10 ms·

Otter Browser

184 points by niedzielski 5y ago

edoceo 5y ago
This seems actually viable. And those weekly updates let us know "It's Alive!!" not some zombie. I'm going to make an effort on using this. I'm currently using a Firefox fork but the maintenance is a little rough and I get conflicts with upstream sometimes that are hard (for me) to resolve.
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  Firefox doesn't even allow me use my own custom homepage from local file when I open new tab. First tab does allow that though. Talk about consistency. They do not fix it for years now which for me means one thing: they do not understand how basic this functionality is and if so I think this 'mainstream' has lost it's sight. For me as long as such idiocy exists in 'mainstream' I consider it doomed. Because if you do not fix such basic things the next question is: what else you did not fix .. Another idiocy is that they push updates through your throat without option to stop checking for it or stopping dialog asking to update. It always appears when you do not want it to appear and breaks the flow of your work. I consider it a disrespect to a person who uses it. And again in my opinion as long as it exists I think it's doomed.
tmikaeld 5y ago
Seems to be a nice UI around QtWebEngine which is based on WebKit or blink (chromium), with quite a solid effort through the years.
- alessivs 5y ago
  Depending on your build, you have a choice between: - QtWebKit: https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_WebKit https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_WebKit - QtWebEngine: https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine (I realized I replied to a previous version of the parent comment)
- smitty1e 5y ago
  > chromium Are there any Google risks for being chromium-based? Honest question here.
  - alessivs 5y ago
    As noted in a sibling to your comment, there's a choice between WebKit and Blink (your build allowing). Here's QT's note addressing your concern in QtWebEngine: https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine#Relationship_to_Chromium https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine#Relationship_to_Chromium Auxiliary services that talk to Google platforms are stripped out
    - smitty1e 5y ago
      So, if Chromium turns into a bun fight with Google, the Open Source components would just fork?
  - ibraheemdev 5y ago
    I can't find a source, but I know Brave has had upstream Google issues in the past. Unfortunately, from what I've heard, Gecko is not very developer friendly, so Google is pretty much the only option.
    - jordemort 5y ago
      I feel like Mozilla's decision not to prioritize support for embedding Gecko ended up being a strategic error in the long-term. Other browsers using Blink don't add directly to Chrome's market share but having it embedded everywhere means that its quirks don't end up being perceived as Chrome-specific. If five different browsers all behave the same way and the sixth one differs, then the sixth one ends up looking like the odd one out, even if the reason the other five behave the same is that they're all sharing code.
      - hulitu 5y ago
        It was no strategic error. They just took the money and told the users to FO. The strategic error was having a board of directors taking decisions about a browser.
beprogrammed 5y ago
Gotta love the webpage with the commit/issues updates every week. Well done boys.
geocrasher 5y ago
I'm not well versed enough in the Browser Wars to say one thing or another about except this: I like the name. It lends it self to saying "I use the Otter browser" which is not just a great pun but the pun on 'other' defines what Otter is, the "other" browser. The web needs independent browsers. We need to get rid of the idea that websites are designed to work on any one technology. They should work on any browser that supports the standards.
- alessivs 5y ago
  > The web needs independent browsers...[websites] should work on any browser Unfortunately, independence ends with the choice between WebKit (QtWebKit) or Blink (QtWebEngine), albeit with a faithful Opera 12-like interface that's less resource hungry than Vivaldi. Otter is still in development and it shows in some rough spots and occasional crashes.
  - jordemort 5y ago
    I'd love to go back to 1999 and see everyone's reaction when I tell them that almost everyone in the 2020s uses a browser derived from Konqueror, and that you have your choice of Konqueror derivatives from Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Whoever named it was more prescient than they realized.
    - mustacheemperor 5y ago
      There’s an old turn of phrase, first comes the Navigator, then comes the Explorer, then…
      - 3np 5y ago
        I guess we’ll all have the browser engines run on Kubernetes in a few years huh?
        6f8986c3 5y ago
        I think you were going with the “governor” definition of Kubernetes, but “pilot” is closer to the mark.
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: Otter Browser – Aims to recreate the best aspects of classic Opera UI using Qt5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830430 - Jan 2019 (47 comments) Opera 12.15 source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417307 - Jan 2017 (86 comments)
winrid 5y ago
Man, those 7 bugs must be tough. ;)
behnamoh 5y ago
No more browsers please.
- yksmd 5y ago
  No! More browsers, please!
bartvk 5y ago
It's in the Homebrew repo, so installing is as easy as $ brew install otter-browser What's also interesting, is that the tab-close button is on the left of the tab, like every other macOS application. Other browsers (Chrome, Firefox) put it stubbornly on the right.
