Refresh: concept for a new kind of web browser
refresh.study
refresh.study
- The website looks great but quite heavy:
29 requests, 17.66 MB transferred, Finish: 40.09 s
Maybe see if you can re-encode `history-device.mp4` and `spaces-device.mp4` since they constitute the 78% of the traffic. =)
- Kudos for getting the tagging right! Many developers expect users to tag their content, and tags were the next-big-thing at some point where there were tag-based file systems[0], photo and video galleries that expected you to tag each of your photos, and so on; but what really worked was automating the process of tagging! Everyone can agree that Google or Apple Photos are miles ahead of digiKam or Picasa when it comes to finding what you are looking for. I am glad that you didn't delegate that responsibility to the user.
- I think you should've put it on the AppStore first before sharing it; I would download it right away right now, as with many other people, but how many of us would remember Refresh a month later?
- I'd love to have branching history as well: so I have a tab and it has a linear history through which I can either go "forward" or "backward". Now, if I move backward in history, and click on a different link in that page, the history should branch at that point so that I won't loose the track of my previous "forward" pages when I click on a link in a previous page.
- Maybe not as satisfying, but I'd also consider developing add-ons for Chrome and Mozilla; some people would be reluctant to change their browser, but they'd be more comfortable adding exciting add-ons on a reliable browser.
All the best!
It's not a browser. It's a browser design. (plus a bunch of not-really-functional prototypes).
I hope it becomes reality but so far this is basically the The William[0] of browsers. The William also never happened even though we all really wanted it to.
- There's a disconnect in space between the space being heated, the diagram of the heating patterns, and the heat control diagram. So you have three points of attention instead of, ideally, one, and traditionally, two.
- The whole interface has no undo. If I remove a heating space, reset clock, recalibrate weight, there is no going back.
- Removal of cookware deletes all associated data and programming.
- Touch interfaces while cooking are horrible and I hope they will never win.
Though, of course, the concept is from 2010 and the idea to add programmable heat curves (or, ideally, IFTTT of cooking) is a nice one.
But in general, tactile knobs are always better than touch screen widgets if one looks beyond flexible function (tactile > non-tactile). Touch screens are more like an economy option when you want to fit in a bunch of functionality in a limited amount of space.
In addition, a lot of the controllers seem to use the really silly plus/minus design to control heat, which means if you want to go from 8 to 3, you need to press 5 times instead of just one touch/twist. Fortunately my current cooking top has a bar so I can go directly, once it registers my finger that is...
I realize why they went with touch though.
Even the flexible zones are showing up in real products now (albeit with a lower resolution): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwljz2R0Z_M&t=54s
The concept was made by Greg Beck, a dude from Ohio, as some sort of a "hey, wouldn't it be nice if..." thing. Or maybe as part of his showreel as a product designer.
Sadly, his website[0] is down, but you can find a version without images in the archive[1].
The domain name is still registered though. You could write him an email and ask what happened. ;)
[0] http://becktothefuture.com/
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111208083212/http://www.beckto...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dK1IVk_NiGY#
Just because something is in an After Effects mockup doesn't mean it's practical to engineer.
I suspect the heater grid might be tricky or expensive, though.
Oh, sorry!
Implemented in Netsurf, with a nice history tree with screenshots :-)
I'd really like to see this in mainstream browsers.
or Histree: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/histree/lngppkkhji...
or Tree History: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-history/kfgne...
or Brancher: https://brancher.io/
I am intrigued, though, how well the browsing history concept scales up to dozens of tabs. In my experience, I only use the newest tab on mobile, while the other open tabs become some kind of living bookmarks.
0 - https://cretz.github.io/doogie/guide/page-tree#workspaces 1 - https://cretz.github.io/doogie/guide/bubble
As your approach is "Browser as IDE", have you thought of.. actually putting tabs next to tabs, inside of the main window?
Like Jupyter Notebook, but for websites?
After all, we all mostly do research and there is an action that springs out of our browsing activity. If that action is 'writing stuff down', why not do it directly in the browser?
While I update it to newer Chromium versions regularly and use it as my main browser with great success, the lack of community interest in the project limits my desire to put much work in to new features unless I really want them.
