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Can someone ELI5 this project?

Mandatum 4y ago
It looks to be an implementation of "browser in a browser". Originally the project seemed to handle usually unsupported apps, like IMAP clients in the browser. I assume they have a server running, and JS libraries that act as a shim for IMAP et al control via websockets. Also appears to create usable web-based proxies for modern security-controlled websites which would break on legacy web-proxy methods. Ah, it looks like they've MuleSoft'd ViewFinderJS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015601 Add the most requested features to a commercial offering.
HeavyFeather 4y ago
Sounds like it’s VNC centered around a remote browser, that loads in your own browser. It has extra features and fewer limitations than a regular browser I suppose, but that’s what I gather.
redareda9 4y ago
You can control a remote Chrome browser located on a remote computer (eg: VPS on the cloud) from your own Chrome browser.
- nabusman 4y ago
  Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but isn't that was Selenium does? How is this different?
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Not obtuse at all! It’s actually not so easy to describe what this is and it took us a while to come up with correct language, and understanding of how to express it even after we knew what it was and had built it: it took us some time to figure out how to communicate that. To answer you: I believe these instrumentation/automation protocols/methods like Selenium/W3C WebDriver Protocol/Remote Debugger Protocol, do not themselves provide user interfaces for controlling their functions, but rather expose APIs. BrowserBox itself uses such a protocol under the hood, but also provides a user interface (that funnily enough looks like a regular browser~~because I wasn’t creative enough to invent a better set of UX interactions/affordances than those already expressed in regular web browser, heh :)). In effect, BrowserBox turns the browser experience into a client server application. And BrowserBox is to those instrumentation/automation APIs, as a front end Client is to a Web application API. That’s a slight simplification because BrowserBox contains a significant server component, however, it’s a useful way to think about it.

It looks to be an implementation of "browser in a browser". Originally the project seemed to handle usually unsupported apps, like IMAP clients in the browser. I assume they have a server running, and JS libraries that act as a shim for IMAP et al control via websockets. Also appears to create usable web-based proxies for modern security-controlled websites which would break on legacy web-proxy methods. Ah, it looks like they've MuleSoft'd ViewFinderJS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015601 Add the most requested features to a commercial offering.

HeavyFeather 4y ago

Sounds like it’s VNC centered around a remote browser, that loads in your own browser. It has extra features and fewer limitations than a regular browser I suppose, but that’s what I gather.

redareda9 4y ago

You can control a remote Chrome browser located on a remote computer (eg: VPS on the cloud) from your own Chrome browser.

nabusman 4y ago
Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but isn't that was Selenium does? How is this different?
- graderjs 4y ago
  Not obtuse at all! It’s actually not so easy to describe what this is and it took us a while to come up with correct language, and understanding of how to express it even after we knew what it was and had built it: it took us some time to figure out how to communicate that. To answer you: I believe these instrumentation/automation protocols/methods like Selenium/W3C WebDriver Protocol/Remote Debugger Protocol, do not themselves provide user interfaces for controlling their functions, but rather expose APIs. BrowserBox itself uses such a protocol under the hood, but also provides a user interface (that funnily enough looks like a regular browser~~because I wasn’t creative enough to invent a better set of UX interactions/affordances than those already expressed in regular web browser, heh :)). In effect, BrowserBox turns the browser experience into a client server application. And BrowserBox is to those instrumentation/automation APIs, as a front end Client is to a Web application API. That’s a slight simplification because BrowserBox contains a significant server component, however, it’s a useful way to think about it.