8 ms·

Bonsai Browser is now open source

146 points by pps 4y ago

Closi 4y ago
Great that they have gone open-source, but whatever this project is, their github page and their website are some of the worst I have ever seen from a communications perspective! I have absolutely no clue what on earth a browser for programmers is and why it would help me to 'think clearly'. Contrast to Firefox and Chrome websites - both of which have a screenshot on their landing page.
- ss48 4y ago
  This was a video walkthrough of the browser from a while back. I agree the communication on the github and website page need to improve a lot. https://www.loom.com/share/93c7c0012f514c37b58a42fa65badc88 https://www.loom.com/share/93c7c0012f514c37b58a42fa65badc88 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147
  - m12k 4y ago
    That actually look pretty neat - I've wanted for a while now for my browser to be more "research" oriented, with ways of grouping all those related tabs that are all trying to answer the same question, or represent the same line of inquery.
    - scoopertrooper 4y ago
      Trying to workout how this relates to the core product of this startup (3D game UX analytics).
      - nequo 4y ago
        Maybe it was their internal tooling?
        scoopertrooper 4y ago
        Presumably, but it seems most of the work in to improving the productivity of certain web browsing workflows. It may help improve some tasks, but not exactly core product stuff. If my capital were on the line, I’d be pretty annoyed seeing it spent that way.
        azeirah 4y ago
        They're just two dudes trying out stuff.
        Tao3300 4y ago
        > If my capital were on the line, I’d be pretty annoyed seeing it spent that way. I think you'll find you get a lot of mileage out of taking those particular glasses off from time to time.
  - bongobingo1 4y ago
    What the dickens, this looks great. Grouping by domain is a great idea along with the workspaces.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > Grouping by domain I basically do this already with Firefox and TreeStyleTabs (but ad-hoc). Any middle mouse/ctrl+click I do on a link, opens in a new tab nested under the current one. So all HN stuff is under one tab that is collapsed, all GitHub stuff is under one and so one. Really effective when you do research, as you can do the initial search on Google, then every result you open goes under the existing tab, which is conveniently labeled via the <title> tag on the Google page.
    - ss48 4y ago
      That's been one of my favorite features in Safari: sorting tabs by website. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-organize-tabs-in-safari?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-organize-tabs-in-safa...
- hinkley 4y ago
  I was privy to a conversation a couple years ago that got out of control, shortly after our peacekeeper left the team, and I was feeling a little too much in agreement with one of the participants A to step in and shut it down even though he was winding B up something fierce. The apex of the argument came down to documentation quality, and at first I thought this conversation was over and A won a bunch of points. I forgot about it for almost a year and then it came back into my brain, moved into the upstairs room, and has been trying not to pay rent ever since. And this is what is playing in a loop in my head: What if your documentation isn't shit because you are bad at explaining things. What if your documentation is shit because you're bad at writing code that can be explained? I was really excited about this thread until I read your reply. And now all I can think is 'why is their documentation bad?' prejudging it before even looking at it.
  - nescioquid 4y ago
    I like how you turn a phrase, though I fear some manner of contact-tracing is in order now. The next time I see bad documentation, I'll be thinking of your comment, wondering if it wasn't an aborted attempt at explaining the unexplainable.
  - shoo 4y ago
    Another place this pops up is documentation for processes in a business -- this could be a process for onboarding or compliance rituals or (hopefully not) deployment. Perhaps a business group has a process that is taught to new individuals who join the group through shadowing or song or dance, it is part of the folklore and rich and vibrant spoken cultural tradition of the group, but has never been written down. Then someone attempts to document it, and the result is confusing. What if the process documentation isn't confusing and stupid because the author is bad at explaining things - what if the process documentation is stupid because the process is stupid and needs to be changed. Another approach to this kind of thing is to reverse the sequence of "do it", "document it" steps and draft a rough version of the documentation up-front as part of an initial design, while it is cheaper to change the process or system, before work is done to implement it and roll it out.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JasonFruit 4y ago
"Is now open source!" is the new hot way to say "We quit." Open sourcing software you decided not to bother maintaining anymore is better than nothing, yes, but without a community devoted enough to it to keep it up to date, it's not much better than dead and gone.
- ericraio 4y ago
  Thankfully, it's MIT licensed and someone can innovate on top of this.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  Open sourcing a software you have no intention to maintain is definitely better than keeping it closed source and preventing its distribution. If copyright laws weren't so screwed up a law / regulation could have been made mandating that all software / code that is no longer being maintained should be automatically open sourced (or become automatically open source after 20-25 years).
