The Browser Company's Darin Fisher Thinks It's Time To Reinvent the Browser (theverge.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Darin Fisher has built a lot of web browsers. A lot of web browsers. He was a software engineer at Netscape early in his career, working on Navigator and then helping turn that app into Firefox with Mozilla. Then, he went to Google and spent 16 years building Chrome and ChromeOS into massively successful products. Last year, he left Google for Neeva, where he worked on ways to build a browser around the startup's search engine. And now, he's leaving Neeva to join The Browser Company and work on Arc, one of the hottest new browsers on the market. Arc, which has been in an invite-only beta for more than a year, is trying to rethink the whole browser UI. It has a sidebar instead of a row of tabs, offers a lot of personalization options, and is meant for people who live their computing life in a browser (which is increasingly most people). CEO Josh Miller often talks about building "the internet computer," too, and using the browser as a way to make the internet more useful.
Fisher has been an advisor to The Browser Company for a while, but Monday is his first official day at the company as a software engineer. Ahead of his new gig, Fisher and I got on a call to talk about why he thinks browsers are due for a reinvention -- and why he thinks a startup is the best place to do it. The answer starts with the browser's defining feature: tabs. Fisher doesn't hate tabs -- in fact, he helped popularize them. But he hates that using a modern browser involves opening a million of them, not being able to find them again, and eventually just giving up and starting all over again. "I remember when tabbed browsing was novel," Fisher says, "and helped people feel less cluttered because you don't have as many windows." But now, "even when I use Chrome," Fisher says, "I get a bunch of clutter. At some point, I just say, 'Forget it, I'm not even going to bother trying to sort through all these tabs. If it's important, I'll open it again.'" Browsers need better systems for helping you manage tabs, not just open more of them.
The best way to improve the browser, Fisher ultimately decided, is to just start from scratch. Arc is full of new ideas about how web browsers can work: it combines bookmarks and tabs into one app switcher-like concept; it makes it easy to search among your open tabs; it has built-in tools for taking notes and making shareable mini websites. The experience can be jarring because it's so different, but Fisher says that's part of what he's excited about. "This is not stuff people haven't talked about before," he says, "but actually putting it together and focusing on it and thinking about the small steps that go a long way, I think that's where there's so much opportunity." Fisher likes to compare a browser to an operating system, which matches with The Browser Company's idea that Arc isn't just a browser but rather an iOS-like system for the open web. "It has task management UI, it has UI for creating and starting a journey, but there's so much more in between," he says. What the iPhone did for native apps, Arc hopes to do for web apps. Fisher says he's interested in improving the way files move around the internet, for instance, finding a better way than the constant downloading and uploading we all do all day. He likes that Arc has a picture-in-picture mode that works by default, pulling your YouTube video out when you switch tabs. All these make the web feel more connected and cohesive rather than just a bunch of tabs in a horizontal line. The Browser Company also plans to reinvent the internet browser for mobile, too. On mobile, in particular, he says, "there are so many opportunities because the starting point is so archaic."
"He's vague on the details of his plans -- and The Browser Company hasn't really started working on a mobile browser yet anyway -- but says that's a big focus for him going forward," adds The Verge.
Fisher has been an advisor to The Browser Company for a while, but Monday is his first official day at the company as a software engineer. Ahead of his new gig, Fisher and I got on a call to talk about why he thinks browsers are due for a reinvention -- and why he thinks a startup is the best place to do it. The answer starts with the browser's defining feature: tabs. Fisher doesn't hate tabs -- in fact, he helped popularize them. But he hates that using a modern browser involves opening a million of them, not being able to find them again, and eventually just giving up and starting all over again. "I remember when tabbed browsing was novel," Fisher says, "and helped people feel less cluttered because you don't have as many windows." But now, "even when I use Chrome," Fisher says, "I get a bunch of clutter. At some point, I just say, 'Forget it, I'm not even going to bother trying to sort through all these tabs. If it's important, I'll open it again.'" Browsers need better systems for helping you manage tabs, not just open more of them.
