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Comment by nuclearburrito | Hacker News Reader

In my mind, this is a good thing. Browsers should do one thing well. They should support the standards, but not be everything but the kitchen sink. I don't want Pocket, which is what I think they are trying to drive people towards. I've disabled it under about:config. I want a browser. More and more, I find myself using uzbl-tabbed under Arch Linux because it does one thing well. I use Mozilla now for multimedia and that's about it. My bank also balks at uzbl-tabbed. As a *nix guy for three decades, I simply cannot escape the "do one thing well" paradigm. It just simply works.

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> In my mind, this is a good thing. Browsers should do one thing well. ... As a *nix guy for three decades, I simply cannot escape the "do one thing well" paradigm.

As with every tool, what counts as that “one thing” is entirely subjective, in the eye of the beholder, highly personal, often arbitrary.

Why should Firefox support tabs? Shouldn’t my window manager do that? Why does a browser keep track of history when my operating environment should keep track of a history of things I’ve seen recently - documents, files, URLs?

It’s the exact same debate about whether programs should do any of the things that can be handled by tmux / GNU screen / readline / whatever.

For you, the “one thing” browsers should do maps exactly to what you think counts as “one thing.” To others, that might include Firefox’s RSS support, and leave out something you consider essential, calling it “bloat” and against the spirit of Unix.

> Why should Firefox support tabs? Shouldn’t my window manager do that? Why does a browser keep track of history when my operating environment should keep track of a history of things I’ve seen recently - documents, files, URLs?

If my operating system could handle those (and that's kind of a neat prospect, actually, though maybe concerning that the host OS is actively "snooping" on what we're doing in a client application), I'd be totally pleased with the browser being just a host for a web engine. Unfortunately, they don't, so tabs, history, etc. which are fairly integral to the web itself are worth supporting directly within the browser.

Some use RSS, some don't. Some use Pocket or similar services, some don't. I have no issue with these being recommended extensions as they can boost the browsing experience for the user, but I agree they shouldn't be in the browser itself.

Now, if with Chrome/Firefox/whatever they allowed more granular customization of components like tabs such that the tab UI by a hypothetical tab management extension is 1:1 with Safari's implementation, I'd be beyond thrilled.

> though maybe concerning that the host OS is actively "snooping" on what we're doing in a client application

How is that concerning? The OS can do whatever it wants. If you don't trust it, you have already lost.

Or to use OP's example to make your point:

> I use Mozilla now for multimedia and that's about it

Why should Firefox support multimedia playback? Your media player can do that.

> Why should Firefox support tabs? Shouldn’t my window manager do that?

You're close to enlightenment. ;)

There should be a renderer, there should be a network engine, there should be a persistent storage, a secret storage keyring, a history tracker, etc - and they all should be small separate programs, talking common protocols, easily replaceable.

Non-interoperable giant monoliths are why we can't have nice things anymore and have to stick with whatever large companies can provide us at their own discretion. Because it's incredibly hard to patch that behemoth and even less so to maintain the patchset. That would be possible again if there'd be a plethora of small programs, each doing its own single thing and not trying to be everything and a kitchen sink.

I'd love to be able to have only one tab bar across all my applications. Probably a Tree Style Bar though.

I use Pocket, but I think these sorts of things (Feed readers, tagging bookmarking services, etc.) should be outside of the browser by default.

From there, you can have addons that may be more first class citizen than others in that they integrate incredibly well, but regardless, they should be addons.

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