Raven - a Mac site-specific web browser | Hacker News Reader

Raven - a Mac site-specific web browser

raven.io

111 pointsnephics76 comments

Nice looking site, but I dont understand what Raven does. As an example here is the explanation for the Smart Bar feature:

"Raven uses a technique called "site specific browsing" to create a dedicated browser instance for certain websites and their features. It debuts with the most widely used websites including Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Quora. Within each app Raven provides yet another instance for key features. This provides a whole new level of multitasking within a single window. The Smart Bar unifies navigation across many different websites allowing access to features quickly, without effort and with little instruction."

I have no clue what this means. This clearly needs to be dumbed down to be understandable by average users.

I agree. Though, it definitely depends on what the target market is. If it is an "average" computer user, then they definitely need to revamp their marketing. However, if they are targeting current site-specific browser users, then perhaps they just need to revamp a bit of their features list. Either way, where they are at now (right in the middle) seems to be confusing to both sides.

I'm very technical, and I have no idea what that means. They are talking technology instead of benefits. Why do I care about all these "instances"? Chrome creates new instances all the time, too, but I would imagine Raven thinks it has some advantage over Chrome.

And what, technically, is an "instance"? Do they mean "instance" as a process or "instance" from a UX perspective, meaning that the browser functions as though each site were in a unique container (autocomplete, etc., isolated)?

Most importantly from a privacy perspective, does this mean cross-site beacons don't work? Can I stay logged into Facebook without the Like button following me in other tabs?

"It debuts with the most widely used websites including ... Quora." Wait, what?

Yes, I widely use Quora. ;)

The most widely used sites in Silicon Valley?

I could be wrong but it looks like an easier to use version of Fluid: http://fluidapp.com/

From the Fluid website: "Turn Your Favorite Web Apps into Real Mac Apps"

Not fully accurate but easier to understand.

Nope. It's definitely not easier to use -- you have to join their developer program or whatever in order to add a website to that "smart" bar.

It sounds like the browser integrates with the application so that the line becomes blurred between where the browser ends and the app begins. As a long-term strategy you can almost see them releasing an API so companies can easily create websites "Built for Raven."

With that said I don't think that's at all clear from the copy... just what I'm inferring.

Essentially for each web app they've crated buttons. Look at twitter for mac or Sparrow, they have buttons relating to each account.

When you add the twitter web app it lets you click replies and dm's in the fashion that fits with the trend those apps brought. It's the same for Facebook, techcrunch (tv, other elements) and hackernews.

It's a nice idea although is slightly annoying unless you're on superfast internet as unlike those other apps you have to wait for your internet to catchup.

I think this browser needs speed increases as unless it's the fastest browser or on par it has little point. Interesting idea but not intuitive enough for me.

People still use Rockmelt so there must be a market for this.

Checked this out and have a few thoughts. I wasn't expecting a full browser interface (specifically, tabs, etc). A site-specific browser, to me, is not a browser replacement, but rather an alternative application for a specific site. The moment you add more than one site to a SSB,it defeats the "site-specific" aspect. The reason I used Fluid or Prism (other SSBs) is that I get separation of browser instances for each of my webapps. With Raven, this seems to get "lost". I do like what they are calling the smartbar, as it adds quick shortcuts to various areas of the webapps that are running. This is nice, but again, this detracts from the SSB aspect. At least you can hide it, unlike other apps using this UI concept. The other thing that I feel is missing, or at least I could not find easily, is a way to install userscripts and userstyles. For me to switch to a different SSB platform, I would need to be able to bring over my customizations. Other than this, the app UI is nice, the icon is nice, the name is nice, and the domain and website are nice. Look forward to seeing where this app ends up in the long run.

I just tried it out. It's not a site-specific browser at all, it's a normal web browser with a few nice interface ideas in it. Raven is using the WebKit/Safari engine, and shares its data repositories (such as cookies, history, offline data).

Between the misuse of software jargon, the buzzword overflow, the overall site design, and the potential for abuse I'm having a difficult time trusting this thing with my data.

My name is Kevin and I am the designer behind Raven. We believe there is a better way to discover and interact with web apps. That browsers could do a better job. At this moment we may not have the exact receipe right but we'll get there with time and iteration. The dream is that we will all someday have a centralized place to find web-based solutions and reduce the friction of signing up for them.

This is a post I wrote almost a year ago. A few weeks later I started down the path: http://newleaders.com/discussions/453-frictionless

Is the concept that you have some persistent buttons on the left hand side for common tasks associated with the app?

Sort of like a dedicated area in the browser that a webapp can add site-wide or page-specific UI controls to, rather than have them anywhere on the page?