- gxnxcxcx 5y ago
  Here's a Firefox userChrome.css workaround that moves the close button to the left side of the tab: https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/blob/master/chrome/combined_favicon_and_tab_close_button.css https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/blob/master/c...
  - bartvk 5y ago
    I have something like it, but this one looks better maintained. Thanks!
- Springtime 5y ago
  Vivaldi (Chromium-based) similarly places it on the left for Mac, fwiw, with an optional setting to change it.
sMarsIntruder 5y ago
Really disappointed by the marketing of these projects. No information whatsoever regarding why I should both download and use the browser. I understand that's something related to Opera revamping, but I just don't understand why such projects don't invest 5 minutes of time explaining features in plain English, and relegate everything to a niche. What a pity.
- fouc 5y ago
  the README.md is a bit more informative > A browser controlled by the user, not vice-versa > Otter Browser aims to recreate the best aspects of Opera 12 and to revive its spirit. We are focused on providing the powerful features power users want while keeping the browser fast and lightweight. We also learned from history and decided to release the browser under the GNU GPL v3.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    That is nice, but it's little to go by. I used Opera once for a while, but no idea what version. What was that "spirit" of Opera 12? What are those features power users want, do I want them too? Give me at least a screenshot and 1-2 sentences that I as the user of current Firefox or Chrome can say anything about. All I get is fast and lightweight, which seemingly 90% of software projects write somewhere on their homepage. Nothing against this browser, it's just that there are more open source projects than I could ever try out in my free time, and if I have to take a second look to find a link to screenshots somewhere below the one to the changelog it's not too convincing. It doesn't have to, maybe I'm not the target audience, but that's my impression.
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      > What was that "spirit" of Opera 12? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23733577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23733577 (plus parent for context) Maybe I can summarise that as "lots of features and customisability".
- 5y ago
nfoz 5y ago
Is it safe to trust binaries hosted from sourceforge? Didn't they used to host modified binaries / packages with malware?
- signal11 5y ago
  I remember there was an announcement from new management. From their Wikipedia page: > After SourceForge was sold to BizX in 2016, DevShare was discontinued. On May 17, 2016, SourceForge announced that they were now scanning all projects for malware, and displaying warnings on projects detected to have malware.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >Is it safe to trust binaries hosted from sourceforge? Didn't they used to host modified binaries / packages with malware? Once upon a time, yes. It was awful. Was bought many years ago and turned around, however. The guy who owns/runs it has posted here before describing the journey. He mentioned one of the primary reasons for the purchase was due to the many software projects hosted there and at risk of falling off the face of the earth, potentially causing all sorts of mayhem in the process. I respect that. Anyhow you can go check it out. It's nice. I'm glad it's still around.
sampling 5y ago
I'm all for unmonopolising the web browser but Otter seems to have major stability issues. I'm on macOS 10.15.7. Doing a DDG search consistently crashes Otter. Would liked to have given it a go but I'll stick with Firefox.
molasses 5y ago
Logo could do with a makeover. Possibility of a really nice cute graphic. Firefox seem to have repeatedly missed that opportunity. And the O is a bit reminiscent of Opera. ( I read it hopes to ape some of the better bits of Opera's past.) Certainly space for an innovative - I'm in the driving seat type browser. The space is really lack-lustre, and not in a good way.
- molasses 5y ago
  Crashed it, before even getting going with it on the content blocking prefs. Otter 1.0.02 on Manjaro. qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 580, resource id: 8418551, major code: 40 (TranslateCoords), minor code: 0 Segmentation fault (core dumped)
ochronus 5y ago
Welcome to the otter side
molasses 5y ago
So does this still use Presto, and is there any forward movement on it?
- nly 5y ago
  Presto is ancient as this point, and the only source code out there was a leak, so legally unviable.
karteum 5y ago
It seems pretty similar to https://www.falkon.org/ https://www.falkon.org/ (which is the successor of Qupzilla, i.e. a lightweight browser based on QT5+Blink, already natively integrating an ad-blocker, vertical tabs, and a lot of useful stuffs)
ktm5j 5y ago
I like this browser because it's one of the better options that runs on Haiku OS!
known 5y ago
I think we should have specialized browsers; For e.g. ultra secure browsers solely for financial/banking transactions;
kgwxd 5y ago
If I were building a new browser, priority 0 would be uBlock Origin support with a front-page guarantee it will never be neutered by any future "standards".
- gonational 5y ago
  Shoot. Has uBlock Origin been neutered in Firefox? I've been using it since the beginning and never bothered to check whether or not support has been reduced in some form.
  - kgwxd 5y ago
    No, not yet, and hopefully never, but they're not flat out promising it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