The best way to improve the browser, Fisher ultimately decided, is to just start from scratch. Arc is full of new ideas about how web browsers can work: it combines bookmarks and tabs into one app switcher-like concept; it makes it easy to search among your open tabs; it has built-in tools for taking notes and making shareable mini websites. The experience can be jarring because it's so different, but Fisher says that's part of what he's excited about. "This is not stuff people haven't talked about before," he says, "but actually putting it together and focusing on it and thinking about the small steps that go a long way, I think that's where there's so much opportunity." Fisher likes to compare a browser to an operating system, which matches with The Browser Company's idea that Arc isn't just a browser but rather an iOS-like system for the open web. "It has task management UI, it has UI for creating and starting a journey, but there's so much more in between," he says. What the iPhone did for native apps, Arc hopes to do for web apps. Fisher says he's interested in improving the way files move around the internet, for instance, finding a better way than the constant downloading and uploading we all do all day. He likes that Arc has a picture-in-picture mode that works by default, pulling your YouTube video out when you switch tabs. All these make the web feel more connected and cohesive rather than just a bunch of tabs in a horizontal line. The Browser Company also plans to reinvent the internet browser for mobile, too. On mobile, in particular, he says, "there are so many opportunities because the starting point is so archaic."
"He's vague on the details of his plans -- and The Browser Company hasn't really started working on a mobile browser yet anyway -- but says that's a big focus for him going forward," adds The Verge.
I am willing to bet 1 satoshi that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Boss of browser company tells us it's time to "reinvent" something that already works.
Film at 11.
Re: (Score:2)
What the browser needs... is to not change! Stop it, put down your keyboard. It's working and if you touch it it will break!
Get rid of the bonus incentive to add new and pointless features. Fix bugs or go home.
Re: (Score:3)
Not only stop adding pointless new features but stop removing useful features.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows build changeset notes: "Remove customer configuration item that was accidentally enabled."
Re: (Score:2)
>What the browser needs... is to not change!
other than encryption I'm scratching my head to come up with any changes since the various versions 3 in the 90s that have actually improved things.
OK, spiking flash.
Won't fly on iOS (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is even more restrictive than 90s Microsoft when it comes to browsers though, they won't allow third party browsers on iOS so it's pretty much dead in the water from a cross-platform perspective unless they can build it as a skin atop the WebKit version that Apple ships with the OS.
Maybe if the concept is demonstrated in a wildly successful way on Android then it would force Apple's hand...seems unlikely though.
Re:Won't fly on iOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Won't fly on iOS (Score:2, Insightful)
Thatâ(TM)s funnyâ¦I have Chrome and Firefox as apps on my iPhone. Granted, I never use them. I do prefer Chrome over Safari on my Mac, however.
What they donâ(TM)t do is ship those apps with the OS. And, I think they require the use of WebKit. But, this is a far cry from saying Apple doesnâ(TM)t allow 3rd party browsers on iOS.
Re: Won't fly on iOS (Score:5, Informative)
What they donÃ(TM)t do is ship those apps with the OS. And, I think they require the use of WebKit. But, this is a far cry from saying Apple doesnÃ(TM)t allow 3rd party browsers on iOS.
Apple does not allow 3rd party browsers. They only allow skins which add some superficial functionality on top of their browser. Sure you have those apps on your phone, but they're castrated, shitty versions of themselves because that's all Apple allows on their device. (It's not yours, clearly.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As long as it's based on the system Webkit, then in general I assume it would be permitted on iOS unless it breaks one of the many other rules Apple has for apps.
Re: Won't fly on iOS (Score:4)
If you have to jump through bullshit hoops and have a developer account then that's not a realistic option for the vast majority of people. Plus, it's a PITA at best, you have to reload the app periodically because Apple will expire it. You also forgot to mention that you have to pay extra for the privilege.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
How is it "false" when it's a god damn fact that Apple doesn't allow distribution of competing browser engines? And then you go on to say the exact same thing, other than saying that someone can go through a song and dance that literally nobody would go through of setting up Xcode and developer credentials (assuming they also have a Mac, and the technical savvy to do any of this) so they can compile their own browser? What, should they also set up a CI/CD pipeline so they can get browser updates for secur
Re: (Score:2)
Again, apple can't stop distribution outside of the app store, and they can't stop someone from developing apps that do not conform to app store policies.
