[HN Gopher] Show HN: Nyxt Browser 2.0.0
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Show HN: Nyxt Browser 2.0.0
Author : jmercouris
Score : 295 points
Date : 2021-05-20 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nyxt.atlas.engineer)
(TXT) w3m dump (nyxt.atlas.engineer)
| jmercouris wrote:
| If you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them :-)
|
| You can also check out our FAQ https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/faq
| monk_the_dog wrote:
| Just tried it and my first impression is: "this was built for
| me! I love it!". One bit of friction: I'm in vi mode. I hit 'f'
| to follow links. Apparently I need to hit 'i' before it will
| accept input. It would be better if it started in insert mode.
| Example: 'f' followed by 'g' just prints 'pressed key g'.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Does the block-mode work like DNS blockers or does it do more
| advanced blocking?
|
| Also, is there a way to securely interface with things such as
| keepassxc without leaking secrets while piping stuff?
| jmercouris wrote:
| Indeed there is; we are cognizant of this problem!
|
| As per block mode, it can block stuff by predicates, URLs,
| and any logic you like.
| pollyranna wrote:
| The download page says I can install from guix but I don't see
| it listed as an installable package in "guix search" or on
| https://guix.gnu.org/en/packages/N/
|
| Is it available through guix?
| mbakke wrote:
| The Guix package list is paginated, you need to navigate to
| the second page:
|
| https://guix.gnu.org/en/packages/nyxt-2.0.0/
|
| If "guix search nyxt" does not work, perhaps you need to
| 'guix pull'?
| kagevf wrote:
| I've installed a few of the v2 pre-releases using guix, and I
| assume that this version is also available.
| rattray wrote:
| One question I had, which is partly answered in the FAQ, is
| what rendering and JS engines are used.
|
| The FAQ says it can run on either WebKit/WebEngine (Blink) -
| how does it decide? Which is the default, and are there
| tradeoffs to using one or the other with Nyxt specifically?
|
| What JS engine is used?
| chalst wrote:
| The FAQ entry talks of their being a basic interface: the
| point is that these two engines have code that realises this
| interface. Other engines could also provide implementations
| of this interface.
|
| I'd be pleased if a Servo hacker stepped up and did this.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What would it take to get this working with Servo? I know
| Servo itself isn't really done yet, but let's ignore that
| for now.
| chalst wrote:
| I hope someone rolls by and answers: I am at the stage of
| following enough to be interested in the concept of
| integrating all the parts of a DOM engine with a proper
| GPU-friendly compositor in a modular way, but not at the
| stage of understanding the interfaces of the modules.
| jmercouris wrote:
| Everything needed is at the bottom of the browser.lisp
| source file, one would need to implement all `ffi-*`
| named functions.
| lucas_codes wrote:
| I use vimium and I love it, but I actually still use the mouse
| for navigating page links.
|
| Many of the websites we use these days are so link-heavy (or just
| not designed with keyboards in mind?) that pressing f, parsing
| the characters of the link I want, and then typing them, is still
| slower are at least more mental effort than using the mouse.
| dreamer7 wrote:
| True, this was my problem with vimium as well. The characters
| of the link would change even for relatively stable UI
| functionality like going fullscreen on Youtube. So, there was
| no muscle memory. Ironically, the only time i would remember i
| had vimium installed was when i would try to press f and then
| press a couple more characters while wondering why i installed
| the plugin in the first place.
| samatman wrote:
| Really? That was my favourite part of using qutebrowser.
|
| I'm already looking at a link when I want to 'click' it, so
| bringing up the shortcuts puts the relevant one right in the
| center of my vision. I don't know if it was faster (I have the
| same question about vim!) but it was fast enough, and more
| satisfying.
|
| Then again, the point of my i3/qutebrowser/etc box was to be
| keyboard-centric, and I would use it with a "the mouse is lava"
| philosophy. I should really stand that box up again; too much
| macOS is bad for the soul...
| lucas_codes wrote:
| It is certainly more satisfying, I'll give you that!