184 points by niedzielski 5y ago

This seems actually viable. And those weekly updates let us know "It's Alive!!" not some zombie. I'm going to make an effort on using this. I'm currently using a Firefox fork but the maintenance is a little rough and I get conflicts with upstream sometimes that are hard (for me) to resolve.

lovelyviking 5y ago
Firefox doesn't even allow me use my own custom homepage from local file when I open new tab. First tab does allow that though. Talk about consistency. They do not fix it for years now which for me means one thing: they do not understand how basic this functionality is and if so I think this 'mainstream' has lost it's sight. For me as long as such idiocy exists in 'mainstream' I consider it doomed. Because if you do not fix such basic things the next question is: what else you did not fix .. Another idiocy is that they push updates through your throat without option to stop checking for it or stopping dialog asking to update. It always appears when you do not want it to appear and breaks the flow of your work. I consider it a disrespect to a person who uses it. And again in my opinion as long as it exists I think it's doomed.

tmikaeld 5y ago

Seems to be a nice UI around QtWebEngine which is based on WebKit or blink (chromium), with quite a solid effort through the years.

alessivs 5y ago
Depending on your build, you have a choice between: - QtWebKit: https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_WebKit https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_WebKit - QtWebEngine: https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine (I realized I replied to a previous version of the parent comment)
smitty1e 5y ago
> chromium Are there any Google risks for being chromium-based? Honest question here.
- alessivs 5y ago
  As noted in a sibling to your comment, there's a choice between WebKit and Blink (your build allowing). Here's QT's note addressing your concern in QtWebEngine: https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine#Relationship_to_Chromium https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine#Relationship_to_Chromium Auxiliary services that talk to Google platforms are stripped out
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    So, if Chromium turns into a bun fight with Google, the Open Source components would just fork?
- ibraheemdev 5y ago
  I can't find a source, but I know Brave has had upstream Google issues in the past. Unfortunately, from what I've heard, Gecko is not very developer friendly, so Google is pretty much the only option.
  - jordemort 5y ago
    I feel like Mozilla's decision not to prioritize support for embedding Gecko ended up being a strategic error in the long-term. Other browsers using Blink don't add directly to Chrome's market share but having it embedded everywhere means that its quirks don't end up being perceived as Chrome-specific. If five different browsers all behave the same way and the sixth one differs, then the sixth one ends up looking like the odd one out, even if the reason the other five behave the same is that they're all sharing code.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      It was no strategic error. They just took the money and told the users to FO. The strategic error was having a board of directors taking decisions about a browser.

beprogrammed 5y ago

Gotta love the webpage with the commit/issues updates every week. Well done boys.

geocrasher 5y ago

I'm not well versed enough in the Browser Wars to say one thing or another about except this: I like the name. It lends it self to saying "I use the Otter browser" which is not just a great pun but the pun on 'other' defines what Otter is, the "other" browser. The web needs independent browsers. We need to get rid of the idea that websites are designed to work on any one technology. They should work on any browser that supports the standards.

alessivs 5y ago
> The web needs independent browsers...[websites] should work on any browser Unfortunately, independence ends with the choice between WebKit (QtWebKit) or Blink (QtWebEngine), albeit with a faithful Opera 12-like interface that's less resource hungry than Vivaldi. Otter is still in development and it shows in some rough spots and occasional crashes.
- jordemort 5y ago
  I'd love to go back to 1999 and see everyone's reaction when I tell them that almost everyone in the 2020s uses a browser derived from Konqueror, and that you have your choice of Konqueror derivatives from Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Whoever named it was more prescient than they realized.
  - mustacheemperor 5y ago
    There’s an old turn of phrase, first comes the Navigator, then comes the Explorer, then…
    - 3np 5y ago
      I guess we’ll all have the browser engines run on Kubernetes in a few years huh?
      - 6f8986c3 5y ago
        I think you were going with the “governor” definition of Kubernetes, but “pilot” is closer to the mark.

