Show HN: Dazzle – Mobile web browser designed from first principles | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Dazzle – Mobile web browser designed from first principles

dazzle.now.sh

57 pointsspolu34 comments

Tried Dazzle few times this afternoon and this browser is just brilliant.

Why: Currently, user interaction with tabs on mobile browsers is totally broken and super cumbersome. Dazzle is merging browsing history with tabs which is smart and leads to a super smooth user experience. Actually, there are no tabs anymore, just the browser history which pops ups every time you touch the address bar at the bottom. Simple but nice solution.

Moreover, it offers a bigger viewport than Safari does (no iOS navigation bar at the bottom und a black slick and super slim address bar).

Finally, I like the slightly rounded corners of the viewport. All small and subtle stuff but shows that the creator cares about a polished appearance.

But I am not sure about the landing page and this 'first principle' thing. People don't get it and it sounds super awkward. Really remake the landing page, make it slicker, put some screenshots there, remove the first principle blabla, find a punchy headline and remake all the copy.

You should definitely keep on working on this and not let yourself getting discouraged. The product and the minimalistic approach you chose is excellent, the Marekting/branding not so.

Thanks! That's exactly what excites us as well and motivated us to work on this.

What message would you use on the landing page?

> What message would you use on the landing page?

Good question and not sure myself.

You could make it straight and simple and put the focus on the missing tabs. Then, your header would be something like 'The No-tabs Browser'. This might be again too simple and you could get a bit more abstract and stress your minimalstic approach ('The Less-is-More Browser'). However, I'd tend to be to the point and build a story around the main feauture.

Or you find a new hook in the communication, e.g. privacy. Then, your UI is kind of nice side-benefit and the DNA.

How many are you and where are you from?

I'm so delighted, I started on a similar browser project a few weeks ago.

It actually started because I wanted to inject javascript into youtube.com to re-enable videos to be played in the background again, and it was just a simple wrapper around a UIWebView. But I've been playing with making each tab a branch in a mind-map type structure, that can be dragged into view, and onto which you can attach the tab to a sibling node or one of its parents.

It's cool to see other people see that there is a need to improve mobile web browsing.

> t offers a bigger viewport than Safari does

But smaller than Chrome. Which has also nailed tabs IMHO.

As a product page visitor using mobile your page is useless to me. No screenshots, no intro video. I'm not going to make a commitment to using something without either of those two.

For me it's something that actually stood out. Just the features.

Hi HN!

I built dazzle with Antoine out of the frustration of having to use tabs on mobile. We wanted to explore a shared history/tabs mechanism that we expected to be particularly adapted to mobile usage.

After a few months of dog fooding we felt like it was time to share it publicly even if it's still a bit rough on the edges (and very experimental really).

Hope you have fun trying it, feedback welcome and encouraged.

Nice work on this. I actually like the simplicity of it. Feels light weight and fast.

We live in an era of distrust so without seeing your terms / privacy policy I was not comfortable logging into a site with a password so may be worth adding a blurb about that. On the bottom where you display the URL, I value seeing HTTPS where applicable as well. I don't want to feel like I am losing security by using this. Last thought, it would be nice to customize the homepage away from google. This one is just vanity though. Good work and good luck.

Hi! That's fair. Pending terms of services; you have access to the source code here: https://github.com/spolu/dazzle

Of course; this is all very experimental for now.

PS: that's the whole point of a Show HN :-)

Also there is no server. We don't store any data outside the app / your phone.

This looks very promising. A few things:

I couldn't find a gesture to bring up sharing/action extensions [1]. This is super important. For example, I use 1Password for logins all the time.

Also, the rounded corners are distracting and look like an anachronism. I want to view a web page the way it was intended, i.e. not with rounded corners. It should be possible to turn it off.

The "X" in the URL field is confusing. I took it mean that it would clear the field, which is how a lot of iOS input fields work. But it actually closes the pane. I recommend moving it somewhere else and putting back the classic "X" that does clear the field.

No way to reload a page without going into the URL field and hitting "Go" again is a bit annoying.

The "history" is nice as a shorthand, but it's not good enough to be the real web browsing history. I like to keep all my history so I can search it. (No history search either?)

I get the idea of using browser history as a substitute for tabs. However, if it's going to work, it has to work like tabs. Right now, if I go back to a previously visited page, it will not preserve any of its state (such as scroll position or form contents).

[1] https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/e...

What are the "first principles" you based the design on?

Mostly a shared tab/history system that feel much more adapted to mobile. To a certain degree, access to everything without changing hand or an additional hand.

Under the hood there's only one WKWebview and that makes it feel surprinsingly I have to admit slightly faster.

So is the main value prop a browser that can be controlled with one hand?

I don't want to sound like a hater, but don't call it "designed from first principles" if it really isn't that.

What about the shared tab/history concept?

Where did these first principles come from?

thank you, that was my first question too.

What security promises can you make? How do I know that you're not hijacking my cookies and passwords? I atleast trust apple and Google with my data before even opening their browsers

Completely understandable. There is no server, we don't store any data outside the app and the source code is available here https://github.com/spolu/dazzle

But of course this is Show HN material so still totally experimental.

From the code it seems like pages can navigate to `file://` URLs?

I don't have a bin handy or I would check myself.

Nice job! Of all the third party browsers I've tried on iOS, this is the only one that feels as nice as mobile Safari, and the only one I'd consider using full time.

Do you have any plans to implement bookmarks, or any way to "pin" items in the history? I use the mobile Safari favorites all the time for quick access to 4 or 5 sites. Seems like the one thing missing from Dazzle.

Thank you! Spot on, we'd like to add a pinning functionality in the future, to keep track of to-dos for instance. We haven't gotten to it just yet.

Just tried this a bit, I like the idea of a simple browser, have tried lots.

Like having the address at the bottom, hate that Safari has this and tabs at opposite ends of tge phone. Corners are cute. Agree with Lobster that "X" is confusing, but useful... seems like the right button with the wrong symbol.

It would also be nice if the last few pages could be frozen, so as not to lose scroll position and half typed comments... but perhaps hard? One better than safari would be to show which tabs are still loaded.

How do I clear cookies? My vote would be for this to happen in the background, perhaps 24hrs after I looked at the page which put them there.

Is it possible for it to use my iOS content blockers?

Great app, totally going to start using it on a day to day basis. It looks like deep links appear to be broken for me:

Link https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/public-wifi-nyc/id1232095734...

Renders this screen http://imgur.com/a/E29QX

Also is there better place I can submit this kind of feedback?

EDIT:

Found github repo and made an issue: https://github.com/spolu/dazzle/issues

Wow, this is done in React Native: https://github.com/spolu/dazzle

How hard would it be to compile a version for Android?

It's a bit optimized for WKWebView for now... but not impossible to support android with a bit of work

It isn't tab management that is keeping the web from shining on mobile devices, it is basically the load time of webpages + Javascript, I think. Also the inability for the user to decide to store a website, so it loads faster the next time, including, for example, those GIF sites that take so much to load every time someone sends you a GIF that they may prefer to download the GIF and send it directly on the IM app.

What is the point of having a third party browser on iOS when you can't change the default from Safari?

What does first principle mean here? Is it a from-scratch engine or is it a redesign of the chrome, or both?

just installed it, i'm loving it. Most important to me is that it's FAST. Feels much faster than iOS Safari and iOS Chrome.

I tried to like Brendan Eich's Brave browser for about 2 weeks, but I didn't detect any clear advantages, so I stopped.

Keep up the good work!

If it had options to block ads, I would be very interested.

This is hot. Nice work.

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