Basically, the webapp equivalent of the OS X File Menu or Inspector. That's an interesting concept. Nontrivial chicken and egg problems though in terms of adoption. One approach is a Chrome extension that uses JS to add a "<nav>" element on the left hand side for a select list of sites. The idea is that over time, other sites could adopt this convention and your wrapper might not be necessary.

But are you thinking that you will always want to display these new UI elements in something that is not HTML/CSS/JS? Hmm. Unless you can do some sort of "automatic extraction of UI" from a page...which could actually be super interesting, as the homepage, sign-in button and so on aren't always that easy to find.

That's the sort of thing one could see a browser taking over in a left pane till the site owner got their act together.

Yes, you can use it to expose your key features in unified way the user will understand. You can use it to tie different sites or pages together. Think of apps like "Super Bookmarks" that contain more than one URL.

Who is "you"? Are websites supposed to develop their own extensions which will then be embedded into the browser? Or distributed as plugins?

> Yes, you can use it to expose your key features in unified way the user will understand.

Unified with who? If I'm AnnoyingSocialSites.com's competition, why do I want to unify with them?

Beyond that, what are you providing that can't already be done in a standard browser?

It seems like most of the functionality you're providing is already available in Air or Titanium.

Isn't this basically the exact same thing as pinned sites in IE9?

centralized place to find web-based solutions and reduce the friction of signing up for them

So this is a lead-generating and advertising business model? I agree with the other posters that the value proposition based on your website is still a little vague.

All that said, changing the BROWSER of a user causes a whole bunch of other problems that you will run into.

First, you want to reduce friction of web-service adoption, but require that users change their browsers first? This creates friction where there was none before. A vast majority of internet users still use IE because they think its the internet - not because they made a conscious decision. Its clear you will miss these users (not just because its Mac only).

Other segments could be blocked by IT departments, internal web-app support (I only assume you mask webkit somehow?), or the choice of browsers already installed by other users (kiosk, family computer). Most of the consumer market is covered web-service wise with GMail, Dropbox, and Facebook. Most of this market uses the services their friends use, not something an esoteric browser will suggest to them.

There are other businesses out there that help you 'discover and sign up' for web-based services, including but not limited to getapp.com, appdirect.com, and more integrated solutions with identity management and SSO for organizations.

Now that you have your beta - don't be too inclined to start building complex discovery features that no one will see. Adoption of your browser as the top of the funnel is your primary goal. You first have to overcome reasons to use Safari, Chrome, or Firefox with a unique value proposition they could only get through your browser. Right now a user can use Chrome and go to one of those sites I mentioned and they never had to download and install your product to do it.

I understand the 'lets flip it on its head and get them at the browser level' but thats a war usually fought for different reasons, requires a level of investment probably not worth what you are trying to do with it, and all during an era where desktop browsing is declining in favor of mobile-web and native app experiences are taking over.

Still, I could have completely missed the reason for Raven and what it is trying to accomplish and my response is only based on my experience so YMMV.

> A vast majority of internet users still use IE

IE may be the most popular browser, but it's not used by the vast majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

How does Raven compare to Fluid? (http://fluidapp.com/) That's what I use for a SSB for Gmail. What advantages does Raven have?

Digressing a little bit, but if you use an SSB for Gmail, have you checked out Sparrow?

Never heard of it until now. Looking at the page, I'm not interested. I don't want a local mail client. I don't even want to configure a local mail client to use IMAP. I just want a good SSB app for Gmail. Fluid fills this role, but I'm always curious if another SSB can do it better. So far, it seems not.

Hi Kevin, good job on Raven so far. I agree with other commenters that it needs some more work before it'll replace my regular browsing but I think you have a really interesting idea here.

Being able to create an app on the fly would be nice though I can see the merits of the app submission process.

The amount of controversy generated here probably means your idea is worth exploring further. Best of luck.

Auto-downloading just because I visited your download page is obnoxious. I just asked you your name, and you immediately tried to jump into my bed. Not cool.

I think downloading when you click the "download" button is reasonable.

I did not have this experience at all.

What did you expect to happen when you hit a button named "Download Raven"?

To the other repliers: it's downloading when you click on the download link in the top-level navigation. This was surprising and annoying to me as well.

Yes, it downloads when you visit the download page, not just by pressing the button.

Sorry if you think we raped you, it seems that Raven love you computer :)

This looks really nice! I like that there is a difference between favorite bookmarks and reference bookmarks. I have tons and tons of bookmarks of stuff I just want to keep/remember but do not visit every day.

The only thing I do not like so far is that I can't use mouse gestures (three finger slide) to navigate back/forth like I can in Chrome. I'm addicted to that feature.

