10 ms·

Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

613 points by cernocky 2y ago

snshn 2y ago
I use Firefox with Tree Tabs extension for that.
- forgotpwd16 2y ago
  Based on comments here either people don't know TST or don't actually care about this functionality beyond seeing it as interesting.
- nsonha 2y ago
  What's with the TST comments in this thread, this thing has more in common with PaperWM than with TST. Maybe you people should read.
maverick74 2y ago
Amazing!!! I want this in my regular browser (you ear me Mozilla && Servo devs?!)
DaanDL 2y ago
I love this idea, I've been using Arc Browser for a while now and it looks like this would be a very nice addition to that browser.
gmurphy 2y ago
This is sweet! When we made Chrome some of us (OK only me) were enamoured with an IE shell browser named iRider - it had tree style tabs and pinning, so was useful in very similar ways IIRC one of the things they did well that could work here is batch control of tabs by dragging across them - you could click on a close or pin button, then drag vertically across other tabs to apply that action - it made handling the glut ever-spawning tabs very easy
- whiplash451 2y ago
  I’ll use this comment to congratulate you and thank you and your team for your amazing work on chrome. - a happy chrome user
- keepamovin 2y ago
  I would like to add this horizontal historying to our "virtualized Chrome" (chrome as a client server app) BrowserBox, and its SaaS, CloudTabs. https://browse.cloudtabs.net https://browse.cloudtabs.net
jeffhuys 2y ago
Orion - Safari with support for FF/Chrome extensions (ALSO on iOS. For free), and has tree-style tabs if you enable it. My browsing has become so much more enjoyable. Also, since it’s almost the same as Safari, great resource management, great gestures, great performance. Definitely recommended
dwayne_dibley 2y ago
Love this idea.
ashkankiani 2y ago
I had this exact idea and I've described it to colleagues before. Fun to see parallel evolution. It feels like a simple concept that should already exist, so I'm surprised it's not more commonly attempted. But you're missing a few of the features that I came up with that build on the initial idea. I haven't gotten around to implementing it yet, but it's on my todo list for this year/next year. I was planning to build it with ultralig.ht, but I'm not 100% sure if it's ready for it. But since most of the content I'm interested in for research is textual/reader mode, and the rest can be viewed with yt-dlp, I think it can render them and it seems the lightest weight. Otherwise it's webkit or servo that I could think of for this. Good to know there's interest in this.
- anougaret 2y ago
  would be curious to know what other features you thought about
matltc 2y ago
Cool, thanks for sharing. Been using the grouping and pinning feature in chrome for a bit then saving the groups i care about to try to emulate this behavior, but still a long way off from ideal; the one dimension of tabs at the top level means the UI gets crowded quickly. Had the tree-style tabs extension for a bit but didn't love its interface and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.
felipesabino 2y ago
This is pretty neat! And I strongly suggest that you contact Kay Xu <Kai.Xu@nottingham.ac.uk>, who is doing research on sensemaking [1] [2] and berrypicking [3], I think he is currently working on newer and better version of his approach with browser extensions (as opposed to a separate renderer), and you both would benefit from collaboration. [1] https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/paper.pdf https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/paper.pdf [2] https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/ https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/ [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20080112091521/http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/berrypicking.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080112091521/http://www.gseis....
- arromatic 2y ago
  No FF support :( Also [The old version of SenseMap is no longer being maintained. A new version called HistoryMap is currently under development ] > site is dead .
  - felipesabino 2y ago
    As I mentioned, it is a research project, so I would not expect production ready code or multi-browser support. They are indeed not supporting the old version, as they are rewriting almost everything from scratch. Last time I had contact with them, they were exploring using Plasmo [1] as building block for the extension, instead of doing everything vanilla as they did in the 1st version, which would offer cross-browser support out of the box. But meanwhile, you can check the code [2] and add the FF manifest yourself to try it out. [1] https://github.com/PlasmoHQ/plasmo https://github.com/PlasmoHQ/plasmo [2] https://github.com/Vis4Sense/HistoryMap https://github.com/Vis4Sense/HistoryMap
    - arromatic 2y ago
      Thanks . The the site [1] dead linked in [2] [1] http://sensemap.io/ http://sensemap.io/
      - msephton 2y ago
082349872349872 2y ago
As a "Watership Down" fan, if I were ever go down the rabbit-holing rabbit hole, I'd be tempted to name the resulting tool "flayrah" (or maybe "Rabscuttle"). But in the meantime (my current rabbit holing technology being a text file in a side window), I'm more than happy to try out everyone else's!
anougaret 2y ago
I love this, I think there is the same problem with IDEs
foul 2y ago
>Yes, it's sometimes good to know how you ended up somewhere, but I think what's most valuable about "research" is the synthesis part — grabbing parts of larger wholes, rearranging, recombining, thinking with the material. A small step in this direction could be persisting scroll position or maybe selection, and making the history editable — allowing users to remove dead ends, add notes, etc. I need to know how this guy will escape the curse of reimplementing a less-VR version of XanaduSpace over HTTPS. Will search his RSS.
unsigner 2y ago
This is also how search in IDEs should work. Each new search term should open a new results panel, with space for the source code on top, and a list of hits at the bottom. Results panels are in an infinite horizontal row.
Yoric 2y ago
