[HN Gopher] Show HN: GoGoBrowse - A Peer to Peer Web Browser
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       Show HN: GoGoBrowse - A Peer to Peer Web Browser
        
       Hi HN!  GoGoBrowse is a side project I've been working on that
       allows 2 users to browse the web together while voice chatting.
       It's a proof of concept for a new model of browsing the web I've
       been thinking about. My thought is that before a leap to a 3D
       Metaverse, we need a 2D Metaverse, which is simply social web
       browsing. I wrote more about it here:
       https://gogobrowse.com/before-the-metaverse-we-need-a-new-we...
       Though the goal of an entirely social web browser is still quite a
       ways off, I think of this as a small first step in that direction.
       I'd love any feedback on the app itself, and the general concept of
       social web browsing.
        
       Author : ddj231
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2023-04-19 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gogobrowse.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gogobrowse.com)
        
       | pipeline_peak wrote:
       | Why not just share a screen on discord etc? I feel this would
       | just be toe stepping
        
         | ddj231 wrote:
         | The difference would be that you and a friend are on the same
         | web page, like a news article (the same location), but you
         | still retain control of your page. Scrolling, etc.
         | 
         | Also you can sync YouTube videos, so you get better quality
         | than you would via screen share.
        
           | pipeline_peak wrote:
           | I mean with screen sharing, I'd still retain control.
           | 
           | I never saw YouTube quality as an issue, but there are watch
           | together extensions for discord.
           | 
           | I think your better off just making an extension.
        
       | KomoD wrote:
       | Yeah I'm not downloading a random ZIP from some website that is
       | just a Notion document
       | 
       | And when the "Disclaimer" is copy-paste with "[business name]" in
       | it
       | 
       | "The information contained in this website is for general
       | information purposes only. The information is provided by
       | [business name]"
        
         | ddj231 wrote:
         | Point taken. This is a side project to get conversations going
         | on social browsing in general (not my full time gig) -- I think
         | I may just open source the repo so people can build themselves
        
       | ddj231 wrote:
       | I made the repo public and open source here:
       | https://github.com/ddj231/GoGoBrowse-Client
       | 
       | (forgive the spaghetti code -- I treated this more like a
       | hackathon to get a proof of concept working)
        
       | ddj231 wrote:
       | I've been working GoGoBrowse in the evenings on and off for the
       | last couple of weeks. The audio chat is built with WebRTC, and a
       | signaling server.
       | 
       | Users send each other urls in a peer to peer way, just like audio
       | data (so no urls are sent to the server). The browser then
       | navigates to the url received.
       | 
       | The browser itself is a Chromium Browser (the Electron
       | BrowserView).
       | 
       | The website is built with Notion + Super.so.
       | 
       | Let me know if you have any questions :)
        
         | tommoor wrote:
         | Are there technical reason this couldn't be achieve as a
         | browser extension? Or is more for just the learning experience.
        
           | ddj231 wrote:
           | With the current direction, I believe it would work as a
           | browser extension.
           | 
           | At first I tried to send the whole dom from one user to
           | another, so users would see the exact same thing (no
           | personalization like some sites do) -- and that didn't work
           | out. It was easy to stream the html from one user to another
           | via webrtc but the styles and javascript seemed non trivial.
           | 
           | So I landed at this more simple version. I haven't
           | experimented much with browser extensions but for that
           | approach, I would just create the peer connection between
           | users in the extension. And simulate a click whenever a
           | leader changes urls. (that may actually be better than this
           | current Chromium browser version)
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-19 23:02 UTC)