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Fiber UI Experiments

kver.wordpress.com

41 pointsjrepin38 comments

"Tabs on Side" is more accurately described as "tabs stuffed into the address bar."

This is what I think of as being "tabs on side", and it works great on a widescreen monitors:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

I'm a long time user of Tree Style Tabs also, but I wish it had a better autohide implementation. The current implementation performs poorly (seems to rerender the tree structure animations on every unhide), and isn't responsive to touch input for unhiding (although Firefox for Desktop just sucks for touch in general, so there's not a huge loss here).

Tabs on side with autohide is the best of both worlds, in my humble opinion. With static tabs on side, the loss of horizontal pixels is mostly inconsequential when running the browser maximized, but really hurts when you want to snap the browser to one side of the screen on a 1080p monitor (and have dev tools on the other side, for instance).

I wish some browser vendor would implement something like this natively to make the feature more discoverable. I'm sure it'll be a hit amongst power users and be a powerful differentiator. I remember Chrome having side tabs in development at one point, but it was scrapped for reasons I no longer remember.

Looks great. But really need a tab sidebar. This works really great on big monitors when you have many tabs open. Instead of stacking up in the top bar.

There's room for a third browser that is 100% open source, built on desktop technologies (non of this HTML/JS nonsense) that takes privacy to absurd levels.

I wonder why one hasn't popped up yet, there are lots of people in the tech industry who would switch in a heart beat. I would still use Chrome for my dev work but the only URL Google would see is localhost.

>I wonder why one hasn't popped up yet

Because all the sites need html/js nonsense ?

You misunderstood. I meant browsers built with something like QT or .NET - another other than HTML and JS. See Atom's performance for why it's a bad idea to use web technologies for something that needs performance.

I've rewrote so many similar replies that I think I'll just copy and paste from now on. See here for more context:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9813873

> See Atom's performance for why it's a bad idea to use web technologies for something that needs performance.

This sentiment, that Atom is not performant because it's built on web technologies, gets repeated a lot, but it's provably false.

Light Table and VS Code both use the exact same HTML/CSS/JS stack on top of Electron. Both are much more performant than Atom.

Whatever performance issues plaguing Atom are more likely caused by flawed architecture and/or lack of optimization. The underlying web technologies it's built on have been demonstrated to be capable of delivering highly performant text editors.

Part of the reason is that once you write it in QT or .NET, performance might cease to be an issue, but now you have significant issues with platform compatibility and ease of porting.

It's a case where the existing solutions aren't perfect but are plenty good enough, and building a high quality product requires an immense amount of effort and long-term support.

There's a gap in the market for a simple and fast browser that takes privacy seriously.

Epic?

Not open source, so it needs to be asked, what's their business model?

Firefox with extensions ?

Firefox has the code that secretly sends a hash of every file you download, with your IP and computer fingerprint, to Google for "verification". I only found out after a post about it here on HN.

But I'm interested, what Firefox extensions are good for privacy?

I think if you uncheck the "block reported forgeries/attacks" options in security settings it won't make the requests.

BetterPrivacy to manage Flash Cookies

Cookie Monster to manage regular cookies

HTTPS Everywhere

DNSSEC/TLSA Validator

RequestPolicy Continued to control third-party requests

NoScript for selectively allowing first-party JS, and keeping third-party scripts blocked when other third-party requests are allowed through RequestPolicy, and for its other always-on features like XSS protection, permanently forcing encryption for cookies set over HTTPS, etc.

µMatrix has apparently been available for Firefox for a few months now, and is probably a viable substitute for RequestPolicy, but not a complete replacement for NoScript.

Links to each of the mentioned (and available) add-ons below. Note that they each require a restart.

- BetterPrivacy https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy...

- Cookie Monster https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...

- HTTPS Everywhere - https://www.eff.org/files/https-everywhere-latest.xpi

- DNSSEC/TLSA Validator - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dnssec-valida...