Looks like the stuff of dreams and nightmares for a ADHD user. Am I the only one who regularly ends up a browsing session with 300 tabs? This feels like a feature I'd overuse, and which would only make my life much worse.
- berkes 2y ago
  I had exactly the same. I need something to keep me on track. Or, at least something that signals me "headsup! you are rabbit-holing" rather than encouraging me to rabbit-hole. OTOH, being able to quickly go back to the junction where I left the path I was supposed to follow, is invaluable too. In vim, I also never got my head around the undo-branching feature. I understand it, but fail to use it in practice. I guess my ADHD brain can handle linear history better than a branching history.
- t_mahmood 2y ago
  I was thinking, this would be really useful for doing research. But you remind me, I also have 400+ tabs open in my browser right now without any chance of going down, and how this going to spiral out of control.
- smrtinsert 2y ago
  I prune mercilessly. I currently use chrome grouping as the main way to reduce tab spam
- sumnole 2y ago
  Offload tabs to OneTab when the amount is overwhelming.
- dmvdoug 2y ago
  I regularly have to declare tab bankruptcy. By which I mean I bookmark the several hundred still-open tabs in a folder named after the date of said declaration. …you know, in case I, uh, want to continue to work through them some other day... :|
  - pjerem 2y ago
baq 2y ago
I mean this is amazing if panes on the left are what the back button history is!
xrisk 2y ago
Needs a 2021 tag.
laurentlassalle 2y ago
How does it compare to horse browser?
- ukuina 2y ago
  I was going to suggest this. https://browser.horse https://browser.horse is more feature-complete for daily usage.
  - davidcollantes 2y ago
    Yes, but it costs $100 (currently on discount, original $200).
    - ukuina 2y ago
      True, and it is perpetually "discounted". A free trial would be neat.
berkes 2y ago
Slightly unrelated: > As an aside, I also use this technique for navigating code with Vim, where a single shortcut goes to a definition of a function in a new pane I was intrigued by this, and searched the author's github for their .vim. This is how they do that: nnoremap gF <c-w>vgF https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86042effba7836fc8b4101057d285/Dotfiles/vimrc#L570 https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86... and nnoremap <silent>gD :call CocActionAsync('jumpDefinition', 'vsplit')<cr> https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86042effba7836fc8b4101057d285/Dotfiles/vim/after/plugin/coc.vim#L56 https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86... --- Edit: This is what I ended up with, lua, nvim: `buf_set_keymap('n', 'gds', '<c-w>v<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.definition()<CR>', opts)` I made it a different map from the normal gd, so that I can choose to open in a new split or just jump to the one in my current window - I don't want a new split if e.g. a variable is define just 20 lines above my current one.
- hyperbrainer 2y ago
  Haystack[0] is pretty cool for something like this actually. [0] https://haystackeditor.com/ https://haystackeditor.com/
  - delano 2y ago
    Thanks, I hadn't seen this.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  For any vim feature we can think of, somebody has implemented it. So I say this knowing that I’ve almost certainly just not seen it yet. But, it would be sort of nice if there was a key combo that basically said “just bring me to this definition if moving there would still leave some of the currently visible text on my screen (so I’m not jumping out of my current context and getting lost), but if it is any further of a jump, open a split”
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
est 2y ago
yes bring us back proper "hypertext". A browser should behave just like browsing documents, we can go back and forth, each "view" should be cachable and savable, not the 20MB main.min.js SPA crap!
kristopolous 2y ago
I made something like this over 20 years ago. It also had full text searching of the contents of the page and also worked as a browser history. I used it for a few years. The real solution I saw in a roomful of butcher paper tucked in cabinets in the basement of a really dedicated guy who had a learning disability. He went through textbooks and had to come up with his own special syntax in order to comprehend the text by rearranging the contents on these giant rolls effectively making a hybrid between a mind map and a zui. He had a "linking" idea that involved an indexing system where you'd get another roll of paper out of the cabinet earmarked with labels and then unrolled it to the "linked" region. Then he'd fold it back on a table and have them both side by side. The general applicability was immediately apparent. I worked on it as a new way to browse the web over 10 years ago for a few months but then didn't stick with it. I keep telling myself I'll work more on it but you know, anxiety and depression sucks. You can even use llms to do smart ontological labeling now. The pieces are right fucking there. All I need to do is pick them up.
- deepnet 2y ago
  I am intrigued. Please can you link to more about your project and its inspiration. Or write on it, do you have a blog or social to follow ? Sounds great, please so more - and tell others.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    I've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback when I describe it. My previous solution was some heuristic system based on regexs with weights as super-parameters and the Wikipedia corpus. It was not amazing. I think some kind of automated OWL system using all the modern magic that huggingface has to offer will produce better than trash results and is the way to go. We're really just tokenizing and lexing here and it's just a matter of putting in the hours and getting people on board. Some of my general problem is I don't care about money. I'm in this field to build a better future, not so I could personally live extravagantly. Benevolence, however, is not how society is organized.
- jacknews 2y ago
  You can also pin papers, photos, notes, etc to the wall or a giant pinboard, and then use red string and thumb tacks to link related items, etc.
Kydlaw 2y ago
