of developers are on Windows, although there's no filter for web developers. However, the survey is biased towards English-speaking countries, which tend to be richer.

Which would they prefer to work on? I haven't seen any stats.

While I can't support this with figures, which I'd love to see by the way, my experience working as a consultant at a number of companies, from startups to big media conglomerates in Europe, is that for web, there's definitely a preference for macs, however slight.

It's generally older, more conservative or more back-end focused shops that are on Windows (.NET, Umbraco), but even those often move to macs or want to. Viacom, for example, uses Rails for it's European sites and all developers in the office use macs.

Smaller startups tend to have mac-users for front-end development and a mix of windows/linux/mac for back-end guys.

And of course my experience here on HN gives me the impression that most front-end stuff is mac-centric.

All that said, the big qualifiers are wealth and web. I know quite a few web guys who use windows because they can't afford a mac, and I know many developers who use windows or linux because they don't do front-end web development. But in my world (The Netherlands) the vast majority of web developers use macs, to the point that it's kind of a 'thing' to see a web developer use anything else.

agreed, I haven't seen any states, I am just basing it on my personal experience in the UK. I use Windows in the Day and OSX for personal projects. Wonder where that puts me?

I think both this criticism and its parent are too quick to judge because the website says "coming soon", but your comment just veers it off to a neurotic direction. At worse, they got revealed too soon on internet forums.

Also, a little random anecdote doesn't help. It's intuitive to believe that most web developers use OS X / Linux, at least inferring from the fact that developer tools like Node or Vagrant came to OS X / Linux first, if not Linux first.

> You're so filter bubbled that it hurts

The HN guidelines ask you not to call names in arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Your comment would be much better without that bit.

I agree, thanks for calling it out and my apologies to toomanythings2. I'm not sure why I thought that was necessary.

Most devs that are using C# for their backend.

I consider myself an experienced web developer with 10+ years of handling web projects from all angles. My primary OS is Windows. OS choice is really irrelevant nowadays.

Your original point is fair tough, it should be cross platform from day 1.

It says "coming for Linux & Mac." No reason for the developer to have to push all at once or any other platform first. Can't wait to try it on OSX!

most: http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...

Most of Accenture digital, Infosys, etc. Also, did you know that Microsoft also has developers?!

I know the pro-Apple bias is high here at HN, but this is just sad.

Almost all developers in corporate America use WIndows. If you work outside of silicon valley at a company with more than a few dozen people, chances are you're probably (but not certainly) using Windows.

We're not talking about developers developers developers, we're talking about web developers.

Personally I usually select my os based on the applications I intend to run on it, but for "web" development all I need is a text editor, so really any of them will do. Linux is nice to work in, but Windows will probably support the wireless card in my laptop.

It's interesting to see what assumptions people make and how they make them. You assumed your parent had a pro-Apple bias and that they wanted a Mac OS X build, while I felt solidarity with them because I was looking for a Linux build. The only OS the parent mentions is Windows, though.

Bayesian reasoning. You and him had different prior beliefs. It's quite justifiable because we live with incomplete information about the world.

I work outside California for a web company with 40 devs. We use Ubuntu for prod and dev. Even the (few) Mac guys run Ubuntu VMs. The windows guy (singular) does too.

More developers use Windows than any other desktop OS. More people use Windows than any other desktop OS.

I prefer Windows for it's mix of flexibility and stability. I do not prefer the Mac OS because I find it to be a generally terrible OS that is completely inflexible compared to Windows. (I call it the Mac OS because they pretty much ruined NeXTSTEP by smearing the disgusting Mac OS UI on top of it.)

Being forced to use a Mac myself, I know a ton of things about how limiting this OS is. You can't even run 2 instance of the same app on OS X, so for instance if you're editing 3 or 4 projects with Xcode and one of them crashes, the whole app has to be restarted.

I could go on about how bad the Mac OS is, but I actually have to go work on my newest web development/mobile app project wherein I use Windows for most of the actual work and only touch my Mac/Apple devices for testing.

I truly respect your opinion, but I laughed at "I prefer Windows for it's mix of flexibility and stability". I can understand stability to some point, but flexibility? Come on, I assume you're a web developer, have you ever used the Linux/OSX console? It cannot be compared to anything related to web development on Windows, really.

Thank you. I do use bash/dash and other shells regularly both on Linux and OS X. If I need my Windows desktop apps to work on the same files as I'm working on with my shell, then I just share the directory one way or another.

Flexibility is certainly debatable depending on your point of view. Personally, I only want flexibility within the realm of stability and speed. For instance - Windows does not let you switch window managers the way you can in Linux. But that's not the kind I'm interested in. I am more concerned with things like:

- Will it run on most hardware without much hassle?

- How easily can I customize the file browser to do things like adding new context menu actions (based on node type or other state) via third party modules?

- How stable are my customizations?

- Can I generally put things where I want them easily, without fighting against some overarching design opinion?

All of the Linux software that I use regularly runs in a terminal and Linux runs absolutely great in a guest VM on any type of host. If I run Windows in a guest VM, it's slower and GPU intensive apps suffer. If I really, really needed to work on an iOS or OS X app while traveling and I could only bring one device with me for some reason, I would certainly bring only my Macbook Pro. Luckily, I don't have that problem!