This article and the idea of tab history solidify an approach that I have always taken to browsing that I've dubbed "immutable browsing". I ctrl+click every link to make a child and only purge the roots of the tree to roll up the children when the roots habe no value to me anymore. On a Wikipedia or Github project spelunking expedition, I can get many levels deep, sometimes ctrl+clicking dozens of pages as background child pages from a single page.
The spaces need to be publishable and moderateable and multiuser and all the other things we expect for web objects though.
Nice progress made on this project.
Our workspaces (persistent windows with names) remember your tabs automatically, are multiuser/collaborative, and even have a URL (like any good web object). You can also access your workspaces on multiple computers, so you can start a project at work and finish it at home.
We're officially launching out of beta next month, but you can sign up now if you're interested:
For example, I need multiple spaces where each space is "dedicated" to a single Google account -- it has multiple tabs open that are logged into that particular Google account.
I tried to create that setup, but the accounts "leak" between spaces: logging into a Google account in one space doesn't allow tabs in other spaces to be logged into a different Google account.
If you ever implement proper account isolation per space, please notify me: I'd like to be a beta tester.
As another person suggested, you can use Chrome profiles with Workona installed on each, but that likely isn't what you're after.
Could you sign in to chrome in your different google accounts, with an instance of workona per google account? It's not perfect, but might do what you want it to do?
For example, if I'm halfway through filling out a form but switch workspaces, will it lose my progress? Can I have multiple workspaces open in different windows?
By default Workona opens workspaces in the same window, but you can command-click (Mac) or control-click (Windows) to open a workspace in a new window.
This video will probably help:
Ever since the early Internet; pre Firefox era, I have been a heavy Tab user. I am possibly on the higher end of spectrum, my Safari currently has 410 Tabs opened. It sort of expands and shrink during the weekend. In some days they could blow up to 500+ Tabs, more like a reading list.
Quite a few of them are youtube links that are acting like a mini playlist or file selection of music. So having a Video as group selection shown in this concept is a godsend. I have been wondering why Safari Multi Tab page doesn't have this. ( And Safari Tab Overview is kind of stupid, it reloads / reactive all the tab you have when you press overview, making huge memory and CPU spike as well as jack )
But over the years I have came to the conclusion, most of the consumers don't use Tab like us. That is why those mini Tabs in Chrome that shrinks to ridiculously small size don't annoy them. They don't check email on the web. Nor do they do much comparison. Their web browsing flow is very linear. While my web browsing flow is extremely jumpy. Reading on something could bring up dozens of other questions in my head.
So I am wondering if there is enough market for this browser? Don't get me wrong I love innovation in the browser UI space and I love the new History timeline. But I am slightly worry about its sustainability.
I used tabs like they were bookmarks, so I started using bookmarks more. I used tabs to keep track of history, so I started using the history more. I used tabs to do things the web browser shouldn't do, such as check email or play media, so I started doing those things in the right application (email client and media player, respectively).
My tab use dropped immediately.
I now have a plugin that prevents me from opening more than n tabs (in my case, I have set n=7 right now), which forces me to linearize my naturally sprawly browsing. I need to either finish one task before going on to the next -- or make a proper core dump of it, which includes mental notes as well as links to browsing session. This has actually helped me pick it up faster later on!
It has also prevented me from stressing about unimportant things because they are open in the web browser, telling me that they are left unfinished. Now I can prioritise the important stuff easier.
Example, I now have a list of International shipping website as well as import tax web site that will likely takes me hours if not days to finish. I cant finish them now and move on to next thing. I will have leave it there, and make it like a to do list.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...
Tabbed browsing: a lousy band-aid over poor browser document and state management
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...
What if the Web was filesystem-accessible?
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...
I'm curious what you mean by "jumpy." The linearity I understand, and notice it when I'm researching with coworkers or shoulder surfing with someone.
I usually us saved links or bookmarks to preserve state or come back to things later. My primary use of tabs is to approach research as a sort of branching tree. Start with a page, any interesting link in it gets opened in a tab. I follow each branch in turn until I've got a handle on whatever I need to. Similarly, I use the tabs for comparison shopping, so they're useful for "shortlisting" items of interest.
What stops you from implementing this yourself? Why?
Chrome is supposedly open source. So is Firefox.
