9 ms·

Nook Browser

138 points by ray__ 10mo ago

idle_zealot 10mo ago
What's up with all the Arc clones? Did people really like the 3-tier tab sidebar thing that much?
- hjkl0 10mo ago
  Yes
- chrysoprace 10mo ago
  Zen (Firefox-based) has been really refreshing. You could probably accomplish the same thing with some user scripts and user CSS, but the concern with those has always been that they could break at any time with a new update. That shouldn't happen with a fork like Zen as they have control over updates.
  - orbital-decay 10mo ago
    Does it do anything that Sidebery doesn't?
    - chrysoprace 10mo ago
      An integrated experience. In the past I found that the vertical tab options in Firefox had the tabs duplicated across the side and the top, which I always found to be a subpar experience. Again, probably something you could accomplish with user.js and user.css but there's a good chance an update could break your modifications.
      - gcr 10mo ago
        If you haven't tried firefox' vertical tabs recently, try it again. Firefox's default vertical tabs UI is quite nice now.
        chrysoprace 10mo ago
        Seems quite similar to Zen's experience, except it seems to be missing folders (which I admittedly don't use often, but they're sometimes handy to group a Jira ticket with a PR, or similar). I'll probably still stick with Zen while it's around, and maybe I'll hop over to LibreWolf as I'm not too happy about Mozilla's recent stance on privacy.
        FuturisticGoo 10mo ago
        Is it similar to tab groups? It's available on Firefox Nightly, don't know about stable.
        chrysoprace 10mo ago
        Maybe! Folders in Zen let you group, label and collapse tabs, so if that's the same thing then yes.
        irilesscent 10mo ago
        I found it too buggy in my usage, it just doesn't compare to the polish in Zen or the other forks. Better just to use the horizontal tabs IMO.
      - forgotpwd16 10mo ago
        >there's a good chance an update Using TST and have tabs hidden few years now. So although there's a chance, it certainly isn't something that happens often.
- anjel 10mo ago
  Who knew you could yearn so much for mousewheel scrolling?
- dartharva 10mo ago
  Precisely what I was wondering
linkage 10mo ago
How is built-in ad blocking not the foremost priority? Brave and Comet both have it. uBlock Origin is not as effective as it used to be as of Manifest v3.
- TheRoque 10mo ago
  uBlock is still as efficient if you're using Mozilla, blame the browser not the extension
  - darthcircuit 10mo ago
    Very correct. I’m on Zen and UBO works great for me. Chrome based browsers are screwed for ads
LoganDark 10mo ago
I think I like the idea, but the structure of the code doesn't look the best. What most sticks out to me is the "Managers" directory. I've seen similar patterns before, even at my current place of work, but they seem to correlate with less experienced implementations. For instance, I clicked on one of them randomly and already found an issue: https://github.com/nook-browser/Nook/blob/09a4c6957a2e9fd7c5737dc5a6adc01356e2ab9a/Nook/Managers/BoostsManager/BoostsManager.swift#L593-L613 https://github.com/nook-browser/Nook/blob/09a4c6957a2e9fd7c5... I guess `www.` (and only `www.`) is always special, and the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br"`? I don't know how critical this "Manager" is (what even is a "boost"?), but a web browser should absolutely have a proper list of TLDs!
- normie3000 10mo ago
  > the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br". Is this sarcasm? The public suffix list will give some ideas for omissions: https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
  - LoganDark 10mo ago
    That was me pointing out what was plainly implemented in the code snippet I linked. It is obviously nowhere near the truth.
    - monerozcash 10mo ago
      > and the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br"`? There are a plenty of reasons why you might want to treat the most common two part TLDs as special, while not doing that with the less common ones.
      - ziml77 10mo ago
        And those reasons would be...?
  - 10mo ago
Zambyte 10mo ago
The website says: > Open-source forever > Transparent code, permissive license, and a community-driven roadmap. Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever. But the license is actually GPLv3 instead. So still contradictory wording, but the "permissive" is the part that isn't correct :-)