Everybody is talking about the existential risk posed by AI but this guys release this tool in the wild without any rail guards... concerning, really. A bit more seriously, it can be really useful to have a graph of ArXiv tabs instead of a linear range of tabs, this can be very handy when doing a dive in scientific literature.
- berkes 2y ago
  How does this related to "AI"?
  - i_am_a_peasant 2y ago
    AHAHAHAHAHAH oh man
  - wpietri 2y ago
    The joke is that this tool is compelling enough that people might die from it.
- forgotpwd16 2y ago
  Graph approach can be extended to entire web browsing. From page A, you open page B, but you also open page B, from page C. Tree-style browsing will result in opening/seeing page B twice and also not (easily) seeing that came to B from both A and C.
qwertox 2y ago
(2021)
mikewarot 2y ago
This is the first time I've seen actual utility in being able to stuff a "web browser" in a pane of a GUI program developed in the language of your choice. The ability to take the metadata of browsing, the links, and especially the knowledge of the connections between clicked URLs, as the basis of a knowledge graph, is the closest I've seen someone come to the Memex[1] in a long time. Add the ability to add notation, ratings, etc... to that knowledge in a structure, and I think you've got a winner. Oh.. and store EVERYTHING required to show the page, or save a view of it that's independent of the live internet... that's the other key part of the Memex. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...
- anthk 2y ago
  Nyxt is that. A WebkitGTK4 window (commonly used by browsers like Surf, Luakit...) with a Common Lisp UI. The Common Lisp interface gives you suporpowers such as creating graphs on bookmarks to extract closely related information.
underlines 2y ago
I specifically just switched back from chrome to Firefox after about 10 years, because there were still no native hierarchical tab solutions in chrome. FF + sideberry for every day use and rabbit holing.
forgotpwd16 2y ago
Looks similar to TST extension. Actually not sure what the difference is. Even the outline is available in TST. Based on first screenshot more design-y?
dbspin 2y ago
This is exactly how the old OPML browsers used to work back in the web 2.0 era. Always thought it was a neat interface, although I'd keep content in one pane, scrollable back to previous windows.
mikojan 2y ago
You can do this in a generalized fashion using a paper WM and hitting shift+click on links.
deepnet 2y ago
This is brilliant. I currently do this in org mode, pasting bookmarks in long indented trees of research. This is that but next level, many thanks for sharing your work. Following rabbit holes, if the trail is preserved, turns my ADHD from inconvenient distraction into a research superpower.
projektfu 2y ago
"I shared a preview on Twitter, to a surprisingly overwhelming response, but I got distracted with other things and never got back to the project". Creates rabbit-holing browser, gets distracted.... All jokes aside, the description of the Vim functionality reminds me of the Whisper browser for Squeak, that had something of a depth-oriented SmalltalkBrowser to avoid the inevitable proliferation of windows in the normal course of things. Interesting that enough functionality for reorienting source browsing like that in Vim is about two lines of config. But, of course, the Whisper browser had stacking of things as well as sideways browsing, and new UI.
smrtinsert 2y ago
I've been wanting something like this for a while now. Very cool idea!
NeroVanbierv 2y ago
While writing my thesis, I made a similar thing as a chrome extension. It kept track of all tab opens & showed it in a node structure. Screenshot: https://github.com/Taborniki/node-search/blob/pre-alfa/demo.png https://github.com/Taborniki/node-search/blob/pre-alfa/demo....
K0IN 2y ago
i need this as a chrome plugin asap :) It looks really cool and clean!
nihatemreyuksel 2y ago
Love this idea! A browser tailored for wiki-style exploration would be amazing, especially for diving deep into interconnected topics.
sigtstp 2y ago
Interesting! Some overlap with these Firefox add-ons: - Tree Style Tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... (more simplistic, no session saving functionality) - Tree Tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs (more complex, can also save sessions, but incompatible with some other add-ons and not evaluated for security by Mozilla) Neither rearrange tabs in the window, just offer an alternate tree listing of open tabs.
- minhaz23 2y ago
  i’ve only ever seen foxytab rearrange tabs in the window
- ta988 2y ago
  Sideberry is a more advanced version of those.
- johnofthesea 2y ago
  Wish there was also something with Miller columns.
- Izkata 2y ago
  Firefox did have an addon to show tabs in a grid in the same window, but it died along with XUL.
boomskats 2y ago
> For example, a good window manager could replace Cartographist almost completely I can see a neat way of doing this with Niri[0] and its recent IPC layout interface, combined with an extension like URL in Title[1] to expose the full window URL to the wm. Someone may need to hold my beer [0]: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/url-in-title/ignpacbgnbnkaiooknalneoeladjnfgb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/url-in-title/ignpac...
emrah 2y ago
Chrome apparently also keeps track of "trails" but i did not find the implementation particularly useful unfortunately
danbruc 2y ago
Is there a way to get this running without having to install the tool chain to build this? Is this an Electron app? Is Electron Fiddle [1] what I am looking for? Can I have Electron Fiddle in the browser? [1] https://www.electronjs.org/fiddle https://www.electronjs.org/fiddle
satisfice 2y ago
I followed the installation instructions and I just get errors.
alfanick 2y ago
This brings back memories. Szymon is/was also active in minimal/experimental music scene [0] back in the days. I think in my hometown (Poznan, Poland) back those 10-15 years ago, there was some self-made small art-hacker community. Great to see his work again! [0]: https://flic.kr/p/9jz4Gh https://flic.kr/p/9jz4Gh
btbuildem 2y ago