It’s an important question, because the answers lead to the reasons why we’re subservient to megacorps. And it also shows merely being open source and free to use isn’t enough to ensure freedom.
We tend to believe that (a) browsers are an open ecosystem, yet (b) we can’t modify them. This is a contradiction.
Why is that so? Because there are enough crazy people who cannot stop writing new web standards. For example, things like Shadow DOM and web components, that are not really necessary and can be implemented using existing specs.
What?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/xsoft/chromium...
Chromium comes in at 120 SBU, which while large isn't impossible. That comes to about 3-4 hours on my laptop.
Building software is not some esoteric pursuit only high priests can perform. It's good practice for software you're familiar with, require performance from and esoteric options most people don't care about.
Ninja, by default, sets the number of jobs to the number of available threads. If your machine is memory constrained, with regard to number of threads, you should reduce the number of jobs by passing the -j# switch to the ninja command below. Plan for roughly 1.25GB per thread while linking WebKit to avoid out of memory errors.
My laptop is memory constrained, I have yet to build Chromuium from source. How much RAM on your laptop? I've been looking for a laptop with 32GB RAM.
you should reduce the number of jobs by passing the -j# switch to the ninja command below.
I have had builds of linpack back in the day taking 24h+ on tiny systems. Again, building software isn't rocket science and you don't need super computers for it.
unit for compilation work relative to a reference package.
Your other comment suggests trying to add a new web standard but IMO the unending stream of web standards is why only "megacorps" maintain browser engines, because only they have the resources and care enough.
Either way, it's a logical leap to suggest you need to modify Chromium or Firefox to implement this in the first place. The concept from TFA can be implemented with webviews without seeing any code from any browser. To answer your first question, the only thing stopping any implementation is time.
I think the idea of it being "open" is that you can do whatever you want within the boundaries of the sandbox you are provided, right? Closed ecosystems can restrict what you can do beyond the APIs provided (no VPNs, no porn, etc.)
The megacorps wouldn’t have allowed the web to evolve into such a massive sandbox if they’d known how much of an effect it would have. Just like Apple didn’t, with the App Store.
The same situation has already happened with Chrome, but with browsers themselves. Try submitting a PR to chromium that implements a new web standard and see how far it gets, let alone a change to the UI.
All of that begs the question: why is it like this? Theoretically there’s nothing stopping you from writing a browser in JS and delivering it as a website. Then users could customize it however they wish. And if you deliver it as a standalone executable, you can do things like add native torrenting support.
FWIW, there have been various new features/standards implemented by people from various companies (some people will have heard of, like Samsung and LG, and others you probably haven't, like Igalia) in Chromium. (UI changes I know much less about, given I rarely look outside of the Blink bubble.)
Please don't. There is already oversupply of web standards. Try writing a new browser engine from scratch; it would take ages.
It'd be fun to see this as an OSS project, though.
People generally don't want to pay for software, is the other part of the answer.
That was a killer feature as presented. In practice it might wind up a little iffy though. Web links aren't static, so the "history" you see might not actually be the pages you were reading. Especially for landing pages for news sites.
I can also imagine it becoming a memory hog for people with certain types of browsing habits. My wife, for example, basically never closes tabs. She just lets them purge on occasions when she needs to restart, which is basically just for OS updates.
I used to worry that WebKit would eat the world, for awhile Trident did eat the world, and now I worry about Blink.
A few things from Servo were integrated in Firefox 57. But the project is far from complete I think.
It's unlikely to become a standard desktop browser, but the roadmap [1] does mention investigating options like a standalone mobile browser [2] or perhaps to be used embedded in an app, e.g. for packaged web apps.
[1] https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap [2] https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/20855
I believe you misunderstood the comment unless it was changed. The commenter questioned the likelihood of it being developed into a product and you responded as of they had questioned the likelihood of any of it being used in production.
Fwiw, I agree with the commenter and am unsure how likely Mozilla is to develop it into a product. They do seem to incorporate pieces though.
Are you saying that Mozilla eventually replacing Gecko’s style system, DOM, compositor, and networking system with Servo’s (as the article I linked describes) is just incorporating “pieces” of Servo?
The product that Mozilla is developing Servo into is Firefox. I don’t know what you expect—for Mozilla to replace Gecko with Servo all at once? For Mozilla to do the same thing they are doing now but just give it a new name?
