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Yeah I have played around with those and either written myself or been part of a team that wrote at least a half dozen browsers that were released and dozens of
by icefox 12y ago
Yeah I have played around with those and either written myself or been part of a team that wrote at least a half dozen browsers that were released and dozens of little R&D browsers. I have also seen many many browsers that offer very little beyond Chrome/Firefox come and go. Yes they might have a very good idea, but it is not enough to get someone to change browsers. A tweak, climbing higher up the local hill, but not fundamentally changing the game. A few of the big points in the article I wrote have to do with the idea that private browsing as known today is flat out wrong and not what users want, having a split view, and robust local access control. Living with a hacked up browser for a month that did these really showed that they were a big deal. But alas after an acquisition my new (former) employer forbid me from working on it so it had to be shelved. But even today I don't know if what I wrote about is going far enough. For most users browsers are like internet speed. The important thing isn't what speed you are connecting, but that you are connected period.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) it isn't 2004 where almost no browser development was occurring and you could have something "new" like Firefox come to light and grow quickly with very little features against almost no competition. These days you have many large companies funding development teams to keep what we have today working and make marginally better each day. To make a new browser you can't just take Chrome and tack on a tiny tweak you need step changes. That is what my 2009 article was about and with a few more years of thought and experienced that is what I have been messing around with lately, making a browser where users abandon Chrome/FireFox/IE not because it is a tiny bit better because it is so better it isn't about switching, but about moving to a different product.