- hedora 4y ago
  I thought you were being overly-negative, but: > Bonsai Browser is no longer being actively developed, but contributions are welcome
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I wonder if that almost guarantees "my PR has been open 3 years without action" :-(
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Time to fork...
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  Not that new, Xara, Watcom, and Palm’s Binder among others are much earlier examples, but this particular spin seems to be recent. While I dislike it as much as I do any other instance of spin, in terms of preservation I’d argue it is much better than dead and gone. It’s hilariously hard to find some pieces of 20-year-old-software, even those from major, still-extant publishers that were freely redistributable and supposedly mirrored all over various FTP sites (anybody got a copy of Wx86[1] for the Alpha? :). I shudder to think how hard it’s going to be to locate things from this era of online updates and no download links a decade or two hence. [1] http://retro.ircx.net.pl/nt/mips/wx86/ http://retro.ircx.net.pl/nt/mips/wx86/
loeg 4y ago
When I saw the headline, I thought it was talking about BonziBuddy, a classic browser add-on from the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy .
- doubled112 4y ago
  Back when anything that tracked your online movements was spyware, and you fought against it, found tools to remove it, and avoided it. Now it is the norm.
  - tekeous 4y ago
    and they don’t even have the guts to give us a nice purple gorilla
    - sceadu 4y ago
      I'm sure you'll be able to buy a bonzai buddy skin in the metaverse
      - YPPH 4y ago
        For the low price of $2.99 per month, billed annually.
dewey 4y ago
Based on https://twitter.com/BonsaiDesk https://twitter.com/BonsaiDesk and https://bonsaidesk.com https://bonsaidesk.com which don't seem related to a browser at all I'd guess they pivoted to some other product (YC backed after all) and instead of throwing the code away are open sourcing it. Nothing wrong with that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
noja 4y ago
Not related to BonziBuddy.
benbristow 4y ago
Apparently open-source, but I need to login to use it still (at least going by the Windows version)?
- bruhhh 4y ago
  big red flag
solarkraft 4y ago
Browser innovation is a big deal. There are very few "real" (usable daily) browsers with interesting UX concepts due to the complexity of embedding a browser engine and keeping it up to date (yes, including with Electron). So this is great, even if only from that perspective! Maybe as a base to work from. I'm not sure I agree with all of the design concepts, but I'll definitely call it interesting - finally something legitimately new! That's great to see, specially in this (somewhat surprisingly) stagnant field. (Source: Tried to find some way to get a version of Chromium with tree style tabs. All options I found were bad. )
- capableweb 4y ago
  > (Source: Tried to find some way to get a version of Chromium with tree style tabs. All options I found were bad. ) Give Firefox a try! Revolutionary features such as: Extensions can actually change the browser chrome! TreeStyleTabs is a extension I can't live without, another one is "container tabs" to separate things a bit more. Ad blocking extensions also will continue working in Firefox, compared to Chrome which are slowly limiting their usefulness.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    Firefox also has that tags feature (advertised on Bonsai’s home page) baked in too. I used it multiple times a day as it’s ridiculously handy.
    - yeeeloit 4y ago
      I had to look it up, but I guess this is what you are referring to: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/categorizing-bookmarks-make-them-easy-to-find?redirectslug=Bookmark+Tags&redirectlocale=en-US https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/categorizing-bookmarks-...
      - hnlmorg 4y ago
        Yeah. It’s really easy to use set and intuitive to use. The only caveat is you still need to bookmark the site. But that makes a lot of sense when you think about it (how else are you going to catalogue the sites?).
Cyberdog 4y ago
> Prerequisites: nodejs Oh my God, it's a browser written in JavaScript. Yo dawg, I herd you like slow, obnoxious "web applications…"
- cxr 4y ago
  There are hundreds of thousands of lines of JS making up the "browser" parts of the app known as Firefox. "Written in JavaScript" is not the thing that tends to make web apps slow. It's all the terrible "best practices" associated with the NPM ecosystem that causes that. You can generally sidestep the performance problems by just not programming in that style.
johnwheeler 4y ago
No screenshots to be found…
- spicybright 4y ago
  The website is atrocious too. It explains nothing and takes up multiple pages to write three sentences. I'm going to get a bit sassy here, but it's probably the worst information website I've seen so far. They couldn't even write one paragraph of what the software actually does? If this was the state of things no wonder it failed...
network2592 4y ago
When I hear browser for programmers, I tend to think of text based browsers like w3m or lynx - not this.
bruhhh 4y ago
yah I'm not creating an account to use a browser, hard pass
jeffalyanak 4y ago
I'm just waiting until Bonsai Buddy goes open source.
dang 4y ago
Related: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 - Sept 2021 (226 comments)
schmorptron 4y ago
Requiring an account to use a browser is a hard no, sorry...

