Dooble: A minimal GUI web browser | Hacker News Reader

Dooble: A minimal GUI web browser

textbrowser.github.io

87 pointsphilonoist52 comments

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Minimal in the sense of gui chrome, it uses Qt's WebEngine (Chromium) lib.

Also minimal in the sense that it doesn't ask you to log in, suggest you use their password manager, etc.

The feature list at https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble is... interesting for a minimal browser:

> Original implementations of AES-256, Threefish-256.

> Native graphing of data.

> Floating digital clock.

etc.

I was almost like "my mother would love this!!" but then I realized that the floating clock app we had on her computer was specifically an analog clock, not a digital clock, as she found that easier.

It seems to be using QtWebEngine, and as such, Blink (Chromium engine), but it also supports Gopher.

https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble

So, a Chromium webview with some custom menus? Cool, cool, cool...

Even cooler:

> both implementations of AES and Threefish are written by the author(s)

What's that old saying about rolling your own crypto? Something about it's definitely always a good idea to do, I think.

I think that's it

Doesn't the saying refer to those who design their own cryptographic algorithms, not those who write their own implementation of accepted ones?

You can still implement existing ones in ways that are vulnerable to e.g. timing attacks.

Not to mention, you can also introduce bugs, which nobody will help you fix, because you’re not one of the major implementations.

I don't think it was about specific algorithms, but about the entire system. And AFAICT it is often said by people who have monetary incentives to convince others hire them, so i'd take it with a grain of salt or two.

Looks like similar to Falkon, which hasn't seen an update in a while. Maybe KDE could support this project? It would be great to have minimal alternative browser in KDE Apps, like Epiphany (GNOME Web) on GNOME.

I dream about a fully integrated, state-of-the-art web browser for KDE. Even I've been saying this for years, but always am replied with "we already have Firefox/Chrome" argument.

But it seems they actually don't care about it. From 4.x on, every web browser they touch is just left to die for some reason (Konqueror, reKonq which was allegedly being supported by Blue Systems, now Qupzilla/Falkon)... Even the noise about Ken Vermette's "Fiber" at the early days of "KDE5" ended being only that, just noise.

I never used KDE for a very long time, but my first Linux distro (Caldera OpenLinux -IIRC- version 2.3, which i still consider the best put together distro in terms of how things worked with each other, especially considering it came out in late 1999) used KDE1 and i used KDE3 via Slax in some school computers years ago. One of my favorite aspects of KDE was Konqueror and how well integrated it felt with the rest of the desktop.

I was disappointed when i learned that KDE decided to replace Konqueror with Dolphin.

They just replaced konqueror with dolphin for file management. Konqueror is still for web browsing

Yes, but what i liked back then was how integrated it felt. Opening any html file opened inside Konqueror, opening a folder with an index.html file showed the page (with a toolbar button to toggle it), back/forward buttons worked seamlessly, being able to drag-and-drop files seamlessly, etc.

Not even Win98/ME (which introduced those features) felt that integrated.

And not just that, Konqueror (still) handles a lot of protocols. man://foobar will show you the man page for foobar with links to other man pages actually working. smb:// will browse a samba share. fish:// and sftp:// for remote ssh access. It really felt like a perfectly integrated everything viewer.

Well, you're in luck because it is still there

It isn't part of KDE/Plasma ever since KDE4 AFAIK. It is "there" in the sense that you can find it in KDE's website and some distributions provide it, but it isn't the KDE file/web/whatever manager anymore.

Also the functionality i described above doesn't exist anymore in current Konqueror - doubleclicking on an .html file doesn't open it inside Konqueror (not even selecting "open in tab" does - even though it does open an empty tab that does nothing :-P), it opens it in Firefox (or whatever browser you have installed i guess). Index.html in folders is not handled anymore and the option to toggle/enable it is also gone.

This is from a quick test i just did with Konqueror available from openSUSE Tumbleweed's repository right now. Also it crashed twice and the settings window had some missing icons and other weird glitches, both of which basically show that it barely receives any attention nowadays.