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| This is a cool project that I have tried a few times in the past.
| To me, the big draw is that it is written in Common Lisp. I was a
| patron contributor for a while, but when I had problems building
| from source, I stopped. Interfacing Common Lisp to things like
| WebKit, GTK, or Qt to build Nyxt was probably the reason I failed
| building from source, IIRC.
|
| This is probably a bad analogy, but forty years ago Lisp Machine
| subsumed the operating system. In modern times, in some sense the
| web browser is like an operating system layer, or at least a
| portable application platform. So, my bad analogy is that Nyxt is
| like a Lisp Machine.
|
| If I have time, I will try to build from source today. I just
| reread the dev source install instructions, and it does look
| straight forward. Hopefully being on a M1 MacBook won't affect
| the build process.
| jmercouris wrote:
| Thanks Mark, I really appreciate that. We're working on a Nix
| recipe to make it easier on MacOS, making some progress
| https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/116233
| cle wrote:
| This is the vision from my understanding. I think of it as
| Emacs for the web, instead of just text. Super compelling
| vision, I really hope they can pull it off.
|
| I've tried Nyxt a few times but I find it quite difficult to
| hack on, at the time it required an elaborate Emacs + SLIME +
| Common Lisp setup...I don't use CL very much so it was a lot of
| work and quite fragile. I hope they can get editing
| bootstrapped into Nyxt so that I can modify it in Nyxt itself
| instead of a bunch of complicated external tooling. As it
| stands, there's too much friction for me to hack on it.
|
| Regardless, tons of promise and I'm eagerly following its
| development!
| vindarel wrote:
| It seems they did it!
|
| > New simple built-in editor capabilities so that you can
| easily script Nyxt without opening up an external editor.
|
| (last screenshot)
| cle wrote:
| Wow nice! Thanks.
| vindarel wrote:
| BTW, Emacs is not the only CL editor anymore. Besides
| Vim, Atom with SLIMA is getting very close to Slime.
| There are a couple extensions for VSCode, and more:
| https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#text-editor-
| resou... Happy lisping :)
| Sleepytime wrote:
| I'm tab addicted. Reduce-to-buffer is so cool, and I like being
| able to save tabs to a file.
| O_H_E wrote:
| > ... and I like being able to save tabs to a file
|
| Yup, my attention was just grabbed
| gredelston wrote:
| Might wanna change the "Chat" page from Freenode to Libera.chat.
| jmercouris wrote:
| Yes, will get to that ASAP! Thank you for pointing it out!
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| For a long time I have been willing to write a personalized
| bookmark manager with a custom way to store and recall them. Nyxt
| looks like ideal platform to get started.
|
| A major thing that puts me off using it is that it does not have
| a dark mode. I hope that will come with ability to use some
| chromium or firefox extensions.
| O_H_E wrote:
| the first screenshot/link are literally for themes/dark-mode
| jmercouris wrote:
| Our bookmark facilities are quite advanced. You can query by
| tag, date, name, any combination of things really. I would give
| it a short investigation. :-)
| creamytaco wrote:
| Security, privacy considerations aside, can I use ublock origin?
|
| No? Then forget it.
| jmercouris wrote:
| OK.
| kgarten wrote:
| Cool project ... tried it in an early version and will play with
| it again.
|
| Was just wondering. From the FAQ there are no links or
| indications on how to configure it in Vi mode.
|
| Also the FAQ mentions the manual/tutorials for ,,here's how you
| configure it".
|
| maybe I missed sth. Being on a small screen (phone). Yet I was
| just interested in how the configure / change to vi worked and
| could not find that on the website.
