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I have a general question. How hard is it to render a page on computer X but display it on computer / phone Y? I don't want a proxy. I want a headless browser

I have a general question. How hard is it to render a page on computer X but display it on computer / phone Y? I don't want a proxy. I want a headless browser on a server somewhere and a head in my pocket. Something like Ember Fastboot, but for everything. Ideally it could reduce image size via aggressive lossy compression. When I'm travelling around the most frustrating thing is not being able to browse the web on my phone because websites are garbling down 5mb a load and opening up a bunch of tracker connections.

didgeoridoo 8y ago
Opera Mini does this exactly, as long as you’re OK with the rendering server being out of your control.
thegeomaster 8y ago
Opera Mini does this. Their servers would render the page for you and ship the result to your phone in an optimized, compressed form. It also supports basic JavaScript-based interactions, where the server would execute the JavaScript for you once you interact with an element (with a short deadline, something like 5 seconds) and send you the diff when it's done. You could even use fairly complex, modern web-apps on old feature phones this way.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Very cool. Is it possible for me to run my own Opera Mini server?
  - thegeomaster 8y ago
    Unfortunately no, it's closed source AFAIK. The cost of having this is that Opera will see all your browsing history and interactions.
jotto 8y ago
I made a SaaS does this: https://www.prerender.cloud/ https://www.prerender.cloud/ curl https://service.prerender.cloud/screenshot/https://google.com/ > out.jpg and a chrome extension that doesn't return a screenshot, but: 1. disables JavaScript 2. pre-renders the site (executes the JS) 3. returns HTML https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prerendercloud-disable-js/bdbogimamneemjcpjaoeemndoopldiig https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prerendercloud-dis... https://github.com/sanfrancesco/prerendercloud-chromeextension https://github.com/sanfrancesco/prerendercloud-chromeextensi...
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  This is almost exactly what I want. I have two things that I still want thought: 1. (And this is obvious, I know, but...) I want to run your stack on my own gear. 2. I want this to work on my phone, which is, unfortunately an iPhone so browser extensions are blocked by Apple policy. I'd have to create my own browser. Yuck. As an aside, are you caching public tweets, etc, by any chance?
  - jotto 8y ago
    2 layers of caching: 1. a configurable cache per URL that defaults to 5-minutes (can be disabled or increased up to 1 month) 2. and non-configurable http caching within chrome (cache-control headers), but since the cluster is auto-scaled, this cache naturally purges every few hours.
def_true_false 8y ago
Browsh does something like this, but with more extreme bandwidth constraints in mind.

didgeoridoo 8y ago

Opera Mini does this exactly, as long as you’re OK with the rendering server being out of your control.

thegeomaster 8y ago

Opera Mini does this. Their servers would render the page for you and ship the result to your phone in an optimized, compressed form. It also supports basic JavaScript-based interactions, where the server would execute the JavaScript for you once you interact with an element (with a short deadline, something like 5 seconds) and send you the diff when it's done. You could even use fairly complex, modern web-apps on old feature phones this way.

3pt14159 8y ago
Very cool. Is it possible for me to run my own Opera Mini server?
- thegeomaster 8y ago
  Unfortunately no, it's closed source AFAIK. The cost of having this is that Opera will see all your browsing history and interactions.

jotto 8y ago

I made a SaaS does this: https://www.prerender.cloud/ https://www.prerender.cloud/ curl https://service.prerender.cloud/screenshot/https://google.com/ > out.jpg and a chrome extension that doesn't return a screenshot, but: 1. disables JavaScript 2. pre-renders the site (executes the JS) 3. returns HTML https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prerendercloud-disable-js/bdbogimamneemjcpjaoeemndoopldiig https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prerendercloud-dis... https://github.com/sanfrancesco/prerendercloud-chromeextension https://github.com/sanfrancesco/prerendercloud-chromeextensi...

3pt14159 8y ago
This is almost exactly what I want. I have two things that I still want thought: 1. (And this is obvious, I know, but...) I want to run your stack on my own gear. 2. I want this to work on my phone, which is, unfortunately an iPhone so browser extensions are blocked by Apple policy. I'd have to create my own browser. Yuck. As an aside, are you caching public tweets, etc, by any chance?
- jotto 8y ago
  2 layers of caching: 1. a configurable cache per URL that defaults to 5-minutes (can be disabled or increased up to 1 month) 2. and non-configurable http caching within chrome (cache-control headers), but since the cluster is auto-scaled, this cache naturally purges every few hours.

def_true_false 8y ago

Browsh does something like this, but with more extreme bandwidth constraints in mind.