146 points by pps 4y ago

Great that they have gone open-source, but whatever this project is, their github page and their website are some of the worst I have ever seen from a communications perspective! I have absolutely no clue what on earth a browser for programmers is and why it would help me to 'think clearly'. Contrast to Firefox and Chrome websites - both of which have a screenshot on their landing page.

ss48 4y ago
This was a video walkthrough of the browser from a while back. I agree the communication on the github and website page need to improve a lot. https://www.loom.com/share/93c7c0012f514c37b58a42fa65badc88 https://www.loom.com/share/93c7c0012f514c37b58a42fa65badc88 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147
- m12k 4y ago
  That actually look pretty neat - I've wanted for a while now for my browser to be more "research" oriented, with ways of grouping all those related tabs that are all trying to answer the same question, or represent the same line of inquery.
  - scoopertrooper 4y ago
    Trying to workout how this relates to the core product of this startup (3D game UX analytics).
    - nequo 4y ago
      Maybe it was their internal tooling?
      - scoopertrooper 4y ago
        Presumably, but it seems most of the work in to improving the productivity of certain web browsing workflows. It may help improve some tasks, but not exactly core product stuff. If my capital were on the line, I’d be pretty annoyed seeing it spent that way.
        azeirah 4y ago
        They're just two dudes trying out stuff.
        Tao3300 4y ago
        > If my capital were on the line, I’d be pretty annoyed seeing it spent that way. I think you'll find you get a lot of mileage out of taking those particular glasses off from time to time.
- bongobingo1 4y ago
  What the dickens, this looks great. Grouping by domain is a great idea along with the workspaces.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > Grouping by domain I basically do this already with Firefox and TreeStyleTabs (but ad-hoc). Any middle mouse/ctrl+click I do on a link, opens in a new tab nested under the current one. So all HN stuff is under one tab that is collapsed, all GitHub stuff is under one and so one. Really effective when you do research, as you can do the initial search on Google, then every result you open goes under the existing tab, which is conveniently labeled via the <title> tag on the Google page.
  - ss48 4y ago
    That's been one of my favorite features in Safari: sorting tabs by website. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-organize-tabs-in-safari?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-organize-tabs-in-safa...
hinkley 4y ago
I was privy to a conversation a couple years ago that got out of control, shortly after our peacekeeper left the team, and I was feeling a little too much in agreement with one of the participants A to step in and shut it down even though he was winding B up something fierce. The apex of the argument came down to documentation quality, and at first I thought this conversation was over and A won a bunch of points. I forgot about it for almost a year and then it came back into my brain, moved into the upstairs room, and has been trying not to pay rent ever since. And this is what is playing in a loop in my head: What if your documentation isn't shit because you are bad at explaining things. What if your documentation is shit because you're bad at writing code that can be explained? I was really excited about this thread until I read your reply. And now all I can think is 'why is their documentation bad?' prejudging it before even looking at it.
- nescioquid 4y ago
  I like how you turn a phrase, though I fear some manner of contact-tracing is in order now. The next time I see bad documentation, I'll be thinking of your comment, wondering if it wasn't an aborted attempt at explaining the unexplainable.
- shoo 4y ago
  Another place this pops up is documentation for processes in a business -- this could be a process for onboarding or compliance rituals or (hopefully not) deployment. Perhaps a business group has a process that is taught to new individuals who join the group through shadowing or song or dance, it is part of the folklore and rich and vibrant spoken cultural tradition of the group, but has never been written down. Then someone attempts to document it, and the result is confusing. What if the process documentation isn't confusing and stupid because the author is bad at explaining things - what if the process documentation is stupid because the process is stupid and needs to be changed. Another approach to this kind of thing is to reverse the sequence of "do it", "document it" steps and draft a rough version of the documentation up-front as part of an initial design, while it is cheaper to change the process or system, before work is done to implement it and roll it out.
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JasonFruit 4y ago

"Is now open source!" is the new hot way to say "We quit." Open sourcing software you decided not to bother maintaining anymore is better than nothing, yes, but without a community devoted enough to it to keep it up to date, it's not much better than dead and gone.