Reinventing Firefox or chromium is a fools errand. These are codebases with millions of lines of code added every year. What we need is a new specification for the web that is small and limited. Maybe we need to break apart the current specs into smaller specs so it is more feasible to build competing products.

Things like Gemini are making such an attempt to focus on document reading.

The modern browser is an operating system and it takes millions upon millions of dollars to build and maintain.

Does konqueror[1] not work well enough?

[1] https://apps.kde.org/konqueror/

funny because that's where webkit (and therefore blink) was originally from, right?

Yes, indirectly. WebKit was a fork of KHTML, and later replaced it entirely.

Thanks for reminder, somehow I absolutely forgot about this browser.

Last time I checked, they use Qt's Webkit, which had been removed from Qt a few years ago, which at that point was already years old (in favor of Webengine), andere Konqueror hasnt been updates since, and I couldn't detect any efforts to port to Webengine.

Ie you'd be using a browser from 2015, without security updates.

there should be an application layer protocol and corresponding browser that only transmits things that do not require a large corporation for the creation and maintenance of the software that is used to display those things. why would i describe it that way instead of some other way? because that is really the core of the issue. we can focus on making the web simpler for the sake of user experience but what really matters is whether a new web would have many smaller organizations maintaining browsers or just one huge company maintaining the browser that 99% of people use. in the former case, browsers are subject to a market and would therefore be faster, safer, better maintained and conform to the preferences of the user, ie open source and no spyware. in the latter case the browser is only good if you are lucky, the well-being of a single company has a disproportionate impact on the ability of people to browse the web and their browser will probably spy on you.

javascript was created because we didnt know how the web would be used. now that the web is part of everyones lives and we know basically how we use it and what role it plays, what reason is there for this giant lumbering mess that is javascript that needs an army of people to interpret and is the source of countless security problems?

I miss Dillo.

Dillo still exists, for what it's worth. Netsurf is another reasonable choice in that same space.

I thought NetSurf was just for BeOS or something. Is it usable?

NetSurf runs on basically everything, including Linux, RISC OS, KolibriOS (fits on a floppy!), and Windows.

I use NetSurf on termux.

> (fits on a floppy!)

*Without NetSurf.

If you don't have two floppy drives, you're not cool enough to be on the internet.

It seems okay. I built it on Arch this morning and the only thing I can't get it to do is save bookmarks (favorites) - any ideas? The gopher support is very welcome as I run a gopher server.

RIP Midori.

(It’s still around but it’s moving to Electron.)

Slim chance, but I'll ask anyway: Is it feasible to port Dooble to legacy platforms*? Or would that be technically impossible due to the stack used?

*Thinking of PPC Macs (both OSX and OS9) as well as old *nix workstations.

It is based on QT which requires modern C++ compiler, which means that it will be very hard to port.

Dillo and Netsurf may be alternatives for you.

With the menu and title bar it already looks bigger than chrome.

I had that same though, seemed about the same amount of GUI as a stock Safari. The title might need a comma: "A minimal, GUI web browser". It's not a "minimal GUI".

The GUI has been changed. See: https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble/issues/108

Fixed. Now the heights of the address frame and the status bar looks like this: https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble/issues/108#issuecommen...

Looks 95% like Firefox

really? to me it just looks like a small browser based on Qt...

It looks identical to my Firefox except the + is on the other side. The icons are the same. (I have a userChrome.css that removes all the dumbass padding newer releases of Firefox added.)

I poked around the site and the github page.

What's the point? Is this a hobby? Does this have some kind of feature (beyond being open source)?

Well, it does have the feature of apparently being trivial to build (i build it with just qmake && make) as it only needs Qt5 (of course then you also need to build Qt5 if you don't have that, which will have a ton of dependencies for itself).

So?

I mean, that's nice if the point is that the browser is a hobby browser or intended for general education about developing your own browser.

But what's the compelling reason to use the browser? What's the advantage?

Dunno, i deleted it after i built it and tried it out for a bit :-P. Firefox is fine.

Perhaps it could be a neat starting point for a new browser or its little code could make it easy to customize.

Sadly does not work on Wayland only environment.

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