|
| Recommend to add links to the FAQ. Is there somewhere a quick
| how-to/setup for the vi mode and maybe a walkthough of cool
| features? (Found qutebrowser way more accessible and stayed with
| it so far)
|
| Edit: typos
| [deleted]
| jmercouris wrote:
| When you start Nyxt there will be a button labeled "common
| settings" if you click it it will set up Vi mode or Emacs mode
| for you :-)
| jtmoulia wrote:
| Congrats to the Atlas team on the release! Nyxt truly delivers on
| the Emacs experience in the browser, and the addition of data-
| profiles to give a Firefox-container-like experience lets me use
| it as my daily driver.
|
| Yup, there are quirks from what I'm used to with Firefox + vimium
| but with Nyxt 1) I can actually understand and modify the code,
| and 2) it's delightful to have a browser I can use so keyboard-
| centrically
|
| One of the last gaps for me is being able to use a yubikey from
| Nyxt, but there's an open issue in the repo which feels
| accessible :)
| jmercouris wrote:
| Thanks so much, that is very kind of you to say :-)
| Bladestorm1011 wrote:
| Pretty cool, definitely going to look more deep into this. Been
| using vi which is supported just not sure till what extend, will
| be messing around with it for a bit.
| jmercouris wrote:
| It is fully supported, everywhere!
| dmos62 wrote:
| > Nyxt is web engine agnostic. We utilize a minimal API to
| interface to any web engine. This makes us flexible and resilient
| to changes in the web landscape. Currently, we support WebKit and
| WebEngine (Blink).
| ibraheemdev wrote:
| Nyxt just hit the top of the front page recently for anyone
| interested in reading past discussions:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509612
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Looks like the previous discussions (including that
| one) are:
|
| _Nyxt Browser_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509612
| - March 2021 (125 comments)
|
| _Nyxt browser: mouseless copy /paste_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25956152 - Jan 2021 (56
| comments)
|
| _Dashboard for Nyxt_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25151976 - Nov 2020 (2
| comments)
|
| _Nyxt Browser 2.0.0 Pre-release_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24353927 - Sept 2020 (11
| comments)
| ibraheemdev wrote:
| I have been one upped :)
| msla wrote:
| It seems it only has host-based blocking:
|
| https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/blob/master/source/bl...
|
| Is uBlock Origin style blocking a priority? NoScript?
| jmercouris wrote:
| Well, actually blocking can be done based on predicates and all
| kinds of rules. That said, uBlock itself is a priority,
| supporting FF extensions.
| conscion wrote:
| I really like the way Nyxt generates keyboard combos for
| clickable links (like this image [0]). Does anyone know if
| there's a program that creates something similar for Windows?
| Where every clickable element in the focused programs would have
| one of these tags generated for it.
|
| [0] https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/static/image/article/visual-
| mode...
| jmercouris wrote:
| You'll find many pantomimes of this in other projects. As far
| as I know Nyxt's style (showing the URL, title, type of
| element, and being able to select based on those) is unique.
| yewenjie wrote:
| If inside the browser, I love Tridactyl -
| https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl
| null621 wrote:
| If you mean within the browser, vim plugins do exactly this. I
| use one called Vimium, very customizable.
| reocha wrote:
| http://vimium.github.io/
| kriops wrote:
| https://qutebrowser.org/
|
| Is a favorite of mine.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| It look like interesting, although I would think to really make a
| better web browser, would require heavily modifying the engine or
| writing a new one (so that the handling of HTML and CSS can be
| customized too), rather than using the existing one. Also, I
| would want to support extensions written in C.
| theSealedTanker wrote:
| how does it compare with something like qutebrowser? or using
| chromium with a extension like vimium?
| math-dev wrote:
| How does this compare to eww?
|
| Also does this fit as an emacs package?
| jolmg wrote:
| > Also does this fit as an emacs package?
|
| It doesn't run on emacs, though you can connect to a running
| instance with emacs.
| math-dev wrote:
| Thanks!