> I like that there is a difference between favorite bookmarks and reference bookmarks.

The sentence "We have finally started to make sense of the differences between Bookmarks and Favorites." bothered me.

I find the difference between a typical browser's bookmarks menu and its bookmarks bar quite clear. The menu is reference for later, the bar is everyday items.

My bookmark bar is cruft free, no favicons, just lowercase abbreviations for bookmarklets and one or two uppercase letters for often used sites:

  read paper pin j.mp P Y TM LF G R A O T G FB F

For example, Y is this site. If I have too many to fit horizontally, I look for whichever ones I haven't been clicking and thin them back out.

My point is modern browsers all have this difference: visible daily use bookmarks, and bookmarks menu bookmarks, and there is a difference between them.

That is a valid point. I do only have the most used bookmarks in my bookmarks bar. But as for all the others I often do not take the time to organize the bookmarks properly when adding them (mostly due to lack of time). The fact that there is a option of choosing between a bookmark that is clearly one of the favorites or just something I would like to read later or keep for reference is what makes it nice. I know I can easily do the same in any other browser simply by using folders but just having a favorite/reference checkbox option upon bookmark creation really simplifies things. It's not a amazing new feature but just something simple that's easily added while improving the feel of adding a bookmark greatly. Or it does so for me anyway, perhaps I'm just too easily swooned by things.

All I can think about is that scene from Big, where Tom Hanks raises his hand and says "I don't get it."

Loving it so far! Nicely done.

The concept makes perfect sense ... to me anyway. Having the 'web apps', with their own unique drop-down context menus only a click of a button away makes for such an awesome alternative to wasting time looking for appropriate links/buttons on websites.

The potential for making a user's web-browsing experience less cluttered and more organised is definintely there.

Looking forward to see where this is at in six months.

Thank you so much, this is really what we try to achieve, making all websites have the same controls. So every you have a consistent experience across all websites.

Do you have plans on providing hooks websites can use to access OS level stuff like Camera, Microphone, or Notification System?

Can we get more technical detail? How closely is this attached to OS X? Heavy integration with Cocoa and other OS X APIs? Is there much portability to other OSes? Do you have any plans to release the source (or has the source been released already)? What license? What rendering engine do you use (presumably WebKit)? Is this a serious effort or more of an exploratory or proof-of-concept thing?

It is made in full cocoa/appkit. Not external UI things or framework. So it heavily integrated in OSX, and we will use the full power of Cocoa as we have a ton of feature planned.

We are considering making an iOS app that will sync with Raven for Mac, and maybe later some ports to Android and Windows.

We don't have any plan to open source the project at the moment, as most of the code is linked to our UI and very specific, currently we use the webkit version installed and your Mac, s tied to Safari (and act the same as Safari too), that why our download is so tiny. When we will start our own fork of webkit we might consider share the sources as it will be interesting.

But if you want technical details about our Smart Bar UI for example I'll be glad to anwsers your questions :)

Isolated cookie store?

I noticed yesterday that Fluid uses the Safari cookie store - which makes it useless atm as a private browser.

This is false. It's a preference you can toggle in the Security settings.

Actually as set by default by Apple we share Safari's cookies. We will have a switch soon that will be turned off by default.

Aw, man. Would love this if it were an extension and not a full-on browser replacement!

;)

Reminds me of Flock..

Best post ever.

I quite like the browser. While it kind of creates a bit of a walled garden effect. The truth is that most people browse the same websites most of the time. The potential with Ravens approach is that they can leverage that.

Quite often people will browse about one topic and then want to go to one of their other sites to get a different perspective, or to watch a video of it etc. It would be good if there was built in "search" where it can work out what topic you are reading and automatically search your other main sites for the same topic. Then you can click between your main sites to get each perspective/content on that topic.

It totally misses the point of SSB, first it shares its data with Safari (cookies, history, etc) and somehow wants to become the web on training wheels.

Filling web forms? Sign up? This problems are trying to be addressed by SSO using providers like Twitter, Facebook or some new kid in town with OAuth/OpenID/YouNewHipsterProtocol.

The idea of having a Site Specific Browser was to have a independent "browser" just to go to X site and be encapsulated from crashes or oddities from plugins from your main browser. It may also have some nice OS specific eye candy or features like system wide shortcuts.

Not becoming the web on training wheels.

I quite like it. Check out the "Web apps", to understand what Raven is about.