I completely acknowledge that the methods for doing this outside of the app store may not be terribly practical for most people, but my point is that it is flatly false to say that it is objectively impossible. It's just more work than most people are willing to put into it.
Re: (Score:2)
No you are just ignoring how normal people communicate, and are being intentionally pedantic. If apple removed X-Code, disabled all ports and wifi and it would still be "possible" to load your own browser on the system by reverse engineering the phone making your own connections, using a super computer to break encryption keys, whatever it takes, it may cost billions but still technically possible. When they said it was impossible, it was quite clear it to a normal reader, that they meant through normal mea
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except that you don't have those installed, because Apple does not allow competing browser engines on iOS [open-web-advocacy.org].
You have Chrome and Firefox skins for WebKit installed as apps on your iPhone. But they aren't actually Chrome or Firefox as they are on literally any other operating system.
Re: (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s funnyâ¦I have Chrome and Firefox as apps on my iPhone.
I was trying to be as clear as possible when I said: "unless they can build it as a skin atop the WebKit version that Apple ships with the OS" which is what Chrome and Firefox "apps" for iOS are, it's not the actual Chrome or Firefox browsers running on iOS.
But, this is a far cry from saying Apple doesnâ(TM)t allow 3rd party browsers on iOS.
No it isn't because the actual browser engine is still the Safari one, the UI is just Chrome/Firefox. So for example Chrome/Firefox on macOS are different browsers to Safari such that they can support things that Safari doesn't, WebGPU for example. Howev
Re: (Score:2)
Not even released, already harvesting emails... (Score:1, Interesting)
I thought I would try it for the novelty factor.
Went to download, only... they demanded my email address, for which, in return, I would not even get to download it, but rather they would let me know when it's "my turn".
I won't ever be giving them a second chance.
Re: Not even released, already harvesting emails.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the summary. It's a closed beta. If you don't provide an email how are they going to contact you? Maybe wait for a public beta. Then if asking for an email your complaint would be valid.
Re: Not even released, already harvesting emails.. (Score:5, Interesting)
except the link that leads to that form explicitly says "Try it for yourself" and not "Join the invitation request queue". for a sw that's not even in public beta that's starting with the marketing bullshit pretty darn soon, and it isn't even good marketing bullshit because it actually frustrates expectations.
on top of that, macos only? these guys are trumpeteering way, way too early.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a Chromium reskin. What merits a closed beta? For that matter, what merits an article before we see if they bother to put anything in it worth mentioning?
Re: Not even released, already harvesting emails. (Score:2)
No idea. To me its just another browser and won't go anywhere so I'm not even bother looking into it unless it gets traction. Just read what was stated in the summary about a closed beta. I rolled eyes when I saw the headline about reinventing the browser. Sorry no new browser completely rewritten from scratch using new concepts is ever going to take the world by storm. (Are you guys over at Opera listening?). What will happen is Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Safari will take cool new features and implement
Re: (Score:2)
I thought I would try it for the novelty factor.
Went to download, only... they demanded my email address, for which, in return, I would not even get to download it, but rather they would let me know when it's "my turn".
I hope you used a fake/one-off address.
Re: (Score:1)
I won't ever be giving them a second chance.
We won't give you a second chance either. You've outed yourself as an impatient idiot who doesn't bother to even understand what's going on before jumping to a conclusion.
It's up to the user (Score:5, Informative)
using a modern browser involves opening a million [tabs], not being able to find them again, and eventually just giving up and starting all over again.
Not me. I have a vast hierarchical collection of bookmarks I've been curating since 1999. I rarely open more than 8 tabs at once.
Browsers didn't make it any harder to use bookmarks when they added tabs, and bookmarks are still the best way of keeping track of pages to go back to later.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: It's up to the user (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here. Close your goddamn tabs, people.
I have about 6-8 on the desktop and none to four on mobile.
I'm all for keeping stuff in the browser, and eschew appy app shit on the phone. Some people might find an innovative UI better but I'm doing fine.
Re: (Score:3)
Same here. Close your goddamn tabs, people.
Huh? Why? We have tab groups and other ways of organising our space. No need to close anything, we can just minimise them for quick access later.
Re: (Score:2)
eschew appy app shit
Eschew.app is the appiest app of all apps! Appy app shit is the future of apps!