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever. No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do. Neither has any effect whatsoever on what future first-party licensing can be; a commitment to "open source forever" by the copyright owner is mostly orthogonal to what kind of open source license the copyright owner offers. (Now, its true that if the owner accepted contributions under a copyright license rather than under a CLA, they would likely have no practical choice but copyleft now and forever, but that's an issue of the license they accept on what they can offer, not an effect of what they offer itself.) (OTOH, using "permissive" for GPLv3, a copyleft license, is actually contradictory, as you correctly note.)
  - Zambyte 10mo ago
    You keep saying "no" and then agreeing with me. > No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do. This should read "Yes, [...]". The point of permissive licenses is for people to sublicense it. You can use this to sublicense the software using a license that actually enforces it must remain Free (see Redict for an example) but it is almost always the case that someone uses this headlining feature of permissive licenses to lock the code up and extract rent. Your next paragraph frames single contributor or CLA as the two primary development patterns, when that those are absolutely the exception, especially if we exclude repos for things like AoC our homework, which are mostly single contributor.
jonathantf2 10mo ago
Thought this was a browser for my e-reader
- cjohnson318 10mo ago
  Same.
- normie3000 10mo ago
  I still want something constructive to do with mine - what a sweet bit of hardware.
  - 1317 10mo ago
    read books?
- neilv 10mo ago
  I won't be surprised if B&N does a C&D on this particular trademark infringement. Nook is a well-known brand in consumer tech, ereaders aren't that far removed from Web browsers, Nooks have a Web browser, and B&N also has a "Nook for Web".
- Hackbraten 10mo ago
  I was hoping for an Animal Crossing themed browser where instead of an AI assistant, we'd get Tom Nook.
monooso 10mo ago
Both the browser and the website look remarkably similar to https://zen-browser.app/ https://zen-browser.app/.
- pmkary 10mo ago
  Because both are trying to be response to the death of Browser Company's Arc. (https://arc.net https://arc.net)
  - twostorytower 10mo ago
    The browser designs look identical to Arc, yes, but the website of these two new “Arc responses” also look the same, down to the background color.
    - irilesscent 10mo ago
      The only difference is zen is Firefox based while arc and nook are chromium based.
      - arthurfm 10mo ago
        According to their FAQ, Nook is WebKit-based.
        irilesscent 10mo ago
        Oops I misunderstood, I thought the fact that it ran chrome extensions meant it was chromium based. Thanks.
- robot-wrangler 10mo ago
  Switched to zen recently, and although I only expected a slightly different experience to firefox, it's hugely better. Profiles/containers/workspaces especially are great.. this level or organization fits my mental model much better and and I never need to manage bookmarks or use multiple windows. (Performance with large numbers of tabs seems much better too, presumably inactive workspaces are reclaiming the memory in smart ways).
bdcravens 10mo ago
Given the background color of the site, I initially thought it was a Barnes and Noble project.
65 10mo ago
It's nice, but it feels like Yet Another Browser. I'm interested in seeing all the new browsers that will come out in the next few years that are based off Ladybird. Or alternatively what Ladybird will enable in terms of customization. I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered.
- normie3000 10mo ago
  > I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered. I'm going out on a limb here and betting they're numbered in the high thousands minimum.
  - agoodusername63 10mo ago
    chromium/blink is going to be ship of theseus'd before it "dies" imo
theoldgreybeard 10mo ago
This looks exactly like Zen...?
- forgotpwd16 10mo ago
  Similar to Zen, it's an open source Arc* clone but WebKit rather Blink/Gecko-based that Arc/Zen are. *Explains "not owned by Atlassian" in about since Arc/Dia dev company was bought by Atlassian.
enthdegree 10mo ago
Another thing called nook? Another browser? Bad, presumptuous name. How many months will this project last?
- balamatom 10mo ago
  inb4 rebrand to "nuke"
ConanRus 10mo ago
[dead]
GaryBluto 10mo ago
I see we're heading back to the days of MDI web browsers, slowly but surely. It's really strange to me how web browsers used to allow so much configuration (like the option to use MDI tab/window management or just generic tiling) but don't anymore. I've been hoping a browser comes out that is just Opera 8/9 but with the ability to browse the modern web so maybe with the advent of all these new browsers I should start taking a look.