I've been using Gingko Writer [1] since it was "gingkoapp" -- it's similar in how information is structured (hierarchical vs linear), but focused on creating, not consuming. The tool permits a rather free-flow approach to compiling things in various scopes [2], and can render a final linear work product from it. OP's browser and gingko mashed up together would be the perfect thing -- find/explore/learn, annotate, synthesize, organize, and combine into a finished thing, be it a reference or a proof. 1: https://gingkowriter.com/ https://gingkowriter.com/ 2: https://vimeo.com/639232763 https://vimeo.com/639232763
atVelocet 2y ago
There was also this approach many years ago which i absolutely adored: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724414
- marci 2y ago
  Unfortunately, your link leads to nowhere.
noisy_boy 2y ago
I raised the feature of side by side panes as something desirable in Firefox and got pushback in replies[0] proclaiming people couldn't imagine why anyone would want it / that it was solely a domain of the DE. Happy to see that someone figured out that it did make sense. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=40786937 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=40786937
deepsun 2y ago
Curious why it cannot be an extension to an existing browser. PS: awesome idea!
stainablesteel 2y ago
nice design! i like the idea
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bloopernova 2y ago
I really would like to implement that multiple panes feature into Emacs, that "column-mode" could be interesting for code browsing. And a column mode for Tree Style Tabs in Firefox (or Orion/Servo/etc)
DanielLee5 2y ago
[dead]
popol1991 2y ago
We developed a solution in the same space called Skipper (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/skipper-fewer-tabs-more-f/cjiinmicahhdcmfpdohhaahgkdiehfga https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/skipper-fewer-tabs-...) Two features to help with rabbit holing, both automatic: 1. Close tabs that are not used for the ongoing topic 2. Group the browsing history by topic so that users can go back and review their research journey Here's the website: https://www.skipper.co/ https://www.skipper.co/
alexpotato 2y ago
Best line ever from a post about someone who built a browser optimized for rabbit-holing: I shared a preview on Twitter ↗, to a surprisingly overwhelming response, but I got distracted with other things and never got back to the project.
solarkraft 2y ago
We can definitely still innovate in the browser space - I quite like the history concept. Firefox‘s history could definitely use a remake, I find it pretty close to useless currently.
chankstein38 2y ago
I would LOVE this on mobile! It's so hard to keep track of mobile tabs. Android would be nice!
atx2bos 2y ago
need this for LLM chatbots
gillesjacobs 2y ago
The parallel browsing has strong resemblance to Xanadu from Ted Nelson's, which was a proposed web protocol and browser. But I am vague about Xanadu's browser as I only seen it as a brief flash in Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World.
- altkf 2y ago
  the last person i expected to be mentioned in this thread is Werner Herzog
G_o_D 2y ago
Isn't Chrome Journeys similiar feature that tracks which site you opened from which
whitmank 2y ago
I can't seem to get it to run, electron-webpack not found after npm install. 404 for electron github?
jschrf 2y ago
Reminds of Hofstadter's concept of the "Parallel Terraced Scan". Kind of a mix between breadth-first and depth-first search or unsupervised learning. Nice write-up here: https://www.menimagerie.com/manuscripts/2018/6/9/v-douglas-hofstadter-and-parallel-terraced-scan https://www.menimagerie.com/manuscripts/2018/6/9/v-douglas-h...
- ukuina 2y ago
  The font on that page is lovely.
opem 2y ago
I was just thinking about something like this yesterday XD
madrox 2y ago
Lately, I've been thinking about how you might bring notebooks to web browsing...something that would make it easier for an LLM to interact with your browsing and thought process. This was timely because it got me thinking more about how what I'm thinking of relates to rabbit-holing.
sourcepluck 2y ago
I wonder if someone will implement this in Nyxt... it seems appropriate for such a browser.
- anthk 2y ago
  https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/global-history-tree.org https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/global-history-tree.org Already done As Nyxt is for browsers what Emacs is for editors, you can put crazy stuff on it with very little.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    I guess it does count... I knew about global-history-tree, but maybe the visualisation in the blog fooled me into thinking this was somehow a bit /different/. Maybe Nyxt could use some slick demo videos :)
amadeusw 2y ago
This is great, I appreciate the ability to save and restore the "trails". Similarly to OP and many other like-minded commenters, I've also built an interface for rabbit-holing [0]. This is a 10 year old, purely JS+CSS solution you can open in your browser. It's limited to Wikipedia and its UI seems broken after Wikipedia's style updates, but nevertheless wanted to share the source code [1] for anyone who's interested [0] https://amadeusw.com/WikiDive/ https://amadeusw.com/WikiDive/ [1] https://github.com/AmadeusW/WikiDive https://github.com/AmadeusW/WikiDive
wganger 2y ago
I often wish that slack had this same feature
vfclists 2y ago
On Firefox just use TreeStyleTabs and its companion addons, such as Copy This Tree To Clipboard
Nevermark 2y ago
This is a little like I a features I wish macOS spaces or Vision Pro screen arrangements provided. To be able to group, name, save, browse and retrieve multi-space/screen contexts. I would end up with some projects I open and close frequently. And a growing list of started projects, which would be much more likely to continue for being so easy to resume. Not being able to put away and resume contexts (of any kind) is a significant cognitive and productivity impediment. A separate do-undo chain or tree for context edits, in addition to content, would be nice too. I.e. see a context history of what windows I closed, to quickly reopen something. Seeing a lot of this in a browser is inspiring.
semo 2y ago
Similarly Sidebery has been immensely useful for my browsing / work flows.
DanielLee888 2y ago
Need to check it.
- DanielLee888 2y ago
  [dead]