| yewenjie wrote:
| Rather than asking what features does Nyxt have now, I think it
| is more useful to ask what do they not have compared to something
| like Firefox or Chromium.
|
| I will be very happy if someone can list down the most important
| features that are lacking in Nyxt.
| jtmoulia wrote:
| From a week of usage my outstanding missing piece is yubikey
| support. Really can't complain tho: it's still early, open-
| source, and a great product.
| wraptile wrote:
| I've been using qutebrowser for few years now - how does Nyxt
| compare to it?
|
| I love seeing more keyboard driven software!
| jmercouris wrote:
| Thanks for the question, we hint at in our FAQ " Nyxt differs
| fundamentally in its philosophy- rather than exposing a set of
| parameters for customization, Nyxt allows you to customize all
| functionality. Every single class, method, and function is
| overwritable and reconfigurable. You'll find that you are able
| to engineer Nyxt's behavior to suit almost any workflow."
| https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/faq
| mdip wrote:
| I think this is the second or third time that I've seen this
| browser hit the front page. Each time I get a little more
| interested.
|
| The concern that I have is that there's going to be a learning
| curve to picking this up. Normally, that's fine, but this is my
| browser. I live in the thing and there's no other piece of
| software outside of my IDEs that affects my productivity more.
| When I took the time to learn VIM a few years ago,
| retrospectively, I could have about spent half as much time
| learning it as I did and skipped a handful of things I don't use.
| The tone isn't meant to be negative -- that 50% is tremendously
| useful and it's rare that I don't over-learn something (I enjoy
| it).
|
| I'm hoping someone who uses Nyxt as their "primary browser"[0]
| might be able to provide their thoughts on any of my questions --
|
| I use VIM/VIM plug-ins, but Firefox; what's the experience of
| becoming proficient with Nyxt?
|
| Is there any tool/first-timer/quick-start that works better/worse
| for acquiring the muscle-memory?
|
| Outside of "keyboard" ... As a full stack web developer (various
| front-ends, mostly .NET web FWIW), what are the "big reasons"
| that I want this (killer app?)? Put other ways: Are there any
| interesting "one-liners"[0] that solved real problems developing
| web-sites? Is there any feature that is so amazing that you
| agonize over it not being available when you're not on your own
| hardware?
|
| Basically, I'm trying to answer (for myself) whether or not it's
| worth the effort to explore integrating this into my work
| tooling, so I'd love any other input.
|
| [0] I've not used the product; I'm referring to its
| programmability -- I can see its use (and do this, today, kludg-
| ily) -- but I'm wondering if there are any use cases that were
| surprisingly "magical".
| cle wrote:
| If you think of this as an interactive API over your browser,
| there are a lot of possibilities, as it significantly lowers
| the barrier to entry for browser dev.
|
| One thing I've always wanted is a way to sync cookies between
| my browser and curl, something like that would be relatively
| trivial in Nyxt, assuming it exposes APIs for managing cookies
| (and if it doesn't, I'd imagine it would be easy to add).
|
| I can easily imagine myself writing little functions like I do
| in Emacs to automate various things, like iterating over all my
| tabs and shoving their URLs into a text file, or searching
| through the _content_ of all open tabs, or adding little menu
| shortcuts like "append this highlighted text to an email
| message text box in another tab", or "take the highlighted
| text, construct a new URL based on it, and open it in a new
| tab". I do these kinds of things all the time in Emacs and I
| love it, I would be excited to use a browser with the same ease
| of extensibility.
|
| I can also imagine, if the community is large enough, that
| people smarter than me will come up with libraries for Nyxt
| that blow my mind. This always happens to me when a powerful
| tool is combined with a strong community.
| vindarel wrote:
| I can give you example snippets I was able to write for Nyxt,
| that I find quite exciting, as premises of an integrated
| platform, bluring the lines between a web browser and other
| applications. I don't agonize in not having them in other
| browsers, yet, but I still find the Nyxt capacities they
| illustrate exciting.