- art0rz 10mo ago
  Opera 9 was peak browser
  - jauntywundrkind 10mo ago
    Opera 10 was getting into some wild stuff. 9 was obviously just winning. But I loved how 10 literally gave you the user your own endpoints on the web. The browser is the server (by way of proxy)! Massively inspirational decentralization. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html
    - andrewl-hn 10mo ago
      Other parts were legendary, too. * They came with a mail and chat (IRC) clients, a download manager, a set of browser dev tools, and in the age of limited internet traffic all of that was smaller than a single download of Firefox. * Their dev tools were the first that allowed remote debugging. You could run Opera on your phone (Symbian, Windows Mobile, early Android) and debug your website from a computer. * They were the first browser to sync your bookmarks, settings, history, extensions across devices. * They were the first to add process isolation, albeit initially on Linux only. If an extension crashed your page it didn't take the whole browser down with it. This was later added first by Microsoft in IE8 and then by Google in Chrome. Their browser was a brilliant piece of tech and a brilliant product. Too bad that the product couldn't survive under pressure.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
gitmagic 10mo ago
> When enabled, they provide helpful tools such as chat assistance, summaries, up-to-date web insights, and more. I find this sentence to be a little odd. Who are “they”?
- petesergeant 10mo ago
  AI features, presumably
- jb1991 10mo ago
  The previous sentence introduces the subject.
- amitav1 10mo ago
  The AI.
udave 10mo ago
the sidebar was the best feature in Arc imo. I gave zen a shot just because of that and it was not a great experience to be honest. First, migration was buggy, then the sidebar lacked some basic features like renaming the tabs even though it looked similar. Nook seems to follow in the same footsteps I just hope that they nail the sidebar like Arc. Tab management is a mess and this has so much potential. All the best to both Zen and Nook.
- bpavuk 10mo ago
  modern Zen is a lot better than then :) the only missing from the sidebar thing is Library as a central place to manage downloads, spaces, and history. and although the downloads window looks a bit unsexy, it's totally enough
jakozaur 10mo ago
Looks like Arc, would love to migrate out of it after migration, but always worry about maintenance. Creating a browser is "easy", keeping it up to date is a lot of work, and many open-source browsers look semi-abandoned to me.
- bpavuk 10mo ago
  Zen is actually solid these days. being a Firefox-based browser, it has its quirks, (i.e. Theo complained about gradient rendering or whatever, but who cares?) but it's still the best Arc-like we currently have. plus, you get synchronization across desktop (Zen) and mobile (Firefox for iPhone/Android). since Google limited theirs only to official Chrome, this feature is basically exclusive to Firefox and forks, Arc <-> Arc Search, and Chrome for desktop <-> Chrome for mobile.
  - SSLy 10mo ago
    Well, Vivaldi and Brave also can sync with mobile products.
    - bpavuk 10mo ago
      yeah, but you have to download their mobile counterpart as well. you can't have e.g. Chrome desktop and Brave mobile work together. meanwhile, any Firefox syncs with any Firefox
  - tamimio 10mo ago
    Zen was solid, after a while it turned to a browser full of bugs, crashes, and too much UI changes it rendered it unstable for me had to ditch it. And reporting the bugs goes to nothing and never getting resolved, one simple bug was the pinned tab, where it supposedly to be pinned but scrolling will take it out of your view, and it was never resolved for months last time I used the browser.
wyre 10mo ago
Am I the only one that thinks "No selling of browsing data. Ever." implies that you're still harvesting browsing data? That is a level of telemetry that I don't want my browser having.
- aorth 10mo ago
  Right, as I read that I also thought, "Wait a sec, do they have the user's browsing data?" They should say "Your browsing data is local and we don't even have it!" instead.
KitN 10mo ago
I was looking for a good browser. I’m finally interning, and Brave has taken over as my official browser(I don’t like the concept of workspaces/profiles). I used Comet for a while but found it extremely annoying. I like Zen, but I’m not a fan of sidebars in browsers. Currently settled on Helium. This would have been good, but I can’t seem to understand the obsession with sidebars.
