Min – A smarter web browser | Hacker News Reader

Min – A smarter web browser

minbrowser.github.io

101 pointsalvil72 comments

I think the main reason people are hating on this is because it's selling itself as something it's not: A smarter browser.

Should stick with its original goal. I think they created it as a "minimal" browser, hence the name.

If you're going for minimal, it won't get much more minimal than this:

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.

> If you're going for minimal, it won't get much more minimal than this:

> 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.

Ahem, no.

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.

Didn't know about netrik, thanks.

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.)

Based on Electron. So this is Chromium, but with less features?

EDIT: It also claims less battery consumption. May I ask some proof?

A. FUCKING. ELECTRON. BROWSER. ಠ_ಠ

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.

This is like using web rendering engine to implement a browser, which is not ridiculous at all.

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.

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.

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'.

Pure speculation, but I bet it's a combination of:

* Lack of a windows machine to test on

* Forgetting to update the site when a Windows build became available.

> With, among others, a file called 'Min-v1.6.3-win32-x64.zip'

"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.

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.

Electron main selling point is being cross platform.

Having it only Ubuntu/macOS seems counter-intuitive.

> Find anything instantly

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

So..?

What's your point? It's just as good as any other browser

It advertises itself as a smarter web browser, but, as you said, it's only "as good as any other browser".

The only pull it has... is that it might be adequate.

Title says it's "smarter"?

But it's not. Because it's not extensible, like many other browsers.

YC commenters are brutal. Not a single positive comment, so far. That feels a little unnecessarily mean, given that it's a free software project.

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

Isn't it great, though, that we hold FLOSS projects to the same standards as the big-bucks closed software?

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.

Edit: I started calling this the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

This is by no means specific for HN.

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]

Yup, and Cunningham's Law also.

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.

Thanks for pointing this out. Indeed, it seems that Mr. Klein rediscovered Cunningham's Law without noticing.

You're wrong.

(I was joking)

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.

It doesn't add any value, compared to Chrome and does a very bad job at selling itself.

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.

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!

"Using electron" and "uses less battery" are too close to each other.

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.

And you wouldn’t expect atom to use more memory than sublime, either.

This is different. Atom is a text editor implemented in a web browser engine. This is a web browser implemented in a web browser engine.

I wouldn't expect it to be any better either. Which means this thing is missing the point of writing a new browser.

> and get suggestions before you even start typing

I really don't want that!

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.

Honestly, I’d say qutebrowser¹ is both smarter and more minimal than Min.

――――――

¹ — https://qutebrowser.org/

From the FAQ; "I believe efficiency while coding is a lot more important than efficiency while running."

As a user, that would make me nervous at least.

Depends on whether that efficiency is used for higher quality or higher feature count. For the firmer, I'd be pretty happy.

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.

Or test Servo... (Mozilla's new engine.)

Neat idea. Perhaps position this as a minimalist browser (vs "smarter")

I think the only way to make a dent into the browser market is to create the most secure browser and market it that way.

I disagree. I think what can make a dent is something that's significantly faster than all we have today.

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.

Chrome `--app` mode does the same thing.

Tried on a site (https://www.dn.se/) which looked completely broken. Tried it on another (https://www.svt.se/nyheter/) and the browser crashed. No thanks.

I don't see what's "smarter" about it.

- 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.

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.

Its not the flatness, its lack of design. See for example, https://www.sail.com.au/, which is flat too, but with a cohesive design.

I am pretty sure core to "Flat UI" is that drop shadows shouldn't be used, and there is hardly an element on that site that isn't full of them.

Flat UI is not "flat", please read up on the topic.

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.

Design is highly subjective, but from the designer's eye, there is no comparison between the two sites.

> It's the same size as Firefox (160MB) despite offering significantly less features.

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

That day came a while back: Brave.

OK, I ... adjusted my comment :D

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?...

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

This is actually Inspiring me to consider making my own visions of browsing can be improved come to fruition!

Thanks very much for the implementation idea and the source. I'm certainly gonna play with both the product and the code.

Electron.. thanks for nothing.

Competition is good. This also looks like a neat browser for staging designs.

I instantly like the clean distraction free look.

That's Min.

I use Bookmark OS which allows me to sort my bookmarks. Does this have bookmark sorting?

I build a browser in your browser, so that you can browse the web browsier.

It sounded reasonably nice (beyond the point that Firefox is all this with a few addons), but Electron? Again?

how am I supposed to get to the other pre-built binaries?

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