|
| - first, there's a simple file manager in Nyxt (Webkit's), the
| open file command is bound to C-x C-f, just as in emacs, so
| it's at easy reach. We can open a directory view, an HTML file,
| a video in Nyxt. I wrote a snippet to dispatch to the right
| application depending on the extension. There was no such thing
| buit-in, but I could add it. Similarly, I added a command (M-x
| open-home-directory) to open the home directory. It's easy to
| write such simple commands.
|
| - there's a built-in _git cloner_ (I contributed it, uh). M-x
| git-clone and it asks for a directory. I can open a file or
| directory with emacsclient.
|
| - we can write hooks: I have one to open reddits links in
| old.reddit.
|
| - I have M-x download-video (built-in maybe?) that fires
| youtube-dl.
|
| - I have M-x fip-radio-save-current-playing-song, that scrapes
| the song data on the radio's website and saves it in a text
| file. I can view them in HTML, I can M-x listen-saved-song,
| that searches it on youtube (it could find on a directory if I
| already have it).
|
| => they are little things that I usually do in a terminal that
| I now do in a browser. Nyxt gives me a nice fuzzy completion
| prompt for any list of strings, it gives me the possibility to
| print rich text, etc.
|
| There's something I didn't manage to do yet but am wanting very
| much, is to be able to react to Webkit web events. Last time I
| checked they were not exposed on Nyxt, only on the C side. I
| would react to button clicks, I would add new buttons on the
| page and react to them. That'd be awesome.
|
| All this is written in Common Lisp, that is strange at first
| (rest assured, you're normal), but it's a great language with a
| long history of industry use, so it's solid and it's good to
| have it on my toolbet. I am now lauching new services in CL
| rather than in Python, that is so slow, unstable and error
| prone.
|
| my snippets: https://github.com/vindarel/next-init.lisp/
| (outdated, I didn't follow the latest changes)
|
| other great config: https://github.com/tviti/next-cfg/ and
| https://github.com/tviti/next-notebook (interface with Jupyter)
|
| An honest comparison with Python, workflow and ecosystem:
| https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/pythonvslisp/ (mine)
| mastrsushi wrote:
| Does anyone know of any attempts at writing new web engines? Or
| at least one built off of WebKit to diverge from Chromium?
| jmercouris wrote:
| It is one of our dreams to resurrect this:
| https://github.com/atlas-engineer/closure
| ahane wrote:
| https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/
| O_H_E wrote:
| Servo?
| ibraheemdev wrote:
| Why are most open source browsers based chromium as opposed to
| gecko? I would think much of the OSS community would be opposed
| to using google owned software.
| sequence7 wrote:
| I suspect the answer is because of compatibility. Chromium has
| become the industry standard, everyone tests only on Chrome
| (and Safari for mobile) so you can expect fewer issues if
| you're based on chromium.
| graderjs wrote:
| But I think it's a valid question. Because for a niche
| browser (which most of these alternate projects are),
| mainstream compatibility for all websites doesn't seem like
| it would be the most important thing. I think the idea of
| using Gecko[0] is a solid one. :P ;) xx
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev
| sequence7 wrote:
| I agree it's a valid question and it seems my suspicion is
| not the main reason. Based on the other replies to the
| parent it seems that choosing Gecko requires more work.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Imo, browsers need to have a standard specification and one
| that includes an open source versioned controlled reference
| implementation of the core parts. It seems chromium has become
| that standard (chromium is open source afaik, not owned by
| google).
|
| I often argue against purely natural language specifications in
| favor code based specs. I just don't think human language is
| nearly precise enough to write an adequate specification.
| Natural language words are incredibly polysemic and contextual.
| Look, for example, at how many meanings the word "break" has:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/break
|
| Kolmogrov has long ago suggested that fully specified
| information distills down to a computer program:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length
|
| The ideal language for a pure specification might be a mix of
| natural language and pseudo code with a pseudo test suit.