- RequestPolicy Continued ??? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...

- NoScript Suite - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

- µMatrix - couldn't find a Firefox version

RequestPolicy Continued: https://requestpolicycontinued.github.io/

µMatrix: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/

are you referring to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9779440

this is the first I've heard of this, could you be more specific?

This: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

It sends a hash of the file to Google with your IP/print. Worded like it's anonymous and one way, it's not. The hash is unique to the file, if your file-hash database is large enough (like Googles) you can cross reference to get the details of the original file. From this hash, you can then see the exact file the person is downloading. Great if you want to make a list of who is downloading an unallowed file, like say, a list of missing Chinese citizens or anything from wleaks.

Nothing on that page mentions a hash. There is absolutely nothing misleading in the page you linked.

The metadata sent to Google includes a hash of the file. That's what the metadata part means.

No, the metadata means the URL (not hashed). The protocol is linked from the page you posted. It's clear as day, and the only person who would be misled is somebody who didn't read the page at all and claimed it said things it doesn't say.

pretty sure you're misunderstanding how firefox handles that, it downloads to local and checks against it, not the other way around

Only if it's signed by a known good publisher. Is that file you downloaded from Github signed by a known good publisher? Nope, then it's getting sent to Google for logging. Oh, it was a list of detained journalists? Well, no more gov contract work for you and you'll never know why.

There is nothing secret about it.

I'd suggest it's purposefully obfuscated. It's certainly not clear this is being done and many users are surprised it exists. Such a possibility would be in line with Mozillas recent actions and allegations made against them.

I really wish that Microsoft and Apple would introduce tabbed windows for the entire OS with some good extensibility and customization options so that application developers aren't pressured into implementing window management as part of their application.

Having every application implement tabs differently is a frustrating experience. Those who've fallen in love with tiling window managers on Linux will sympathize.

Does anyone happen to know if there is a pre-release? I couldn't find anything with a cursory Google search...

Seems like there is not: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoroni...

Source code or GTFO was the response, and seemingly its all theory so far....

I'd love a web browser that uses an idea similar to vim's tabs and buffers.

Each tab would be a grouping of sites and you could use Ctrl+P to open a fuzzy search for sites in that tab.

Edit: And maybe there could be a mode where you fuzzy search the contents of the site too.

I think Vimperator/Pentadactyl with Panorama (aka Firefox's Tab Group) might fit this requirement.

Currently I have two Panorama groups, general and work. I can use Ctrl-N/Ctrl-P to switch between each tabs in the group, and can navigate to other Panorama group with Ctrl-Space. All of these are also accessible via Vimperator command b where it will list all buffers and I can filter or navigate to it by tab number of tab name.[1]

A dedicated browser that does this out of the box would be nice, though.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/svKZh23.png

Edit: Or even Firefox with Panorama alone, since I think Firefox now jumps to tab when you search in the navigation bar.

Is the only innovation in how customizable the UI is? I guess it's way too hard to write a new rendering engine. With the existing ecosystem of chrome / Firefox / safari extensions it will be difficult to gain traction.

Note that this is a kde based browser. I got the impression the the author didn't even plan on porting it to non-linux OSs. Its not looking for mainstream adoption, it looks like its just trying to be the next kde web browser, one that integrates well with the kde desktop environment, like epiphany on gnome.

While more new rendering engines are good too, having more flexible and customisable UIs is something that mainstream browsers seem to be actively moving away from, so a new UI on an existing rendering engine isn't such a bad idea.

Really nothing new with tabs on the side. As I remember IE did this on IE9? It wasn't too good so they reverted it back.

so another browser? what makes this one different? would it be safe from drive by downloads and other exploits? do you have a team and an army of QA to make sure new patches are released on time and make sure vulnerabilities don't linger?

are the tabs done in QML? as a qml developer i would really love to be able to use that code if they are! any plans on sharing it?

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