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Refresh: concept for a new kind of web browser
- vxNsr 8y agoLooks really cool. I wish there were more of these types of fully fleshed out design thesis. A couple years ago someone did one on Windows 8 and it had an outsized effect on the development of windows 10, someone had a similar idea for office, but I don't know how much of an effect it had. either way it was fun to read and look over.
- hello_asdf 8y agoWow, looks great, good job. I really wish this was available.
- asdfasdfdavid 8y agoYeah, I so want this. Funny how these features take so long to arrive then seems obvious afterwards.
- evo_9 8y agoPretty nice. I use a Safari add-in called Sessions to create sets of browser tabs I can recall later. Super handy when you are researching something new or just want to persevere your current multi-tab browsing session for later. https://sessions-extension.github.io/Sessions/ https://sessions-extension.github.io/Sessions/
- Moter8 8y agoUnfortunately: >Sessions will not install on Safari 12 or later, as Apple has officially deprecated Safari Extensions.
- Rjevski 8y agoDisappointing that a website about making the web better still wants to track me with cookies for god knows what reason (also non-GDPR compliant despite them being based in Germany).
- elliottcarlson 8y agoThey clearly state that they use cookies for analytics. They are not collecting PII. Their Google Analytics implementation uses `anonymizeIp`.
- Rjevski 8y agoI would not trust a company whose bottom line is proportional to how much personal data they collect to just honour an "anonymise" argument. Not to mention, analytics still wouldn't require a cookie unless they want to know which other sites I visited, which is none of their business.
- juliussohn 8y agoThe cookies are also used to distinguish visitors. I'd recommend using private browsing or a GA blocker plugin if you're not comfortable with that.
- HaHa31 8y agoNice idea, I have definitely felt that the browser market space has become to stagnant and bland. I am surprised you are using cookies for what mostly seems to be a product outline.
- spython 8y agoGlad to see the concept of work spaces realized quite thoroughly - I wrote about the need for such an approach before: https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/ https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/ I am intrigued, though, how well the browsing history concept scales up to dozens of tabs. In my experience, I only use the newest tab on mobile, while the other open tabs become some kind of living bookmarks.
- juliussohn 8y agoYour article has a place in our reading list ;) https://refresh.study/reading-list https://refresh.study/reading-list
- spython 8y agoOh wow, awesome! Glad my text was, in part, a source of inspiration :)
- erikpukinskis 8y agoThis is correct. Browsers need to become “spacers”. The spaces need to be publishable and moderateable and multiuser and all the other things we expect for web objects though. Nice progress made on this project.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- workona 8y agoYou should check out Workona's workspaces. We've built some of what you've mentioned as a Chrome extension backed by a web app. Our workspaces (persistent windows with names) remember your tabs automatically, are multiuser/collaborative, and even have a URL (like any good web object). You can also access your workspaces on multiple computers, so you can start a project at work and finish it at home. We're officially launching out of beta next month, but you can sign up now if you're interested: https://workona.com https://workona.com
- PurpleRamen 8y agoLooks like Tab Groups or Tab Trees, just 10 Years later.
- superkuh 8y agoThat's exactly what I thought until I saw the proposed timeline mechanism for exploring session history. That feature looks very useful.
- sigi45 8y agoIt looked entreating but i still can't come up with a use case; I'm very very rarely browse through my history. I only search for a specific item
- mynameisvlad 8y agoTrip planning comes to mind. If you have a bunch of booking sites, along with hotel information open, then you switch contexts to something like airfare booking. It's conceivable you want to eventually come back to the hotels if you haven't finished booking, and getting all X tabs open again would be helpful in that case so you don't have to individually remember all the hotels you were looking at.
- codethief 8y agoIf only sessions on travel-related websites didn't expire already after half an hour.
- mynameisvlad 8y agoThat's a good point, although some will re-search once the session is expired. It still helps with reference sites (like the hotel's/airline's/cruise's/etc page).
- otp124 8y agoI search for a specific item in my history all the time, but it can sometimes be difficult to find what I'm looking for via Chrome's itemized list search, especially when the <title> tags are all the same. I think this would help me find it, in relation to my other activity and time.