- splatter9859 10mo ago
  I need someone to explain to me, at length, at some point in my life the value proposition of Brave and what it brings to the table that other browsers do not. For example, most of the key differentiators of Brave could be accomplished similarly in Firebox with a litany of extensions -- such as UBlock Origin as just one example -- or Privacy Badger if you'd like to be less 'heavy handed'. The only other differentiator I see is the use of cryptocurrency as a way of compensating users for watching ads and the use of a crypto wallet; which if your not interested in such functionality is meaningless. Yet I see very educated, competent, and intellegent people I've known for years be advocates and at some points "zealots" over the browser. I would love to understand this. I'm honestly open to discussing this in good faith as I would like to understand the benefit here, and if I am somehow missing something will be the first to admit I was ignorant.
  - marcwebbie 10mo ago
    For me the reasons for using brave for over an year now are: - no ads, no trackers and they are transparent about it - I can install chrome extensions - I don’t feel like I am handing all my data to Google - overall feels faster even with dozens for tabs open
    - splatter9859 10mo ago
      I get that and it makes sense. What distinguishing features does it have that keeps you coming back to Brave that, say, Edge or Chrome or even Firefox doesn't bring? I ask because most of the items you listed could be accomplished in other browsers with extensions. Just trying to find the secret sauce that keeps people coming back specifically to Brave. I really appreciate you engaging and listing your reasons! Thank you for sharing your viewpoint and why you enjoy Brave.
sph 10mo ago
New browser starter pack: * Fancy logo * Blink engine so it's basically Chrome like every other alternative browser * Mention of AI somewhere on the website * Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari * Heartfelt promises of speed and privacy * macOS only
- RestartKernel 10mo ago
  > Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari More like Arc † nowadays.
- frizlab 10mo ago
  The engine of this browser is Webkit.
  - integricho 10mo ago
    Anyone can slap a fancy UI on an existing engine and claim they made a browser. So many of them exist now, they don't matter anymore at all. This one will die in the crowd like every other wannabe browser. Build your own goddamn engine and then claim you made a browser, at least the Servo and Ladybird devs are doing some concrete work, not just pointless marketing and empty claims.
    - eviks 10mo ago
      > Anyone can slap a fancy UI It's the opposite, anyone can slap an existing good engine to a bad UI that works well on many sites because it already works for some major browser. Almost no one can slap a fancy UI, and none of these newly sprangeld browsers offer any, they are way closer to the basic fails for Chrome/Firefox where even changing the default keybinds in an exercise in futility, and all the other stuff is similarly bad - for example, in this browser while the have vertical tabs, the 9to5mac example website doesn't fit the tab name and has the … symbol, which is not fancy at all on its own (fancy UI would be something like non-space-wasting fade out instead of text replacement), but also is part of the same low-density-whitespace-wasteful UI nonsense you see everwhere else - while there is enough whitespace in the tabbbar to fit whole ~two next words "...Mac Rumours breaki"
jollyjerry 10mo ago
Lot of nostalgia today. This brings me back to compiling Camino, a gecko based browser, on my iBook G4.
- stuartd 10mo ago
  I loved Camino. I think I still have the binary on my MBA just to look at the icon and sigh
rezaprima 10mo ago
"This software does not run on macOS versions older than Sequoia.". Is there any reason I should upgrade from Sonoma ?
Suppafly 10mo ago
I'm sure Barnes and Noble will have no problem with the name.
TomMasz 10mo ago
Interestingly enough, Kagi has a new browser, Orion, that's also WebKit-based. Besides the obvious macOS, it's in Alpha for Linux and "in development" for Windows. May the best non-Chromium browser win! https://blog.kagi.com/orion https://blog.kagi.com/orion
- cyber_kinetist 10mo ago
  Kinda interesting that they were able to resurrect the WebKit engine on Windows, might have been quite an engineering feat. In the past (2007-2012) Apple distributed a Windows version of Safari, but it's been more than a decade since it was deprecated and the engine only supported Apple's ecosystem.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