But please, don't close all websites when I close the window. Closing tabs on closing the window makes sense for Chrome, where each tab represents something ephemeral to begin with. But in Raven, a "tab" might be my Twitter page or my Hacker News feed. I want that to be readily available when I reopen Raven. (For the time being, I might just use CMD-H instead of CMD-W)

Or maybe that is not what Raven is intended to be after all?

I'm Thomas the developer of Raven :) We're still deciding about the window behavior, should we have only one window which keep trace of every tabs and app you open ? But then how to reset your main browser window ?

We have a lot of to consider, we don't want to provide a too limited experience, that why at the moment Raven behave as other browser, but we will adjust it soon.

I would like Raven to be this physical place that contains my most important web fixtures. That is, whenever I want to access Hacker News, instead of opening Chrome and hitting a bookmark, I'd just go to Raven and know that HN will be right there, no loading required. And right next to it, there will be Reddit and Github and Gmail.

But that creates an interesting problem: Twitter and Gmail will auto-reload its contents. Hacker News will not. Therefore, I'd like to set some fixed auto-refresh interval for the HN "app" (but not Gmail).

I don't know whether that is in line with your vision for Raven, but it certainly is something I would like!

Additionally, I'd like to have the option to open external links in my regular browser.

One of the benefits of using a single-site browser is that you can restrict the URLs the browser will load, protecting you against phishing, cookie stealing, etc.

Last I looked at Fluid, it had a whitelisting feature but it was horribly broken in that it included default rules that were irremovable like 'userscripts.org*' allowing 'userscripts.org.evil.com'.

I haven't looked at Raven yet, but hopefully it has whitelisting that works. That alone would make it worth looking into for me.

Nice how they've placed Hacker News in in the promo for "The Smart Bar" right on the homepage. That should earn some downloads right there. I'll give it a spin.

I didn't understand anything the site said, but I liked the pretty pictures a lot so I downloaded it. I think this could be appealing for highly visual guys like me. Maybe replacing all that copy with a nice video will be a good idea.

I didn't quite get why there are "apps" and why they need to be installed. Why are these more than just regular bookmarks?

That needs a better explanation.

The side pane for history, bookmarks, downloads, etc is so awesome! I really wish I could do this in Chrome...

Basically, I love the left side of Raven. I don't like the tabs and address bar...

Be nice to get some of these to be a bit more cross-platform. I believe the only cross-platform one out right now is Prism via Mozilla.

and Chrome's application shortcut feature

This is missing support for gestures and a lot of the standard hotkeys like switching tabs. Kind of disappointing.

Where is the command + F "search" fucntion???

Flock, again?

Does it look like Flock. I promise not

nice name, nice domain

but i don't get raven's USP

While we don't have payments in place yet this explains what our long term goal is. We are web app developers. We understand the problems with finding an audience for our services.

"The web has been plagued with required forms fields when signing up for websites, apps and services. While auto-fill is helpful it hasn't made the process of signing up for services any easier. Smart Bar apps provide us with a 1-click process for adding an app to your browser. When we combine this with an API for developers to integrate their "Best Offer" with subscription services we can provide a 1-click sign-up and subscription management just like you can with other software."

It's a nice idea in principle.

> The web has been plagued with required forms fields when signing up for websites, apps and services.

The solution isn't yet another standard (cue XKCD comic)—we already have OAuth, OpenID, and BrowserID for authentication.

> Smart Bar apps provide us with a 1-click process for adding an app to your browser. When we combine this with an API for developers to integrate their "Best Offer" with subscription services we can provide a 1-click sign-up and subscription management just like you can with other software

A proprietary API usable only in a new OS X-only browser? Have you approached the Mozilla Foundation?

Mozilla is putting quite a bit of effort into apps right now. "App tabs" in the browser is definitely one small step in getting a nice total ecosystem in place for developers.

FWIW, when I looked at Raven, my initial thought was "it's a browser with app tabs on the side". It's nicely designed, but doesn't seem groundbreaking to me.

I do like the Instapaper integration, though! I also like people exploring new browser ideas.

(obdisclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

A good comment from someone working for Mozilla, thank you sir :) This is only a beta, we're trying a lot of things at once.

I'm not defending the ideas of raven (i don't know enough about it anyway) but OpenID etc don't solve anything for me. I don't want 'one login to rule them all'-- at least, not server-side (or the 'cloud' as we are supposed to call it these days)

fuck not another browser!

"It debuts with the most widely used websites including Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Quora."

Lol, most widely used websites? Maybe for tech geeks. But for the rest of the world, it's Facebook, Craigslist, YouPorn/PornHub, etc.

We have a lot of applications coming soon, both official and non official.

I think it makes sense to cater to early adopters in this phase of the product's life.

"Raven is a site-specific web browser for Mac"

You're welcome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com