Apps!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, software design can't make a person be organized. I imagine the type of person that has a million tabs, gets overwhelmed and then starts over is the same kind of person that has thousands of emails in their inbox. Also the same kind of person that uses the Downloads dir as their do-everything working dir. If you have so many tabs open you can't find what you want, that's a _you_ problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Since 1999? How many of them are even still active?
Re: (Score:2)
Since 1999? How many of them are even still active?
Only one, the original [seamonkey-project.org].. Accept no imitations
Re: (Score:2)
Even if the site goes away, there's a good chance it's still in the internet archive, so those bookmarks aren't worthless.
Re: (Score:3)
I only use bookmarks for stuff I want to access quickly. They rot too fast and require too much effort to organize. If there is some useful information on a page that isn't likely to change, I clip it into a Joplin note. Joplin then becomes kind of like a bookmarks organizer, with tags and with a copy of the content in case it gets removed.
Re:It's up to the user (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly this.
I read the article thinking "what sort of chaotic brain opens so many tabs at once then gets 'overwhelmed' and shuts them all?"
Does he use tabs in lieu of bookmarks? Is that how he thinks this is supposed to work?
Re: (Score:2)
Does he use tabs in lieu of bookmarks? Is that how he thinks this is supposed to work?
I assume what gets overwhelmed is Chrome leaking memory like a sieve, and the browser crashes, then when you try to reopen those tabs you get a thousand, resubmit the form prompts or hit back on your browser. Bookmarks stopped being as useful when the world went to dynamic AJAX page
Re: (Score:2)
If you rely on bookmarks instead of downloading the content, you will find that 90% of those 1999 bookmarks lead to the land of 404.
Re: (Score:2)
Out of my few hundred bookmarks, there are maybe 20 that point to the same URL they did in 1999.
Of course, most of them aren't anywhere near that old.
Re: (Score:2)
bookmarks are still the best way of keeping track of pages to go back to later
Yes, and no. I have lots of bookmarks going back many years too, but aside from active and topic-specific ones (longer YouTube videos I want to watch later), they tend to fall prey to "out of sight, out of mind".
What I really want is a middle-ground between bookmarks and tabs. Sort of a "work in progress" collection that functions both as a list of of pages that I anticipate returning to soon as well as a TODO list and visual reminder. This is both for short-term (news articles and Slashdot pages to read
Re: (Score:2)
I don't even bother with bookmarks or favorites. I maintain a single HTML file with tables of links and have it set as my homepage. I share that single file across all my computers and browsers, so every machine in my home has the same links. If you don't have any fancy styling, it's a piece of cake to maintain, and you can add as many comments/omissions to the file as you like, too.
I never use tabs, either. I shift-click on links all the time, and use one of the programmable keys next my my left shift
Hopefully not more crapware... (Score:1)
We have plenty of browsers. However, a browser designed for the user privacy is rare. Just a single f-ing setting of not displaying videos unless the site is allowed, and videos be clicked on to start playing is beyond the capability of today's popular browsers. Similar with actually doing stuff against browser fingerprinting, or even allowing malicious code to escape a browser context and run as the user.
So far, the best browser entity is a virtual machine with Firefox in FireJail, where you can dump th
Might be willing to give this a try (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You want to try something new, which has no ads? Try a Gopher [wikipedia.org] client. No intrusive ads, and information at your fingertips.
Re: Might be willing to give this a try (Score:1)
too late (Score:3)
You'd have to turn off the Internet and replace it with a different network to get people to change.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: too late (Score:1)
Browsers will be used for local file manulipation one day so something like midnight commander? Merged with wget? All we be assimilated....
Netscape History Repeating Itself (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
At the time that Netscape was invented, there was only one other graphical browser of note: Mosaic. Mosaic rendered graphical images, which was a big deal at the time, but was otherwise little better than lynx, the text-based web browser that preceeded it.
You can't really fault Netscape engineers for building it from scratch, as the only other option was objectively inferior.
Fwiw, Internet Explorer was originally based off of the Mosaic codebase, which Microsoft had licensed, and came out the year *A
Re: (Score:3)
I think they're referring to the transition from Netscape 4.x to what ultimately became Gecko/Netscape 6/Mozilla/Firefox/etc. There was a big delay there where Netscape 4.x was getting increasingly creaky and getting left behind by IE4 and 5 with regards to things like multimedia integration and DHTML and all that other shiny flashy stuff that led us to where we are now.
