Hacker News Reader

Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

We're past the point were small aesthetic changes like this make a meaningful difference in browsers.

In 2025 a browser that really acts as a user agent needs to do much more at the content level: ad blocking, content rewriting (clickbait headlines, etc.), content aggregation and summarization, deceptive content idenification, automatic reader-mode, etc.

View on HN

The extent that we need so many lines of defense versus web developers is astonishing.

Congrats to everyone working to make the Internet worse; you’ve had a very successful couple of decades.

In 2025 we still largely fail at the very basics of good UI in many apps, browsers included, so we're nowhere near the point where these extra features you describe are the only way to make a meaningful difference

Genuinely curious about where browser UI is falling short. I often run Chrome fullscreen, so there's barely any visible UI at all.

Chrome settings are abysmal.

The invisible part sucks as well. Since you do fullscreen often, you might need a convenient way to switch it on and off. F11 isn't convenient Similarly, can you see your tabs momentarily without shifting the page layout as happens if you exit fullscreen? Can you change the tab switching keybinds in-browser? Can you press C to copy the current page url in fullscreen mode? Can you have more fitting vertical tabs without the tab close button? Etc., etc., etc. Some of the issues are hacked around with various extensions, but then some have inpenetrable barriers coded in the awfulness that is the browser UI itself...

Man that really hits me for a killer app for LLMs: headline identification and summarization. Rewrite "could X be Y?" headlines with the answer.

Safari's reader mode summaries aren't too bad for this. They are usually short, under a paragraph. It'd be nice if you could "3D touch" the headline to just load that summary in the little preview window instead of having to click, and then open in reader mode though.

I can see that being a really nice built-in browser feature, to load a summary on hover over a link.

Arc has this, though I used it less than I thought I would, mostly because the summaries were too short to be helpful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com