613 points by cernocky 2y ago

snshn 2y ago

I use Firefox with Tree Tabs extension for that.

forgotpwd16 2y ago
Based on comments here either people don't know TST or don't actually care about this functionality beyond seeing it as interesting.
nsonha 2y ago
What's with the TST comments in this thread, this thing has more in common with PaperWM than with TST. Maybe you people should read.

maverick74 2y ago

Amazing!!! I want this in my regular browser (you ear me Mozilla && Servo devs?!)

DaanDL 2y ago

I love this idea, I've been using Arc Browser for a while now and it looks like this would be a very nice addition to that browser.

gmurphy 2y ago

This is sweet! When we made Chrome some of us (OK only me) were enamoured with an IE shell browser named iRider - it had tree style tabs and pinning, so was useful in very similar ways IIRC one of the things they did well that could work here is batch control of tabs by dragging across them - you could click on a close or pin button, then drag vertically across other tabs to apply that action - it made handling the glut ever-spawning tabs very easy

whiplash451 2y ago
I’ll use this comment to congratulate you and thank you and your team for your amazing work on chrome. - a happy chrome user
keepamovin 2y ago
I would like to add this horizontal historying to our "virtualized Chrome" (chrome as a client server app) BrowserBox, and its SaaS, CloudTabs. https://browse.cloudtabs.net https://browse.cloudtabs.net

jeffhuys 2y ago

Orion - Safari with support for FF/Chrome extensions (ALSO on iOS. For free), and has tree-style tabs if you enable it. My browsing has become so much more enjoyable. Also, since it’s almost the same as Safari, great resource management, great gestures, great performance. Definitely recommended

dwayne_dibley 2y ago

Love this idea.

ashkankiani 2y ago

I had this exact idea and I've described it to colleagues before. Fun to see parallel evolution. It feels like a simple concept that should already exist, so I'm surprised it's not more commonly attempted. But you're missing a few of the features that I came up with that build on the initial idea. I haven't gotten around to implementing it yet, but it's on my todo list for this year/next year. I was planning to build it with ultralig.ht, but I'm not 100% sure if it's ready for it. But since most of the content I'm interested in for research is textual/reader mode, and the rest can be viewed with yt-dlp, I think it can render them and it seems the lightest weight. Otherwise it's webkit or servo that I could think of for this. Good to know there's interest in this.

anougaret 2y ago
would be curious to know what other features you thought about

matltc 2y ago

Cool, thanks for sharing. Been using the grouping and pinning feature in chrome for a bit then saving the groups i care about to try to emulate this behavior, but still a long way off from ideal; the one dimension of tabs at the top level means the UI gets crowded quickly. Had the tree-style tabs extension for a bit but didn't love its interface and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.

felipesabino 2y ago

This is pretty neat! And I strongly suggest that you contact Kay Xu <Kai.Xu@nottingham.ac.uk>, who is doing research on sensemaking [1] [2] and berrypicking [3], I think he is currently working on newer and better version of his approach with browser extensions (as opposed to a separate renderer), and you both would benefit from collaboration. [1] https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/paper.pdf https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/paper.pdf [2] https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/ https://vis4sense.github.io/sensemap/ [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20080112091521/http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/berrypicking.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080112091521/http://www.gseis....

arromatic 2y ago
No FF support :( Also [The old version of SenseMap is no longer being maintained. A new version called HistoryMap is currently under development ] > site is dead .
- felipesabino 2y ago
  As I mentioned, it is a research project, so I would not expect production ready code or multi-browser support. They are indeed not supporting the old version, as they are rewriting almost everything from scratch. Last time I had contact with them, they were exploring using Plasmo [1] as building block for the extension, instead of doing everything vanilla as they did in the 1st version, which would offer cross-browser support out of the box. But meanwhile, you can check the code [2] and add the FF manifest yourself to try it out. [1] https://github.com/PlasmoHQ/plasmo https://github.com/PlasmoHQ/plasmo [2] https://github.com/Vis4Sense/HistoryMap https://github.com/Vis4Sense/HistoryMap
  - arromatic 2y ago
    Thanks . The the site [1] dead linked in [2] [1] http://sensemap.io/ http://sensemap.io/
    - msephton 2y ago

082349872349872 2y ago

As a "Watership Down" fan, if I were ever go down the rabbit-holing rabbit hole, I'd be tempted to name the resulting tool "flayrah" (or maybe "Rabscuttle"). But in the meantime (my current rabbit holing technology being a text file in a side window), I'm more than happy to try out everyone else's!

anougaret 2y ago

I love this, I think there is the same problem with IDEs

foul 2y ago

>Yes, it's sometimes good to know how you ended up somewhere, but I think what's most valuable about "research" is the synthesis part — grabbing parts of larger wholes, rearranging, recombining, thinking with the material. A small step in this direction could be persisting scroll position or maybe selection, and making the history editable — allowing users to remove dead ends, add notes, etc. I need to know how this guy will escape the curse of reimplementing a less-VR version of XanaduSpace over HTTPS. Will search his RSS.

unsigner 2y ago

This is also how search in IDEs should work. Each new search term should open a new results panel, with space for the source code on top, and a list of hits at the bottom. Results panels are in an infinite horizontal row.