Nook Browser

138 points by ray__ 10mo ago

idle_zealot 10mo ago

What's up with all the Arc clones? Did people really like the 3-tier tab sidebar thing that much?

hjkl0 10mo ago
Yes
chrysoprace 10mo ago
Zen (Firefox-based) has been really refreshing. You could probably accomplish the same thing with some user scripts and user CSS, but the concern with those has always been that they could break at any time with a new update. That shouldn't happen with a fork like Zen as they have control over updates.
- orbital-decay 10mo ago
  Does it do anything that Sidebery doesn't?
  - chrysoprace 10mo ago
    An integrated experience. In the past I found that the vertical tab options in Firefox had the tabs duplicated across the side and the top, which I always found to be a subpar experience. Again, probably something you could accomplish with user.js and user.css but there's a good chance an update could break your modifications.
    - gcr 10mo ago
      If you haven't tried firefox' vertical tabs recently, try it again. Firefox's default vertical tabs UI is quite nice now.
      - chrysoprace 10mo ago
        Seems quite similar to Zen's experience, except it seems to be missing folders (which I admittedly don't use often, but they're sometimes handy to group a Jira ticket with a PR, or similar). I'll probably still stick with Zen while it's around, and maybe I'll hop over to LibreWolf as I'm not too happy about Mozilla's recent stance on privacy.
        FuturisticGoo 10mo ago
        Is it similar to tab groups? It's available on Firefox Nightly, don't know about stable.
        chrysoprace 10mo ago
        Maybe! Folders in Zen let you group, label and collapse tabs, so if that's the same thing then yes.
      - irilesscent 10mo ago
        I found it too buggy in my usage, it just doesn't compare to the polish in Zen or the other forks. Better just to use the horizontal tabs IMO.
    - forgotpwd16 10mo ago
      >there's a good chance an update Using TST and have tabs hidden few years now. So although there's a chance, it certainly isn't something that happens often.
anjel 10mo ago
Who knew you could yearn so much for mousewheel scrolling?
dartharva 10mo ago
Precisely what I was wondering

linkage 10mo ago

How is built-in ad blocking not the foremost priority? Brave and Comet both have it. uBlock Origin is not as effective as it used to be as of Manifest v3.

TheRoque 10mo ago
uBlock is still as efficient if you're using Mozilla, blame the browser not the extension
- darthcircuit 10mo ago
  Very correct. I’m on Zen and UBO works great for me. Chrome based browsers are screwed for ads

LoganDark 10mo ago

I think I like the idea, but the structure of the code doesn't look the best. What most sticks out to me is the "Managers" directory. I've seen similar patterns before, even at my current place of work, but they seem to correlate with less experienced implementations. For instance, I clicked on one of them randomly and already found an issue: https://github.com/nook-browser/Nook/blob/09a4c6957a2e9fd7c5737dc5a6adc01356e2ab9a/Nook/Managers/BoostsManager/BoostsManager.swift#L593-L613 https://github.com/nook-browser/Nook/blob/09a4c6957a2e9fd7c5... I guess `www.` (and only `www.`) is always special, and the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br"`? I don't know how critical this "Manager" is (what even is a "boost"?), but a web browser should absolutely have a proper list of TLDs!

normie3000 10mo ago
> the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br". Is this sarcasm? The public suffix list will give some ideas for omissions: https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
- LoganDark 10mo ago
  That was me pointing out what was plainly implemented in the code snippet I linked. It is obviously nowhere near the truth.
  - monerozcash 10mo ago
    > and the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br"`? There are a plenty of reasons why you might want to treat the most common two part TLDs as special, while not doing that with the less common ones.
    - ziml77 10mo ago
      And those reasons would be...?
- 10mo ago