| However, if you are writing that, you might as well go one step
| further and write working testable code.
|
| I like the concept of Literate Programming
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) and its
| descendants of having code with extractable inline comments
| that auto generate documentation. I would argue that modern
| pull request based workflows that tie discussions to version
| controlled code changes are also the progression of this line
| of thought. A cleaned up version of these might make sense for
| a specification.
|
| And I get some of the concerns. While natural language under
| specifies, reference implementations over specify. This is more
| of a problem with low level languages however. Modern high
| level languages are getting fairly close to a form of pseudo
| code. I fully agree that the reference implementations
| shouldn't contain or should hide, low level optimizations. I
| also understand that reference implementations can unduly tie
| specs to specific hardware, OSs and platforms.
|
| But to me, over-specification is less of a problem than under-
| specification and it can be mitigated by labeling particular
| functions or blocks of code as implementation specific and not
| part of the spec.
|
| Without spec written in code, the different implementations
| always have subtle incompatibilities. I see egregious versions
| of under-specification in government where horrendously vague
| specs are created in order to issue RFPs for getting software
| built. They usually end up with non working software at mind
| blowing cost.
|
| People have this weird misconception that you are contracting
| out to build software. You are not. Building software is really
| easy. You press the build button or type the compile command.
| Building software has been fully automated for a while now.
| What is difficult is designing software and specifying what it
| must do. This is because there is a vast jungle of protocols,
| business flows, hardware and software platforms that need to be
| interacted in different ways for different needs. This is what
| needs to be specified and only computer code can do it
| adequately.
|
| I wish that Mozilla adopted the chromium core. We really need a
| well funded non-profit managed release of the reference
| browser.
| cylinder714 wrote:
| This is really, really good, thank you.
|
| My only concern is that one ends up with something like TeX,
| written in a long-obsolete dialect of Pascal, requiring a
| translation layer to convert the source into a more relevant
| language (C).
| mavroprovato wrote:
| If I'm not greatly mistaken, there is no way to embed Gecko in
| a desktop application right now
| fmakunbound wrote:
| IIRC, Mozilla killed off embedded gecko years ago.
| ginko wrote:
| What I'd like to see would be more projects picking up Servo.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Perhaps when it's production-ready. There's still quite a lot
| of work to be done before then.
| jmercouris wrote:
| We are not based on Chromium, we are engine agnostic. As to why
| no Gecko support? Mozilla does not make it easy!
| servilio wrote:
| Have you looked at Servo instead?
| dijit wrote:
| I have,
|
| I was working on replacing QtWebEngine(chromium) for
| Qutebrowser with Servo. It is very far from ready, most
| websites do not render correctly and JavaScript is very
| hit/miss with regards to updating the rendered view.
|
| Simply put: Servo is not possible to use as a daily driver.
| lufte wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have that work available anywhere?
| hawski wrote:
| Servo is not done.
| shakow wrote:
| Servo is not yet ready for everyday use. Moreover, Mozilla
| fired most of its team working on it, so notable progress
| is not to be expected in the short term :(
| pojntfx wrote:
| If I remember correctly, it is much harder to use Firefox's
| components outside of Firefox than it is to do with
| Chromium/Blink. There is a reason why there is no relevant
| Electron alternative based on Firefox/Gecko. On Android the
| situation is different but not on any other platform:
| https://mozac.org/
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Is/Has there been much interest in doing this at Mozilla?
| More people using their renderer is good for them in the long
| run.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Historically, Firefox has been the only moneymaker for
| Mozilla. It is possible they didn't want to make it easy to
| embed so anyone can create second FF on top of their work
| and compete without paying dues. Electron and single
| applications built fully on top of browser engine alone is
| relatively new, and possibily out of Mozilla's field of
| vision back then.