Yoric 2y ago

Looks like the stuff of dreams and nightmares for a ADHD user. Am I the only one who regularly ends up a browsing session with 300 tabs? This feels like a feature I'd overuse, and which would only make my life much worse.

berkes 2y ago
I had exactly the same. I need something to keep me on track. Or, at least something that signals me "headsup! you are rabbit-holing" rather than encouraging me to rabbit-hole. OTOH, being able to quickly go back to the junction where I left the path I was supposed to follow, is invaluable too. In vim, I also never got my head around the undo-branching feature. I understand it, but fail to use it in practice. I guess my ADHD brain can handle linear history better than a branching history.
t_mahmood 2y ago
I was thinking, this would be really useful for doing research. But you remind me, I also have 400+ tabs open in my browser right now without any chance of going down, and how this going to spiral out of control.
smrtinsert 2y ago
I prune mercilessly. I currently use chrome grouping as the main way to reduce tab spam
sumnole 2y ago
Offload tabs to OneTab when the amount is overwhelming.
dmvdoug 2y ago
I regularly have to declare tab bankruptcy. By which I mean I bookmark the several hundred still-open tabs in a folder named after the date of said declaration. …you know, in case I, uh, want to continue to work through them some other day... :|
- pjerem 2y ago

baq 2y ago

I mean this is amazing if panes on the left are what the back button history is!

xrisk 2y ago

Needs a 2021 tag.

laurentlassalle 2y ago

How does it compare to horse browser?

ukuina 2y ago
I was going to suggest this. https://browser.horse https://browser.horse is more feature-complete for daily usage.
- davidcollantes 2y ago
  Yes, but it costs $100 (currently on discount, original $200).
  - ukuina 2y ago
    True, and it is perpetually "discounted". A free trial would be neat.

berkes 2y ago

Slightly unrelated: > As an aside, I also use this technique for navigating code with Vim, where a single shortcut goes to a definition of a function in a new pane I was intrigued by this, and searched the author's github for their .vim. This is how they do that: nnoremap gF <c-w>vgF https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86042effba7836fc8b4101057d285/Dotfiles/vimrc#L570 https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86... and nnoremap <silent>gD :call CocActionAsync('jumpDefinition', 'vsplit')<cr> https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86042effba7836fc8b4101057d285/Dotfiles/vim/after/plugin/coc.vim#L56 https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86... --- Edit: This is what I ended up with, lua, nvim: `buf_set_keymap('n', 'gds', '<c-w>v<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.definition()<CR>', opts)` I made it a different map from the normal gd, so that I can choose to open in a new split or just jump to the one in my current window - I don't want a new split if e.g. a variable is define just 20 lines above my current one.

hyperbrainer 2y ago
Haystack[0] is pretty cool for something like this actually. [0] https://haystackeditor.com/ https://haystackeditor.com/
- delano 2y ago
  Thanks, I hadn't seen this.
bee_rider 2y ago
For any vim feature we can think of, somebody has implemented it. So I say this knowing that I’ve almost certainly just not seen it yet. But, it would be sort of nice if there was a key combo that basically said “just bring me to this definition if moving there would still leave some of the currently visible text on my screen (so I’m not jumping out of my current context and getting lost), but if it is any further of a jump, open a split”
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

est 2y ago

yes bring us back proper "hypertext". A browser should behave just like browsing documents, we can go back and forth, each "view" should be cachable and savable, not the 20MB main.min.js SPA crap!

kristopolous 2y ago

I made something like this over 20 years ago. It also had full text searching of the contents of the page and also worked as a browser history. I used it for a few years. The real solution I saw in a roomful of butcher paper tucked in cabinets in the basement of a really dedicated guy who had a learning disability. He went through textbooks and had to come up with his own special syntax in order to comprehend the text by rearranging the contents on these giant rolls effectively making a hybrid between a mind map and a zui. He had a "linking" idea that involved an indexing system where you'd get another roll of paper out of the cabinet earmarked with labels and then unrolled it to the "linked" region. Then he'd fold it back on a table and have them both side by side. The general applicability was immediately apparent. I worked on it as a new way to browse the web over 10 years ago for a few months but then didn't stick with it. I keep telling myself I'll work more on it but you know, anxiety and depression sucks. You can even use llms to do smart ontological labeling now. The pieces are right fucking there. All I need to do is pick them up.

deepnet 2y ago
I am intrigued. Please can you link to more about your project and its inspiration. Or write on it, do you have a blog or social to follow ? Sounds great, please so more - and tell others.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  I've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback when I describe it. My previous solution was some heuristic system based on regexs with weights as super-parameters and the Wikipedia corpus. It was not amazing. I think some kind of automated OWL system using all the modern magic that huggingface has to offer will produce better than trash results and is the way to go. We're really just tokenizing and lexing here and it's just a matter of putting in the hours and getting people on board. Some of my general problem is I don't care about money. I'm in this field to build a better future, not so I could personally live extravagantly. Benevolence, however, is not how society is organized.
jacknews 2y ago
You can also pin papers, photos, notes, etc to the wall or a giant pinboard, and then use red string and thumb tacks to link related items, etc.