Zambyte 10mo ago

The website says: > Open-source forever > Transparent code, permissive license, and a community-driven roadmap. Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever. But the license is actually GPLv3 instead. So still contradictory wording, but the "permissive" is the part that isn't correct :-)

dragonwriter 10mo ago
> Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever. No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do. Neither has any effect whatsoever on what future first-party licensing can be; a commitment to "open source forever" by the copyright owner is mostly orthogonal to what kind of open source license the copyright owner offers. (Now, its true that if the owner accepted contributions under a copyright license rather than under a CLA, they would likely have no practical choice but copyleft now and forever, but that's an issue of the license they accept on what they can offer, not an effect of what they offer itself.) (OTOH, using "permissive" for GPLv3, a copyleft license, is actually contradictory, as you correctly note.)
- Zambyte 10mo ago
  You keep saying "no" and then agreeing with me. > No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do. This should read "Yes, [...]". The point of permissive licenses is for people to sublicense it. You can use this to sublicense the software using a license that actually enforces it must remain Free (see Redict for an example) but it is almost always the case that someone uses this headlining feature of permissive licenses to lock the code up and extract rent. Your next paragraph frames single contributor or CLA as the two primary development patterns, when that those are absolutely the exception, especially if we exclude repos for things like AoC our homework, which are mostly single contributor.

jonathantf2 10mo ago

Thought this was a browser for my e-reader

cjohnson318 10mo ago
Same.
normie3000 10mo ago
I still want something constructive to do with mine - what a sweet bit of hardware.
- 1317 10mo ago
  read books?
neilv 10mo ago
I won't be surprised if B&N does a C&D on this particular trademark infringement. Nook is a well-known brand in consumer tech, ereaders aren't that far removed from Web browsers, Nooks have a Web browser, and B&N also has a "Nook for Web".
Hackbraten 10mo ago
I was hoping for an Animal Crossing themed browser where instead of an AI assistant, we'd get Tom Nook.

monooso 10mo ago

Both the browser and the website look remarkably similar to https://zen-browser.app/ https://zen-browser.app/.

pmkary 10mo ago
Because both are trying to be response to the death of Browser Company's Arc. (https://arc.net https://arc.net)
- twostorytower 10mo ago
  The browser designs look identical to Arc, yes, but the website of these two new “Arc responses” also look the same, down to the background color.
  - irilesscent 10mo ago
    The only difference is zen is Firefox based while arc and nook are chromium based.
    - arthurfm 10mo ago
      According to their FAQ, Nook is WebKit-based.
      - irilesscent 10mo ago
        Oops I misunderstood, I thought the fact that it ran chrome extensions meant it was chromium based. Thanks.
robot-wrangler 10mo ago
Switched to zen recently, and although I only expected a slightly different experience to firefox, it's hugely better. Profiles/containers/workspaces especially are great.. this level or organization fits my mental model much better and and I never need to manage bookmarks or use multiple windows. (Performance with large numbers of tabs seems much better too, presumably inactive workspaces are reclaiming the memory in smart ways).

bdcravens 10mo ago

Given the background color of the site, I initially thought it was a Barnes and Noble project.

65 10mo ago

It's nice, but it feels like Yet Another Browser. I'm interested in seeing all the new browsers that will come out in the next few years that are based off Ladybird. Or alternatively what Ladybird will enable in terms of customization. I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered.

normie3000 10mo ago
> I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered. I'm going out on a limb here and betting they're numbered in the high thousands minimum.
- agoodusername63 10mo ago
  chromium/blink is going to be ship of theseus'd before it "dies" imo

theoldgreybeard 10mo ago

This looks exactly like Zen...?

forgotpwd16 10mo ago
Similar to Zen, it's an open source Arc* clone but WebKit rather Blink/Gecko-based that Arc/Zen are. *Explains "not owned by Atlassian" in about since Arc/Dia dev company was bought by Atlassian.

enthdegree 10mo ago

Another thing called nook? Another browser? Bad, presumptuous name. How many months will this project last?

balamatom 10mo ago
inb4 rebrand to "nuke"

ConanRus 10mo ago

[dead]

GaryBluto 10mo ago

I see we're heading back to the days of MDI web browsers, slowly but surely. It's really strange to me how web browsers used to allow so much configuration (like the option to use MDI tab/window management or just generic tiling) but don't anymore. I've been hoping a browser comes out that is just Opera 8/9 but with the ability to browse the modern web so maybe with the advent of all these new browsers I should start taking a look.