|
| But, that is speculation, and I have no proof whatsoever
| other than tangential conclusions from Mozilla's blunders
| in recent years.
| whatshisface wrote:
| A much more realistic explanation would be that any
| software that isn't specifically designed in a decoupled
| way will be coupled at a million points and impossible to
| separate.
| samatman wrote:
| It's probably both.
|
| The only upside for Mozilla is that making Gecko
| available is the right thing to do. Which, for a
| nonprofit, matters, and I'm sure that having an Electron-
| equivalent is the kind of thing that would be considered
| cool by staff.
|
| But there is the downside that it makes it easier to
| build browsers which would compete with Firefox for the
| shrinking niche that is "doesn't run Chrome or Safari". I
| guess you could make a case that such browsers would take
| at least as much share from Chrome as Firefox, maybe more
| even; but you could make the other case as well.
|
| When you add the additional downside that it's probably
| many man-decades of work to do it at all, well, then it
| doesn't happen. Although the existence of GeckoView
| implies that Firefox and Gecko aren't as tightly coupled
| as they could be.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Isn't that the point? Making the engine decoupled and
| embeddable just wasn't on Mozilla's radar, and it
| suffered as a consequence.
|
| Chrome team was advcied very early in their development
| by none other than Android team to go for WebKit because
| it was easier to work with. Not Presto, not Gecko. So at
| least since back then, thud feature was at least somewhat
| on Apple's list of priorities. I'm not sure if it got
| carried over from KHTML, but if it did, they didn't break
| it intentionally.
|
| Back in IE horror days I remember using Avant Browser. It
| used IE to provide fancier features like tabs. I never
| remember Gecko anywhere in discussion for being a
| platform to build on top of, except for other Mozilla
| projects (FFOS, Thunderbird) that Mozilla dropped sooner
| or later.
| aakkaarr wrote:
| I am sorry but you are wrong. I remember times when first
| company forked WebKit to make their WebKit based browser
| (it was apple creating safari, or if my memory is wrong
| it was Google and their chrome). Mozilla foundation was
| much upset they didn't choose Gecko. But the company
| (Apple?) said it was because easiness of own
| implementation. Gecko was too hard to adapt.
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| Mozilla making money? LOL. Google just sends them spare
| change, pretending to pay for placement, to have an alt
| browser to show to antitrust authorities. Third-party use
| of Gecko satisfies that too.
| vfclists wrote:
| Mozilla has never been truly sincere in their claimed
| desire to create a browser builder toolkit.
|
| Even their own developers were disappointed when they
| changed direction.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| Not since the days of XULRunner, which is ancient nowadays.
| smazga wrote:
| Conkeror (basically Nyxt on xulrunner...exactly what the
| upper comment is asking about) used to be my browser of
| choice. It was baffling to me when they deprecated
| xulrunner. Like, why?
|
| There was supposed to be an alternate way to do it
| (running with 'firefox -app' or something), but it was
| poorly documented and constantly breaking in new
| versions, so I eventually gave up.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I loved Conkeror, but I think this one might be even
| better, once I've gotten used to its quirks. I'm kinda
| stoked right now.
| donio wrote:
| RIP conkeror, miss you dearly
| kilian wrote:
| They have Geckoview on Android but from what I've heard
| there was no interest in making that available for other
| platforms, and this was _before_ they fired a ton of their
| technical staff. A shame really!
| gostsamo wrote:
| I think that Mozilla has a project for decoupling the
| browser components but I'm not sure if it will result in
| further projects. The name was something like project
| Stylus, but I can't find it now and I might be wrong about
| the name.
| avery42 wrote:
| Yes. There was an experimental project called Positron [0]:
| "a experimental, Electron-compatible runtime on top of
| Gecko". It was discontinued in 2017 [1].
|
| AFAIK the only thing around nowadays is GeckoView [2] for
| Android.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mozilla/positron [1]:
| https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ [2]:
| https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/
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