- boramalper 8y agoThis looks really nice, kudos! Here are my few (hopefully constructive) comments: - The website looks great but quite heavy: 29 requests, 17.66 MB transferred, Finish: 40.09 s Maybe see if you can re-encode `history-device.mp4` and `spaces-device.mp4` since they constitute the 78% of the traffic. =) - I liked all the features you've introduced, but loved the way you've designed them! - Kudos for getting the tagging right! Many developers expect users to tag their content, and tags were the next-big-thing at some point where there were tag-based file systems[0], photo and video galleries that expected you to tag each of your photos, and so on; but what really worked was automating the process of tagging! Everyone can agree that Google or Apple Photos are miles ahead of digiKam or Picasa when it comes to finding what you are looking for. I am glad that you didn't delegate that responsibility to the user. - I think you should've put it on the AppStore first before sharing it; I would download it right away right now, as with many other people, but how many of us would remember Refresh a month later? - I'd love to have branching history as well: so I have a tab and it has a linear history through which I can either go "forward" or "backward". Now, if I move backward in history, and click on a different link in that page, the history should branch at that point so that I won't loose the track of my previous "forward" pages when I click on a link in a previous page. - Maybe not as satisfying, but I'd also consider developing add-ons for Chrome and Mozilla; some people would be reluctant to change their browser, but they'd be more comfortable adding exciting add-ons on a reliable browser. All the best! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagsistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagsistant
- skrebbel 8y ago> I think you should've put it on the AppStore first before sharing it It's not a browser. It's a browser design. (plus a bunch of not-really-functional prototypes). I hope it becomes reality but so far this is basically the The William[0] of browsers. The William also never happened even though we all really wanted it to. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wBe3SDCcz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wBe3SDCcz8
- TeMPOraL 8y agoHoly hell! Never seen that before, and I very much want it now. Do you know why it didn't happen?
- bytematic 8y agoGreat design and media, got me interested!
- arikr 8y agoI hope they build this! Making web browser software can be very profitable if you get a large userbase. Mozilla had $520 million of revenue in 2016! More browser innovation would be great, considering how many human hours are spent browsing the web. Small browser level increases in efficiency with better tools for web browsing could have massive impact. And, building browser companies can be a path to making lots of money, so it's not a charity.
- TinyPants 8y agoI'd love to see this built out - I was disappointed there was no download link.
- xasd4 8y agoI want to see something like https://web.hypothes.is https://web.hypothes.is made native in browsers, so you can have community overlays on websites and commenting based on a group you subscribe to, automate common operations teams perform on web pages and leave notes for them etc. with out the websites itself being entirely in control of the entire ux and functionality.
- juliussohn 8y agoWe actually thought about adding a similar function in the beginning, but discarded it later since we wanted to focus on the existing key problems, rather than adding productivity features for power users. Nevertheless it is an interesting topic worth exploring.
- xasd4 8y agoI think the vision is more that it’s a meta web rather than a power user feature. Glad it’s on your radar
- spython 8y agoIn the same vein it would be interesting to explore mechanisms of automatic discovery - e.g. proposing tabs that have close horizontal proximity in other people's collections. Sure, it opens up the questions of privacy and data collection, but it could provide a much needed alternative to using search engines for discovery.
- amelius 8y agoI'd like that too. And perhaps the browser should know about the concept of "user-reviews" (where the reviews are customized per-user, i.e. computed based on the groups you are in, and who you trust, etc.) Thinking about it more, that's what the web needs most: reviews that we can actually trust.
- niutech 8y agoDo you remember Google Sidewiki? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjJOsx84MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjJOsx84MA
- bugmen0t 8y agoReminds me of Firefox Container Tabs and other advanced ffeatures
- shawn 8y agoHere’s an interesting question to turn over this lovely Sunday afternoon. What stops you from implementing this yourself? Why? Chrome is supposedly open source. So is Firefox. It’s an important question, because the answers lead to the reasons why we’re subservient to megacorps. And it also shows merely being open source and free to use isn’t enough to ensure freedom. We tend to believe that (a) browsers are an open ecosystem, yet (b) we can’t modify them. This is a contradiction.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- conradev 8y ago> We tend to believe that (a) browsers are an open ecosystem, yet (b) we can’t modify them. This is a contradiction. I think the idea of it being "open" is that you can do whatever you want within the boundaries of the sandbox you are provided, right? Closed ecosystems can restrict what you can do beyond the APIs provided (no VPNs, no porn, etc.)
- shawn 8y agoEven the “no porn” is giving up freedoms. The megacorps wouldn’t have allowed the web to evolve into such a massive sandbox if they’d known how much of an effect it would have. Just like Apple didn’t, with the App Store. The same situation has already happened with Chrome, but with browsers themselves. Try submitting a PR to chromium that implements a new web standard and see how far it gets, let alone a change to the UI. All of that begs the question: why is it like this? Theoretically there’s nothing stopping you from writing a browser in JS and delivering it as a website. Then users could customize it however they wish. And if you deliver it as a standalone executable, you can do things like add native torrenting support.
- gsnedders 8y ago> The same situation has already happened with Chrome, but with browsers themselves. Try submitting a PR to chromium that implements a new web standard and see how far it gets, let alone a change to the UI. FWIW, there have been various new features/standards implemented by people from various companies (some people will have heard of, like Samsung and LG, and others you probably haven't, like Igalia) in Chromium. (UI changes I know much less about, given I rarely look outside of the Blink bubble.)