Kydlaw 2y ago

Everybody is talking about the existential risk posed by AI but this guys release this tool in the wild without any rail guards... concerning, really. A bit more seriously, it can be really useful to have a graph of ArXiv tabs instead of a linear range of tabs, this can be very handy when doing a dive in scientific literature.

berkes 2y ago
How does this related to "AI"?
- i_am_a_peasant 2y ago
  AHAHAHAHAHAH oh man
- wpietri 2y ago
  The joke is that this tool is compelling enough that people might die from it.
forgotpwd16 2y ago
Graph approach can be extended to entire web browsing. From page A, you open page B, but you also open page B, from page C. Tree-style browsing will result in opening/seeing page B twice and also not (easily) seeing that came to B from both A and C.

qwertox 2y ago

(2021)

mikewarot 2y ago

This is the first time I've seen actual utility in being able to stuff a "web browser" in a pane of a GUI program developed in the language of your choice. The ability to take the metadata of browsing, the links, and especially the knowledge of the connections between clicked URLs, as the basis of a knowledge graph, is the closest I've seen someone come to the Memex[1] in a long time. Add the ability to add notation, ratings, etc... to that knowledge in a structure, and I think you've got a winner. Oh.. and store EVERYTHING required to show the page, or save a view of it that's independent of the live internet... that's the other key part of the Memex. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

anthk 2y ago
Nyxt is that. A WebkitGTK4 window (commonly used by browsers like Surf, Luakit...) with a Common Lisp UI. The Common Lisp interface gives you suporpowers such as creating graphs on bookmarks to extract closely related information.

underlines 2y ago

I specifically just switched back from chrome to Firefox after about 10 years, because there were still no native hierarchical tab solutions in chrome. FF + sideberry for every day use and rabbit holing.

forgotpwd16 2y ago

Looks similar to TST extension. Actually not sure what the difference is. Even the outline is available in TST. Based on first screenshot more design-y?

dbspin 2y ago

This is exactly how the old OPML browsers used to work back in the web 2.0 era. Always thought it was a neat interface, although I'd keep content in one pane, scrollable back to previous windows.

mikojan 2y ago

You can do this in a generalized fashion using a paper WM and hitting shift+click on links.

deepnet 2y ago

This is brilliant. I currently do this in org mode, pasting bookmarks in long indented trees of research. This is that but next level, many thanks for sharing your work. Following rabbit holes, if the trail is preserved, turns my ADHD from inconvenient distraction into a research superpower.

projektfu 2y ago

"I shared a preview on Twitter, to a surprisingly overwhelming response, but I got distracted with other things and never got back to the project". Creates rabbit-holing browser, gets distracted.... All jokes aside, the description of the Vim functionality reminds me of the Whisper browser for Squeak, that had something of a depth-oriented SmalltalkBrowser to avoid the inevitable proliferation of windows in the normal course of things. Interesting that enough functionality for reorienting source browsing like that in Vim is about two lines of config. But, of course, the Whisper browser had stacking of things as well as sideways browsing, and new UI.

smrtinsert 2y ago

I've been wanting something like this for a while now. Very cool idea!

NeroVanbierv 2y ago

While writing my thesis, I made a similar thing as a chrome extension. It kept track of all tab opens & showed it in a node structure. Screenshot: https://github.com/Taborniki/node-search/blob/pre-alfa/demo.png https://github.com/Taborniki/node-search/blob/pre-alfa/demo....

K0IN 2y ago

i need this as a chrome plugin asap :) It looks really cool and clean!

nihatemreyuksel 2y ago

Love this idea! A browser tailored for wiki-style exploration would be amazing, especially for diving deep into interconnected topics.

sigtstp 2y ago

Interesting! Some overlap with these Firefox add-ons: - Tree Style Tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... (more simplistic, no session saving functionality) - Tree Tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs (more complex, can also save sessions, but incompatible with some other add-ons and not evaluated for security by Mozilla) Neither rearrange tabs in the window, just offer an alternate tree listing of open tabs.

minhaz23 2y ago
i’ve only ever seen foxytab rearrange tabs in the window
ta988 2y ago
Sideberry is a more advanced version of those.
johnofthesea 2y ago
Wish there was also something with Miller columns.
Izkata 2y ago
Firefox did have an addon to show tabs in a grid in the same window, but it died along with XUL.

boomskats 2y ago

> For example, a good window manager could replace Cartographist almost completely I can see a neat way of doing this with Niri[0] and its recent IPC layout interface, combined with an extension like URL in Title[1] to expose the full window URL to the wm. Someone may need to hold my beer [0]: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/url-in-title/ignpacbgnbnkaiooknalneoeladjnfgb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/url-in-title/ignpac...

emrah 2y ago

Chrome apparently also keeps track of "trails" but i did not find the implementation particularly useful unfortunately

danbruc 2y ago

Is there a way to get this running without having to install the tool chain to build this? Is this an Electron app? Is Electron Fiddle [1] what I am looking for? Can I have Electron Fiddle in the browser? [1] https://www.electronjs.org/fiddle https://www.electronjs.org/fiddle

satisfice 2y ago

I followed the installation instructions and I just get errors.

alfanick 2y ago

This brings back memories. Szymon is/was also active in minimal/experimental music scene [0] back in the days. I think in my hometown (Poznan, Poland) back those 10-15 years ago, there was some self-made small art-hacker community. Great to see his work again! [0]: https://flic.kr/p/9jz4Gh https://flic.kr/p/9jz4Gh

btbuildem 2y ago

I've been using Gingko Writer [1] since it was "gingkoapp" -- it's similar in how information is structured (hierarchical vs linear), but focused on creating, not consuming. The tool permits a rather free-flow approach to compiling things in various scopes [2], and can render a final linear work product from it. OP's browser and gingko mashed up together would be the perfect thing -- find/explore/learn, annotate, synthesize, organize, and combine into a finished thing, be it a reference or a proof. 1: https://gingkowriter.com/ https://gingkowriter.com/ 2: https://vimeo.com/639232763 https://vimeo.com/639232763

atVelocet 2y ago

There was also this approach many years ago which i absolutely adored: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724414

marci 2y ago
Unfortunately, your link leads to nowhere.