ericraio 4y ago
Thankfully, it's MIT licensed and someone can innovate on top of this.
webmobdev 4y ago
Open sourcing a software you have no intention to maintain is definitely better than keeping it closed source and preventing its distribution. If copyright laws weren't so screwed up a law / regulation could have been made mandating that all software / code that is no longer being maintained should be automatically open sourced (or become automatically open source after 20-25 years).
hedora 4y ago
I thought you were being overly-negative, but: > Bonsai Browser is no longer being actively developed, but contributions are welcome
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I wonder if that almost guarantees "my PR has been open 3 years without action" :-(
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Time to fork...
mananaysiempre 4y ago
Not that new, Xara, Watcom, and Palm’s Binder among others are much earlier examples, but this particular spin seems to be recent. While I dislike it as much as I do any other instance of spin, in terms of preservation I’d argue it is much better than dead and gone. It’s hilariously hard to find some pieces of 20-year-old-software, even those from major, still-extant publishers that were freely redistributable and supposedly mirrored all over various FTP sites (anybody got a copy of Wx86[1] for the Alpha? :). I shudder to think how hard it’s going to be to locate things from this era of online updates and no download links a decade or two hence. [1] http://retro.ircx.net.pl/nt/mips/wx86/ http://retro.ircx.net.pl/nt/mips/wx86/

loeg 4y ago

When I saw the headline, I thought it was talking about BonziBuddy, a classic browser add-on from the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy .

doubled112 4y ago
Back when anything that tracked your online movements was spyware, and you fought against it, found tools to remove it, and avoided it. Now it is the norm.
- tekeous 4y ago
  and they don’t even have the guts to give us a nice purple gorilla
  - sceadu 4y ago
    I'm sure you'll be able to buy a bonzai buddy skin in the metaverse
    - YPPH 4y ago
      For the low price of $2.99 per month, billed annually.

dewey 4y ago

Based on https://twitter.com/BonsaiDesk https://twitter.com/BonsaiDesk and https://bonsaidesk.com https://bonsaidesk.com which don't seem related to a browser at all I'd guess they pivoted to some other product (YC backed after all) and instead of throwing the code away are open sourcing it. Nothing wrong with that.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

noja 4y ago

Not related to BonziBuddy.

benbristow 4y ago

Apparently open-source, but I need to login to use it still (at least going by the Windows version)?

bruhhh 4y ago
big red flag

solarkraft 4y ago

Browser innovation is a big deal. There are very few "real" (usable daily) browsers with interesting UX concepts due to the complexity of embedding a browser engine and keeping it up to date (yes, including with Electron). So this is great, even if only from that perspective! Maybe as a base to work from. I'm not sure I agree with all of the design concepts, but I'll definitely call it interesting - finally something legitimately new! That's great to see, specially in this (somewhat surprisingly) stagnant field. (Source: Tried to find some way to get a version of Chromium with tree style tabs. All options I found were bad. )

capableweb 4y ago
> (Source: Tried to find some way to get a version of Chromium with tree style tabs. All options I found were bad. ) Give Firefox a try! Revolutionary features such as: Extensions can actually change the browser chrome! TreeStyleTabs is a extension I can't live without, another one is "container tabs" to separate things a bit more. Ad blocking extensions also will continue working in Firefox, compared to Chrome which are slowly limiting their usefulness.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  Firefox also has that tags feature (advertised on Bonsai’s home page) baked in too. I used it multiple times a day as it’s ridiculously handy.
  - yeeeloit 4y ago
    I had to look it up, but I guess this is what you are referring to: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/categorizing-bookmarks-make-them-easy-to-find?redirectslug=Bookmark+Tags&redirectlocale=en-US https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/categorizing-bookmarks-...
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      Yeah. It’s really easy to use set and intuitive to use. The only caveat is you still need to bookmark the site. But that makes a lot of sense when you think about it (how else are you going to catalogue the sites?).

Cyberdog 4y ago

> Prerequisites: nodejs Oh my God, it's a browser written in JavaScript. Yo dawg, I herd you like slow, obnoxious "web applications…"

cxr 4y ago
There are hundreds of thousands of lines of JS making up the "browser" parts of the app known as Firefox. "Written in JavaScript" is not the thing that tends to make web apps slow. It's all the terrible "best practices" associated with the NPM ecosystem that causes that. You can generally sidestep the performance problems by just not programming in that style.

johnwheeler 4y ago

No screenshots to be found…

spicybright 4y ago
The website is atrocious too. It explains nothing and takes up multiple pages to write three sentences. I'm going to get a bit sassy here, but it's probably the worst information website I've seen so far. They couldn't even write one paragraph of what the software actually does? If this was the state of things no wonder it failed...

network2592 4y ago

When I hear browser for programmers, I tend to think of text based browsers like w3m or lynx - not this.

bruhhh 4y ago

yah I'm not creating an account to use a browser, hard pass

jeffalyanak 4y ago

I'm just waiting until Bonsai Buddy goes open source.

dang 4y ago

Related: Show HN: Web browser to help programmers think clearly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446147 - Sept 2021 (226 comments)

schmorptron 4y ago

Requiring an account to use a browser is a hard no, sorry...