- slifin 8y agoOn desktop chrome you can press ctrl+f find a link on a page using search then press escape and then press enter to follow the link without a mouse I wish any browser on iOS could allow this, I use an iPad and I can shortcut myself to anything on safari with my hardware keyboard, except clicking links, it's really jarring to jab the screen for that part
- Tehnix 8y agoReally need something like Vimari/Vimium for iOS Safari with hardware keyboard. I wonder if there are any custom browsers that support that.
- mathandy 8y agoIt's like Netflix for tabs
- LukeB42 8y agoInteresting triplet of Chrome extensions.
- kiechu 8y agoThat's a browser I would love to use on my desktop. Two thumbs up!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ksec 8y agoI love the concept, but... Ever since the early Internet; pre Firefox era, I have been a heavy Tab user. I am possibly on the higher end of spectrum, my Safari currently has 410 Tabs opened. It sort of expands and shrink during the weekend. In some days they could blow up to 500+ Tabs, more like a reading list. Quite a few of them are youtube links that are acting like a mini playlist or file selection of music. So having a Video as group selection shown in this concept is a godsend. I have been wondering why Safari Multi Tab page doesn't have this. ( And Safari Tab Overview is kind of stupid, it reloads / reactive all the tab you have when you press overview, making huge memory and CPU spike as well as jack ) But over the years I have came to the conclusion, most of the consumers don't use Tab like us. That is why those mini Tabs in Chrome that shrinks to ridiculously small size don't annoy them. They don't check email on the web. Nor do they do much comparison. Their web browsing flow is very linear. While my web browsing flow is extremely jumpy. Reading on something could bring up dozens of other questions in my head. So I am wondering if there is enough market for this browser? Don't get me wrong I love innovation in the browser UI space and I love the new History timeline. But I am slightly worry about its sustainability.
- glandium 8y agoTo support your point, data gathered from the Firefox user population a few years ago showed that, IIRC, the median number of tabs was somewhere around 2. And a lot (I don't remember the proportion but it was unexpectedly large) of browser sessions lasted a couple minutes. As if lots of people opened links from outside the browser, read it, and closed the browser shortly after.
- Qwertie 8y agoComments like this remind me how out of touch I am with the average user.
- MrEldritch 8y agoThis sounds like what I sometimes open Chrome up for - to try and see if something will work in a different browser, and then closing it back down and going back to Firefox.
- benoror 8y agoFWIW, you can get similar "Spaces" functionality with Toby extension: https://www.gettoby.com/ https://www.gettoby.com/
- Vinnl 8y agoPanorama view for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- classichasclass 8y agoMaybe it's the curmudgeon in me, but while I salute the ingenuity in this UI/UX idea, I think we need a new kind of browser engine at least as much as a new kind of browser interface, perhaps more. I used to worry that WebKit would eat the world, for awhile Trident did eat the world, and now I worry about Blink.
- tehabe 8y agoMaybe you should take a look at Servo from Mozilla: https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/ A few things from Servo were integrated in Firefox 57. But the project is far from complete I think.
- classichasclass 8y agoI'm aware of Servo. Servo is neat to play with, though it's pretty bad with older legacy HTML pages. Also, I'm not sure how likely Mozilla is to develop it into a product; it seems more like a testbed for later Gecko evolution (which, to be sure, is still a good thing).
- jonathanyc 8y agoFirefox already includes parts of Servo, so it’s not a question of “how likely” it is to be used in production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_(Mozilla) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_(Mozilla)
- classichasclass 8y agoThat's not what I meant. I meant whether Servo the engine is likely to be a standalone product (on its own merits along with Gecko).
- jonathanyc 8y agoI think you misunderstand what a browser engine is, then—read the Wikipedia article I linked and tell me how the “stand-alone product” that Servo is going to be is not Firefox itself. Massive parts of Gecko have already been simply deleted from the codebase and replaced with components from Servo. “Firefox” is not a browser engine, it is a browser UI. Gecko and Servo are browser engines.
- tuxidomasx 8y agoI made it 3/4 of the way through the video, then clicked around the website in frustration looking for the download button.
- tr33house 8y agoJust wanted to point out that Chrome has Chrome Profiles which can be used for "work" "thailand" etc spaces. Maybe we can extend this with a better UI + ability to move pages between profiles (this creates some serious security problems though)
- dijit 8y agoWell, I think most of the concepts are design-centric. We have history, tagging and bookmarks but I barely use them in modern browsers. This UI makes it more orthogonal (it seems).
- Qwertie 8y agoFirefox has tab containers which are similar but can be open at the same time on the same window.
- tanilama 8y agoKinda confusing TBH. Browsing should be simple, why convolute it with the Productivity App ideas?