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: Otter Browser – Aims to recreate the best aspects of classic Opera UI using Qt5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830430 - Jan 2019 (47 comments) Opera 12.15 source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417307 - Jan 2017 (86 comments)

winrid 5y ago

Man, those 7 bugs must be tough. ;)

behnamoh 5y ago

No more browsers please.

yksmd 5y ago
No! More browsers, please!

bartvk 5y ago

It's in the Homebrew repo, so installing is as easy as $ brew install otter-browser What's also interesting, is that the tab-close button is on the left of the tab, like every other macOS application. Other browsers (Chrome, Firefox) put it stubbornly on the right.

gxnxcxcx 5y ago
Here's a Firefox userChrome.css workaround that moves the close button to the left side of the tab: https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/blob/master/chrome/combined_favicon_and_tab_close_button.css https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/blob/master/c...
- bartvk 5y ago
  I have something like it, but this one looks better maintained. Thanks!
Springtime 5y ago
Vivaldi (Chromium-based) similarly places it on the left for Mac, fwiw, with an optional setting to change it.

sMarsIntruder 5y ago

Really disappointed by the marketing of these projects. No information whatsoever regarding why I should both download and use the browser. I understand that's something related to Opera revamping, but I just don't understand why such projects don't invest 5 minutes of time explaining features in plain English, and relegate everything to a niche. What a pity.

fouc 5y ago
the README.md is a bit more informative > A browser controlled by the user, not vice-versa > Otter Browser aims to recreate the best aspects of Opera 12 and to revive its spirit. We are focused on providing the powerful features power users want while keeping the browser fast and lightweight. We also learned from history and decided to release the browser under the GNU GPL v3.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  That is nice, but it's little to go by. I used Opera once for a while, but no idea what version. What was that "spirit" of Opera 12? What are those features power users want, do I want them too? Give me at least a screenshot and 1-2 sentences that I as the user of current Firefox or Chrome can say anything about. All I get is fast and lightweight, which seemingly 90% of software projects write somewhere on their homepage. Nothing against this browser, it's just that there are more open source projects than I could ever try out in my free time, and if I have to take a second look to find a link to screenshots somewhere below the one to the changelog it's not too convincing. It doesn't have to, maybe I'm not the target audience, but that's my impression.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    > What was that "spirit" of Opera 12? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23733577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23733577 (plus parent for context) Maybe I can summarise that as "lots of features and customisability".
5y ago

nfoz 5y ago

Is it safe to trust binaries hosted from sourceforge? Didn't they used to host modified binaries / packages with malware?

signal11 5y ago
I remember there was an announcement from new management. From their Wikipedia page: > After SourceForge was sold to BizX in 2016, DevShare was discontinued. On May 17, 2016, SourceForge announced that they were now scanning all projects for malware, and displaying warnings on projects detected to have malware.
Nicksil 5y ago
>Is it safe to trust binaries hosted from sourceforge? Didn't they used to host modified binaries / packages with malware? Once upon a time, yes. It was awful. Was bought many years ago and turned around, however. The guy who owns/runs it has posted here before describing the journey. He mentioned one of the primary reasons for the purchase was due to the many software projects hosted there and at risk of falling off the face of the earth, potentially causing all sorts of mayhem in the process. I respect that. Anyhow you can go check it out. It's nice. I'm glad it's still around.

sampling 5y ago

I'm all for unmonopolising the web browser but Otter seems to have major stability issues. I'm on macOS 10.15.7. Doing a DDG search consistently crashes Otter. Would liked to have given it a go but I'll stick with Firefox.

molasses 5y ago

Logo could do with a makeover. Possibility of a really nice cute graphic. Firefox seem to have repeatedly missed that opportunity. And the O is a bit reminiscent of Opera. ( I read it hopes to ape some of the better bits of Opera's past.) Certainly space for an innovative - I'm in the driving seat type browser. The space is really lack-lustre, and not in a good way.

molasses 5y ago
Crashed it, before even getting going with it on the content blocking prefs. Otter 1.0.02 on Manjaro. qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 580, resource id: 8418551, major code: 40 (TranslateCoords), minor code: 0 Segmentation fault (core dumped)

ochronus 5y ago

Welcome to the otter side

molasses 5y ago

So does this still use Presto, and is there any forward movement on it?

nly 5y ago
Presto is ancient as this point, and the only source code out there was a leak, so legally unviable.

karteum 5y ago

It seems pretty similar to https://www.falkon.org/ https://www.falkon.org/ (which is the successor of Qupzilla, i.e. a lightweight browser based on QT5+Blink, already natively integrating an ad-blocker, vertical tabs, and a lot of useful stuffs)

ktm5j 5y ago

I like this browser because it's one of the better options that runs on Haiku OS!

known 5y ago

I think we should have specialized browsers; For e.g. ultra secure browsers solely for financial/banking transactions;

kgwxd 5y ago

If I were building a new browser, priority 0 would be uBlock Origin support with a front-page guarantee it will never be neutered by any future "standards".

gonational 5y ago
Shoot. Has uBlock Origin been neutered in Firefox? I've been using it since the beginning and never bothered to check whether or not support has been reduced in some form.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  No, not yet, and hopefully never, but they're not flat out promising it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]