Do you remember seeing screenshots of "servo"? Running a Servo executable (or browserhtml or whatever) is/was a thing. It was branded as being developed as an alternative browser to FF. It was even using cannibalizing FF pieces (e.g. Spider Monkey) not the other way around.
> The product that Mozilla is developing Servo into is Firefox. I don’t know what you expect—for Mozilla to replace Gecko with Servo all at once? For Mozilla to do the same thing they are doing now but just give it a new name?
That is the case now, though they have names for the pieces, the name "Servo" still seems to be the name of the full browser (coopted by the VR group IIRC). It was what everyone expected to not necessarily replace FF all at once, but be developed alongside as an alternative. This history was clear, the name Servo as a whole browser was clear, and the misunderstanding is pretending that was not the case.
Servo is a browser engine, not some VR project (where the heck did you get that? Go to https://github.com/servo/servo ); what’s more, Firefox is “Servo as a whole browser,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Of course you are able to run Servo “by itself,” how the heck do you expect Servo developers to be able to test their browser engine?
I’m not sure what weird dramatization of history you are trying to create, but it’s all the more bizarre in that (1) this all happened in the open, so you should easily be able to see what you are saying is and was simply not the case, and in that (2) far from Servo being killed, it is the future of Firefox, so what on earth is there to be upset about? This has been surreal; good luck.
“Firefox” is not a browser engine, it is a browser UI. Gecko and Servo are browser engines.
>Sessions will not install on Safari 12 or later, as Apple has officially deprecated Safari Extensions.
I save my session file with semantic naming every week or so. I would love to have a graphical timeline of all tabs like this to explore older session files as well as my current one.
Making web browser software can be very profitable if you get a large userbase. Mozilla had $520 million of revenue in 2016!
More browser innovation would be great, considering how many human hours are spent browsing the web. Small browser level increases in efficiency with better tools for web browsing could have massive impact.
And, building browser companies can be a path to making lots of money, so it's not a charity.
I wish any browser on iOS could allow this, I use an iPad and I can shortcut myself to anything on safari with my hardware keyboard, except clicking links, it's really jarring to jab the screen for that part
Just create a virtual desktop for each space.
It really does save a lot of time in the long run. The added benefits of virtual desktops is you can also recall more than just browser tabs.
On Windows 10, all you have to do is hit CTRL + Win Key + Right arrow to launch a new desktop.
Tab management: Pin tabs seems to do this already.
Saving & recalling: Tons of "spaces" extensions already exist.
I'm not a big fan of the netflix layout.
Smart link previews: Nice to have an image preview but the auto categorization of links would probably not work so well. So this would be probably only be used for main well known sites.
Browsing History: That timeline actually looks really nice. Not sure how well it would work, but that's actually innovative for a browser.
Tagging: So... a bookmarking system?
Focus on whats important: Nope nope nope. I don't want my browser to become an app that strips out what makes a website unique. Most often this functionality just breaks the UI or strips away code that breaks the functionality.
Firefox has such feature (reader's view) and it works surprisingly well. It really helps, especially when the text is difficult to read (contrast issues, small fonts, etc) or when a page contains lots of elements that try to distract you from main content.
Maybe we can extend this with a better UI + ability to move pages between profiles (this creates some serious security problems though)
We have history, tagging and bookmarks but I barely use them in modern browsers.
This UI makes it more orthogonal (it seems).
It's back: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...
This is what it looks like if you press Ctrl+Shift+F: https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/200/...
If you then click one of the tabs, the tab bar gets populated by the tabs in that group.
(Perhaps you tried this extension before the tab hiding Web Extension API arrived? That only arrived in the latest version of Firefox, IIRC.)
I might have done so. The problem I had is that I was in the middle of a few hundred tabs and opening panorama opened a new tab at the end of the list making me lose my place. If it hides all tabs when you open panorama it might work well enough.
I'll try it again, thanks for letting me know.
Yeah, it's largely the same : we open app, enter the URL and it shows a web page..But cmon, stating that IE6 is largely the same as Chrome or Brave is kinda exagreggation.
Timeline seems like barrowed from Windows. This will be another awesome feature I love to see
Not to mention, analytics still wouldn't require a cookie unless they want to know which other sites I visited, which is none of their business.