- nitinreddy88 8y agoContainers is available in Firefox, however the usability and ease of usage should be something like shown in video. Its pretty awesome to shift between containers. Timeline seems like barrowed from Windows. This will be another awesome feature I love to see
- avshyz 8y agoI used to use containers all the time (tab groups per activity/mind state is a thing I've always craved for) But they're buggy. Really buggy. Twice I've lost a trace of all the containers and tabs that were open (over 40).
- baby 8y agoDid this has tabs on the side?
- huntie 8y agoThis reminds me a lot of Firefox tab groups/panorama which was removed a few years ago. I like the history idea, there are some really good ideas there. I tried finding something in my history on Firefox recently and it was an awful experience, so maybe someone will be inspired by this.
- Vinnl 8y ago> This reminds me a lot of Firefox tab groups/panorama which was removed a few years ago It's back: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...
- huntie 8y agoI tried that addon, and it is not the same thing. Panorama was an overlay, but this opens a new tab to view your groups. This doesn't really work when you have hundreds of tabs. I'm pretty sure that the old Panorama view is not possible with webextensions, although I haven't really looked into it.
- Vinnl 8y agoI don't get what the difference is, except that in the old version there was no tab bar in the overview, whereas in the new version the tab bar is still there with just a single tab that says "Panorama view"? I don't see how that interferes with the number of tabs you have? I have quite a few tabs as well, no problem there. This is what it looks like if you press Ctrl+Shift+F: https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/200/200289.png?modified=1530209514 https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/200/... If you then click one of the tabs, the tab bar gets populated by the tabs in that group. (Perhaps you tried this extension before the tab hiding Web Extension API arrived? That only arrived in the latest version of Firefox, IIRC.)
- huntie 8y ago>Perhaps you tried this before tab hiding I might have done so. The problem I had is that I was in the middle of a few hundred tabs and opening panorama opened a new tab at the end of the list making me lose my place. If it hides all tabs when you open panorama it might work well enough. I'll try it again, thanks for letting me know.
- sAbakumoff 8y ago>> And while the web itself has undergone big changes in the last twenty years, browsers have remained largely the same. Yeah, it's largely the same : we open app, enter the URL and it shows a web page..But cmon, stating that IE6 is largely the same as Chrome or Brave is kinda exagreggation.
- nickjj 8y agoSome of those features can be done today with any browser, such as spaces. Just create a virtual desktop for each space. It really does save a lot of time in the long run. The added benefits of virtual desktops is you can also recall more than just browser tabs. On Windows 10, all you have to do is hit CTRL + Win Key + Right arrow to launch a new desktop.
- konart 8y agoThis is entirely different concept and has no implementation on mobile which looks like to be a target platform.
- abakker 8y agoI'd use it.
- vinceguidry 8y agoMoving back in time was the most interesting new idea in the preso to me. Makes what you do in the browser quite accessible. Between this and web archival it might become possible to have easy, on-demand access to just about any personal web history. Imagine being able to travel back in time 10 years and see the websites you perused.
- naravara 8y ago>Moving back in time was the most interesting new idea in the preso to me. Makes what you do in the browser quite accessible. Between this and web archival it might become possible to have easy, on-demand access to just about any personal web history. Imagine being able to travel back in time 10 years and see the websites you perused. That was a killer feature as presented. In practice it might wind up a little iffy though. Web links aren't static, so the "history" you see might not actually be the pages you were reading. Especially for landing pages for news sites. I can also imagine it becoming a memory hog for people with certain types of browsing habits. My wife, for example, basically never closes tabs. She just lets them purge on occasions when she needs to restart, which is basically just for OS updates.
- philipov 8y agoImagine giving every new browsing history tracker the ability to see what websites you looked at 10 years ago.
- cortexio 8y agoit's too complex and useless. There's nothing wrong with how we use the web now.
- ibdf 8y agoInteresting concept. Looks like a bunch of ideas from other extensions and apps that are already doing these things. Tab management: Pin tabs seems to do this already. Saving & recalling: Tons of "spaces" extensions already exist. I'm not a big fan of the netflix layout. Smart link previews: Nice to have an image preview but the auto categorization of links would probably not work so well. So this would be probably only be used for main well known sites. Browsing History: That timeline actually looks really nice. Not sure how well it would work, but that's actually innovative for a browser. Tagging: So... a bookmarking system? Focus on whats important: Nope nope nope. I don't want my browser to become an app that strips out what makes a website unique. Most often this functionality just breaks the UI or strips away code that breaks the functionality.
- jacekm 8y ago> Focus on whats important Firefox has such feature (reader's view) and it works surprisingly well. It really helps, especially when the text is difficult to read (contrast issues, small fonts, etc) or when a page contains lots of elements that try to distract you from main content.