[HN Gopher] Dooble: A minimal GUI web browser
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       Dooble: A minimal GUI web browser
        
       Author : philonoist
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2021-12-30 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (textbrowser.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (textbrowser.github.io)
        
       | butz wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | Gualdrapo wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | badsectoracula wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | guessbest wrote:
             | They just replaced konqueror with dolphin for file
             | management. Konqueror is still for web browsing
        
               | badsectoracula wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | Asooka wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | guessbest wrote:
               | Well, you're in luck because it is still there
        
         | guessbest wrote:
         | Does konqueror[1] not work well enough?
         | 
         | [1] https://apps.kde.org/konqueror/
        
           | smegsicle wrote:
           | funny because that's where webkit (and therefore blink) was
           | originally from, right?
        
             | LeoPanthera wrote:
             | Yes, indirectly. WebKit was a fork of KHTML, and later
             | replaced it entirely.
        
       | tb131 wrote:
       | It seems to be using QtWebEngine, and as such, Blink (Chromium
       | engine), but it also supports Gopher.
       | 
       | https://github.com/textbrowser/dooble
        
       | gigel82 wrote:
       | So, a Chromium webview with some custom menus? Cool, cool,
       | cool...
        
         | Koshkin wrote:
         | Even cooler:
         | 
         | > _both implementations of AES and Threefish are written by the
         | author(s)_
        
           | danudey wrote:
           | What's that old saying about rolling your own crypto?
           | Something about it's definitely always a good idea to do, I
           | think.
        
             | kingofpandora wrote:
             | Doesn't the saying refer to those who _design_ their own
             | cryptographic algorithms, not those who write their own
             | implementation of accepted ones?
        
               | Asooka wrote:
               | You can still implement existing ones in ways that are
               | vulnerable to e.g. timing attacks.
        
             | tragictrash wrote:
             | I think that's it
        
       | brnt wrote:
       | Minimal in the sense of gui chrome, it uses Qt's WebEngine
       | (Chromium) lib.
        
         | danudey wrote:
         | Also minimal in the sense that it doesn't ask you to log in,
         | suggest you use their password manager, etc.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | gwbas1c wrote:
       | 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)?
        
         | badsectoracula wrote:
         | 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).
        
       | anthropodie wrote:
       | Sadly does not work on Wayland only environment.
        
       | abdel_nasser wrote:
       | 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?
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | I miss Dillo.
        
         | saunup wrote:
        
         | NoGravitas wrote:
         | Dillo still exists, for what it's worth. Netsurf is another
         | reasonable choice in that same space.
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | I thought NetSurf was just for BeOS or something. Is it
           | usable?
        
             | easrng wrote:
             | NetSurf runs on basically everything, including Linux, RISC
             | OS, KolibriOS (fits on a floppy!), and Windows.
        
               | marcodiego wrote:
               | I use NetSurf on termux.
        
               | Koshkin wrote:
               | > _(fits on a floppy!)_
               | 
               | *Without NetSurf.
        
               | danudey wrote:
               | If you don't have two floppy drives, you're not cool
               | enough to be on the internet.
        
       | sto_hristo wrote:
       | With the menu and title bar it already looks bigger than chrome.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | 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".
        
       | m000 wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | greggyb wrote:
         | Dillo and Netsurf may be alternatives for you.
        
         | avrionov wrote:
         | It is based on QT which requires modern C++ compiler, which
         | means that it will be very hard to port.
        
       | happynacho wrote:
       | Looks 95% like Firefox
        
         | _benj wrote:
         | really? to me it just looks like a small browser based on Qt...
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | 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.)
        
       | ComputerGuru wrote:
       | RIP Midori.
       | 
       | (It's still around but it's moving to Electron.)
        
       | resoluteteeth wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | saurik wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | heresathinf99 wrote:
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-30 23:01 UTC)