noisy_boy 2y ago

I raised the feature of side by side panes as something desirable in Firefox and got pushback in replies[0] proclaiming people couldn't imagine why anyone would want it / that it was solely a domain of the DE. Happy to see that someone figured out that it did make sense. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=40786937 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=40786937

deepsun 2y ago

Curious why it cannot be an extension to an existing browser. PS: awesome idea!

stainablesteel 2y ago

nice design! i like the idea

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bloopernova 2y ago

I really would like to implement that multiple panes feature into Emacs, that "column-mode" could be interesting for code browsing. And a column mode for Tree Style Tabs in Firefox (or Orion/Servo/etc)

DanielLee5 2y ago

[dead]

popol1991 2y ago

We developed a solution in the same space called Skipper (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/skipper-fewer-tabs-more-f/cjiinmicahhdcmfpdohhaahgkdiehfga https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/skipper-fewer-tabs-...) Two features to help with rabbit holing, both automatic: 1. Close tabs that are not used for the ongoing topic 2. Group the browsing history by topic so that users can go back and review their research journey Here's the website: https://www.skipper.co/ https://www.skipper.co/

alexpotato 2y ago

Best line ever from a post about someone who built a browser optimized for rabbit-holing: I shared a preview on Twitter ↗, to a surprisingly overwhelming response, but I got distracted with other things and never got back to the project.

solarkraft 2y ago

We can definitely still innovate in the browser space - I quite like the history concept. Firefox‘s history could definitely use a remake, I find it pretty close to useless currently.

chankstein38 2y ago

I would LOVE this on mobile! It's so hard to keep track of mobile tabs. Android would be nice!

atx2bos 2y ago

need this for LLM chatbots

gillesjacobs 2y ago

The parallel browsing has strong resemblance to Xanadu from Ted Nelson's, which was a proposed web protocol and browser. But I am vague about Xanadu's browser as I only seen it as a brief flash in Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World.

altkf 2y ago
the last person i expected to be mentioned in this thread is Werner Herzog

G_o_D 2y ago

Isn't Chrome Journeys similiar feature that tracks which site you opened from which

whitmank 2y ago

I can't seem to get it to run, electron-webpack not found after npm install. 404 for electron github?

jschrf 2y ago

Reminds of Hofstadter's concept of the "Parallel Terraced Scan". Kind of a mix between breadth-first and depth-first search or unsupervised learning. Nice write-up here: https://www.menimagerie.com/manuscripts/2018/6/9/v-douglas-hofstadter-and-parallel-terraced-scan https://www.menimagerie.com/manuscripts/2018/6/9/v-douglas-h...

ukuina 2y ago
The font on that page is lovely.

opem 2y ago

I was just thinking about something like this yesterday XD

madrox 2y ago

Lately, I've been thinking about how you might bring notebooks to web browsing...something that would make it easier for an LLM to interact with your browsing and thought process. This was timely because it got me thinking more about how what I'm thinking of relates to rabbit-holing.

sourcepluck 2y ago

I wonder if someone will implement this in Nyxt... it seems appropriate for such a browser.

anthk 2y ago
https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/global-history-tree.org https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/global-history-tree.org Already done As Nyxt is for browsers what Emacs is for editors, you can put crazy stuff on it with very little.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  I guess it does count... I knew about global-history-tree, but maybe the visualisation in the blog fooled me into thinking this was somehow a bit /different/. Maybe Nyxt could use some slick demo videos :)

amadeusw 2y ago

This is great, I appreciate the ability to save and restore the "trails". Similarly to OP and many other like-minded commenters, I've also built an interface for rabbit-holing [0]. This is a 10 year old, purely JS+CSS solution you can open in your browser. It's limited to Wikipedia and its UI seems broken after Wikipedia's style updates, but nevertheless wanted to share the source code [1] for anyone who's interested [0] https://amadeusw.com/WikiDive/ https://amadeusw.com/WikiDive/ [1] https://github.com/AmadeusW/WikiDive https://github.com/AmadeusW/WikiDive

wganger 2y ago

I often wish that slack had this same feature

vfclists 2y ago

On Firefox just use TreeStyleTabs and its companion addons, such as Copy This Tree To Clipboard

Nevermark 2y ago

This is a little like I a features I wish macOS spaces or Vision Pro screen arrangements provided. To be able to group, name, save, browse and retrieve multi-space/screen contexts. I would end up with some projects I open and close frequently. And a growing list of started projects, which would be much more likely to continue for being so easy to resume. Not being able to put away and resume contexts (of any kind) is a significant cognitive and productivity impediment. A separate do-undo chain or tree for context edits, in addition to content, would be nice too. I.e. see a context history of what windows I closed, to quickly reopen something. Seeing a lot of this in a browser is inspiring.

semo 2y ago

Similarly Sidebery has been immensely useful for my browsing / work flows.

DanielLee888 2y ago

Need to check it.

DanielLee888 2y ago
[dead]