art0rz 10mo ago
Opera 9 was peak browser
- jauntywundrkind 10mo ago
  Opera 10 was getting into some wild stuff. 9 was obviously just winning. But I loved how 10 literally gave you the user your own endpoints on the web. The browser is the server (by way of proxy)! Massively inspirational decentralization. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html
  - andrewl-hn 10mo ago
    Other parts were legendary, too. * They came with a mail and chat (IRC) clients, a download manager, a set of browser dev tools, and in the age of limited internet traffic all of that was smaller than a single download of Firefox. * Their dev tools were the first that allowed remote debugging. You could run Opera on your phone (Symbian, Windows Mobile, early Android) and debug your website from a computer. * They were the first browser to sync your bookmarks, settings, history, extensions across devices. * They were the first to add process isolation, albeit initially on Linux only. If an extension crashed your page it didn't take the whole browser down with it. This was later added first by Microsoft in IE8 and then by Google in Chrome. Their browser was a brilliant piece of tech and a brilliant product. Too bad that the product couldn't survive under pressure.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

gitmagic 10mo ago

> When enabled, they provide helpful tools such as chat assistance, summaries, up-to-date web insights, and more. I find this sentence to be a little odd. Who are “they”?

petesergeant 10mo ago
AI features, presumably
jb1991 10mo ago
The previous sentence introduces the subject.
amitav1 10mo ago
The AI.

udave 10mo ago

the sidebar was the best feature in Arc imo. I gave zen a shot just because of that and it was not a great experience to be honest. First, migration was buggy, then the sidebar lacked some basic features like renaming the tabs even though it looked similar. Nook seems to follow in the same footsteps I just hope that they nail the sidebar like Arc. Tab management is a mess and this has so much potential. All the best to both Zen and Nook.

bpavuk 10mo ago
modern Zen is a lot better than then :) the only missing from the sidebar thing is Library as a central place to manage downloads, spaces, and history. and although the downloads window looks a bit unsexy, it's totally enough

jakozaur 10mo ago

Looks like Arc, would love to migrate out of it after migration, but always worry about maintenance. Creating a browser is "easy", keeping it up to date is a lot of work, and many open-source browsers look semi-abandoned to me.

bpavuk 10mo ago
Zen is actually solid these days. being a Firefox-based browser, it has its quirks, (i.e. Theo complained about gradient rendering or whatever, but who cares?) but it's still the best Arc-like we currently have. plus, you get synchronization across desktop (Zen) and mobile (Firefox for iPhone/Android). since Google limited theirs only to official Chrome, this feature is basically exclusive to Firefox and forks, Arc <-> Arc Search, and Chrome for desktop <-> Chrome for mobile.
- SSLy 10mo ago
  Well, Vivaldi and Brave also can sync with mobile products.
  - bpavuk 10mo ago
    yeah, but you have to download their mobile counterpart as well. you can't have e.g. Chrome desktop and Brave mobile work together. meanwhile, any Firefox syncs with any Firefox
- tamimio 10mo ago
  Zen was solid, after a while it turned to a browser full of bugs, crashes, and too much UI changes it rendered it unstable for me had to ditch it. And reporting the bugs goes to nothing and never getting resolved, one simple bug was the pinned tab, where it supposedly to be pinned but scrolling will take it out of your view, and it was never resolved for months last time I used the browser.

wyre 10mo ago

Am I the only one that thinks "No selling of browsing data. Ever." implies that you're still harvesting browsing data? That is a level of telemetry that I don't want my browser having.

aorth 10mo ago
Right, as I read that I also thought, "Wait a sec, do they have the user's browsing data?" They should say "Your browsing data is local and we don't even have it!" instead.