Looking forward, Windows will soon have Ubuntu running on the Windows kernel. If that works out, I can have the best of both worlds without keeping any VMs running. The closest I can get to this in Linux is with Wine, but that sucks worse than Cygwin does on Windows IMO.

> You can't even run 2 instance of the same app on OS X

Sure you can. Pass the -n flag to /usr/bin/open, e.g.:

   open -n /Applications/Xcode.app

Ever tried it? I would not recommend it, especially with Xcode but generally for most OS X apps.

It's fine for running multiple instances of the simulator if that's all you need to do. You'll be sorry if you try to actually work with code though. Settings will be overwritten, caches will be corrupted and some things won't work. The problem is that OS X isn't designed with this in mind at all and you're actually working against that design when you do this.

> a ton of things about how limiting this OS is. ... if you're editing 3 or 4 projects with Xcode ...

I'm not an OS X fan – far from it, really – but that is not a limitation of OS X. That's a limitation of Xcode. I have launched multiple instances of the same app on OS X; via right-clicking on their icons, I think.

A lot of people use Windows for web development... Your statement doesn't seem vary enlightened. OSX isn't the king you think it is.

A chromium based browser which does everything that google chrome has built into its development console... what? Integrations with other systems, you mean like tonnes of chrome extensions already provide? ... What's the point of this browser? I'd like a browser that makes development easier but literally everything this browser claims so solve is already built into chrome.

Business model? Why should I trust this company?

This is a fair question. I also begs the question of why we should trust other browser vendors.

Google's business model seems to be mostly advertising related. This doesn't align particularly well with the interests of individuals using Chrome.

Apple's business model has been more hardware-sales oriented, which might mean their browser exists to keep customers happy with their hardware, which might be a better fit.

Mozilla exists for the public good, thought it does have some financial pressure to keep the lights on.

Disclosure: My business has done work for Mozilla in the past.

Google Chrome's business model / goals are (were?) providing the fastest and best browser experience available; they were given green light by the Google organization for a simple reason, faster internet = more ad views = more revenue for google. That was a win-win for google, just like all the other (faster) internet technology Google is sponsoring and developing.

Probably some variation of paid browser compatibility updates

The browser for web developers is the browser your users use. That's it. At some point I am going to have to swap to Chrome and IE to ensure that every runs properly, so why not skip that step and just develop against Chrome and IE?

4 Reasons to use Blisk → PRODUCTIVITY

Blisk browser will make you 200% productive. So you can do your work 2 times faster and spend your time for the things that really do matter for you. Or have a cup of coffee and relax. [1]

I…what? The big thing that this site had to sell on me is that my browser is going to make a big difference for my job. I already bounce back and forth between Firefox, Chrome, and Brave for different reasons. Telling me that I'm going to be twice as productive just makes me skeptical.

1: https://blisk.io/product

I guess it'll make you 3 times as productive by making you only use one browser? That's how productivity works, right?

Chrome already has this feature...

It does? How do you use it?

I suppose they are referring to Developer Tools + Toggle Device Mode. Less feature-complete than what Blisk is claiming, but seems to handle at least some of the device resolution-related things.

If you mean mobile device emulation, it's the second icon from the left on the dev tools toolbar, or Ctrl-Shift-M while the dev tools are open. It doesn't work very well in my experience, but it's there.

I count six distinct features which Blisk advertises, of which Chrome has one.

Could you list them out for us, please?

All six are shown on the home page, which is the link we are discussing here. In case it's not blindingly obvious, here's the first feature which Chrome has support for: https://blisk.io/#section-multiple-devices Scroll down for the other five.

Would love to see if this could be integrated with Webpack, which (not necessarily always) requires a full reload to see changes.

Still a pain to see the Dev Tools together with the website in the same window. The DT pane reduces the available screen for the website and creates problems when trying to check layout while having access to the internals. I was hoping they would crack that problem.

Pretty cool and I look forward to the evolution of this tool. I found that when I tried to use it with a site that requires authentication, only one of the desktop/mobile views would be authenticated at a time. Would be nice if they shared cookies/local storage.

Why companies still use a Mac for their headline stock image, when they don't even have the Mac app ready.

Other than that nice idea.

Scroll behaviour overriding is horrid on that site.

Using a display of Macs to flaunt a Windoze exe is quite misleading.

Awesome idea and project!

Windows is utter crap, Mac OSX is a slightly less smelly pile of crap, there is also Linux which is much less crap than both Windows and Linux.

> I prefer Windows for it's mix of flexibility and stability.

Not sure if this is supposed to be a joke.

My two windows workstations (office and home) both have an average uptime of 40 days. Constantly running ~ 20 vm's of various OSs in the background, just because there is no performance gain in shutting them down while they're idling.

> Not sure if this is supposed to be a joke.

Are you really not sure if that is supposed to be a joke or are you just saying that in a passive/aggressive attempt to insult me and/or my opinion?

In either case let me assure you, my statement is not a joke. Windows serves my needs for a desktop workstation better than any other OS.

I've been programming since I was very young. I've used Linux professionally since early Red Hat releases and the Mac OS since System 1 as a kid and since System 6/7 professionally. Windows is by far the best desktop OS in my opinion since I have to fight with it the least to make it do what I want. Obviously, every desktop OS has its share of problems.

Please don't do flamewars here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691212 and marked it off-topic.

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