KitN 10mo ago

I was looking for a good browser. I’m finally interning, and Brave has taken over as my official browser(I don’t like the concept of workspaces/profiles). I used Comet for a while but found it extremely annoying. I like Zen, but I’m not a fan of sidebars in browsers. Currently settled on Helium. This would have been good, but I can’t seem to understand the obsession with sidebars.

splatter9859 10mo ago
I need someone to explain to me, at length, at some point in my life the value proposition of Brave and what it brings to the table that other browsers do not. For example, most of the key differentiators of Brave could be accomplished similarly in Firebox with a litany of extensions -- such as UBlock Origin as just one example -- or Privacy Badger if you'd like to be less 'heavy handed'. The only other differentiator I see is the use of cryptocurrency as a way of compensating users for watching ads and the use of a crypto wallet; which if your not interested in such functionality is meaningless. Yet I see very educated, competent, and intellegent people I've known for years be advocates and at some points "zealots" over the browser. I would love to understand this. I'm honestly open to discussing this in good faith as I would like to understand the benefit here, and if I am somehow missing something will be the first to admit I was ignorant.
- marcwebbie 10mo ago
  For me the reasons for using brave for over an year now are: - no ads, no trackers and they are transparent about it - I can install chrome extensions - I don’t feel like I am handing all my data to Google - overall feels faster even with dozens for tabs open
  - splatter9859 10mo ago
    I get that and it makes sense. What distinguishing features does it have that keeps you coming back to Brave that, say, Edge or Chrome or even Firefox doesn't bring? I ask because most of the items you listed could be accomplished in other browsers with extensions. Just trying to find the secret sauce that keeps people coming back specifically to Brave. I really appreciate you engaging and listing your reasons! Thank you for sharing your viewpoint and why you enjoy Brave.

sph 10mo ago

New browser starter pack: * Fancy logo * Blink engine so it's basically Chrome like every other alternative browser * Mention of AI somewhere on the website * Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari * Heartfelt promises of speed and privacy * macOS only

RestartKernel 10mo ago
> Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari More like Arc † nowadays.
frizlab 10mo ago
The engine of this browser is Webkit.
- integricho 10mo ago
  Anyone can slap a fancy UI on an existing engine and claim they made a browser. So many of them exist now, they don't matter anymore at all. This one will die in the crowd like every other wannabe browser. Build your own goddamn engine and then claim you made a browser, at least the Servo and Ladybird devs are doing some concrete work, not just pointless marketing and empty claims.
  - eviks 10mo ago
    > Anyone can slap a fancy UI It's the opposite, anyone can slap an existing good engine to a bad UI that works well on many sites because it already works for some major browser. Almost no one can slap a fancy UI, and none of these newly sprangeld browsers offer any, they are way closer to the basic fails for Chrome/Firefox where even changing the default keybinds in an exercise in futility, and all the other stuff is similarly bad - for example, in this browser while the have vertical tabs, the 9to5mac example website doesn't fit the tab name and has the … symbol, which is not fancy at all on its own (fancy UI would be something like non-space-wasting fade out instead of text replacement), but also is part of the same low-density-whitespace-wasteful UI nonsense you see everwhere else - while there is enough whitespace in the tabbbar to fit whole ~two next words "...Mac Rumours breaki"

jollyjerry 10mo ago

Lot of nostalgia today. This brings me back to compiling Camino, a gecko based browser, on my iBook G4.

stuartd 10mo ago
I loved Camino. I think I still have the binary on my MBA just to look at the icon and sigh

rezaprima 10mo ago

"This software does not run on macOS versions older than Sequoia.". Is there any reason I should upgrade from Sonoma ?

Suppafly 10mo ago

I'm sure Barnes and Noble will have no problem with the name.

TomMasz 10mo ago

Interestingly enough, Kagi has a new browser, Orion, that's also WebKit-based. Besides the obvious macOS, it's in Alpha for Linux and "in development" for Windows. May the best non-Chromium browser win! https://blog.kagi.com/orion https://blog.kagi.com/orion

cyber_kinetist 10mo ago
Kinda interesting that they were able to resurrect the WebKit engine on Windows, might have been quite an engineering feat. In the past (2007-2012) Apple distributed a Windows version of Safari, but it's been more than a decade since it was deprecated and the engine only supported Apple's ecosystem.

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