Netscape lost years in development hell trying to massage the existing 4.x codebase into something new and when that was clearly failing, r
Re: (Score:2)
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't help that Netscape 6 was a total piece of shit. I vividly remember how slow and buggy it was. When all the Macintosh people were uninstalling Netscape (which came with MacOS) and started moving over to Microsoft's browser, you know something really went wrong.
To all the people who insist that Microsoft killed Netscape, they clearly don't understand their history. Netscape killed themselves -- just like Mozilla is doing today.
GUI Markup Language Time! (Score:1)
Desktops and mice are still the backbone of most business and productivity applications. It's time for a state-ful GUI markup standard that's CRUD/Mice/State/Desktop-friendly so we don't have to download screwy JavaScript libraries that are buggy and have long learning curves.
List of missing or ill-defined GUI idioms per current browsers. [reddit.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's time for a state-ful GUI markup standard that's CRUD/Mice/State/Desktop-friendly so we don't have to download screwy JavaScript libraries that are buggy and have long learning curves.
We'll end up with a GUI markup standard where the implementations are all written in Javascript
Re: (Score:2)
JavaScript is a lousy systems language. It would be stupid to build a GUI engine with it.
That's why I consider it a likely outcome.
I was thinking the Tk or Qt kits could be used so as to avoid starting from scratch.
Sure, why not? I vote for Qt.
Although, I am fuzzy about Qt's licensing.
Qt is now dual-licensed commercial, and GPL/LGPL depending on which bit. You only need a license agreement if you don't want to distribute code that requires GPL bits of Qt to function to customers, or otherwise don't want to follow the Free Software license.
Business model? (Score:2)
Um. What's their business model?
Go Customizable [Re:Business model?] (Score:1)
Instead of trying to redesign the browser UI, perhaps they should make it customizable. Add a Visual-Basic-6-like designer with plenty of use-able samples. People picked up VB-classic real quick. The excessive obsession with "responsive" ruined simple WYSIWYG ui designers. If it's personal usage, responsive isn't that important. (MS also was obsessed with cloning Java instead of making a UI-friendly language. Java sucks at UI, e-bureaucracy.)
Re: Go Customizable [Re:Business model?] (Score:1)
An os should just handle the system call itself and get it over with. If all people care about is the ui. I understand that all graphical environments suck though so back to square one....
How can you have a "browser startup"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Web browsers are free, and have been for a couple decades. No individual is going to pay for a web browser, and I expect it's highly unlikely that Google, Microsoft, or Apple would buy a browser company either. So what exactly is the business plan here? And what venture capitalist was dumb enough to bankroll it?
Re: (Score:2)
The usual one is to auction off the right to be the default search engine.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the idea is to create a browser that eventually digs enough market share out of an existing one, then you hope that they buy you out so that they can get your market share, your users of course dump the browser instantly because the reason they took up your browser is exactly that it's NOT one of the big ones, then you start over.
Sure, it's not gonna make you a billionaire, but it's a steady income.
I do it by... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For what it's worth, Apple basically already did buy a browser company. It just wasn't so much a company as an open source project.
Re: (Score:2)
I would pay for a browser that was very focused on usability and privacy.
I'm getting tired of managing my adblockers and script blockers, and fiddling with them for best usability, I'd pay a small monthly fee for someone to maintain these blocklists for me
Re: (Score:2)
non-intrusive side ads
There is no such thing and never will be a thing.
Tabs are just local state (Score:2)
People use tabs to store the page state. Figure out a better way to save the state and the tab problem goes awy.
Re: Tabs are just local state (Score:2)
Is this actually a new browser? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is it just a heavy fork of the Chromium engine with a funky new UI?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's the latter.
I got my invite yesterday and tried it out. Honestly, it's pretty neat and pretty slick. It's got some cool things going for it on the UI. I'm almost certainly sticking with Safari, but I wish them well.
We do need something new (Score:4, Funny)
In unrelated, but similar news ... (Score:2)
Guy joins bagel startup, thinks it's time to rethink bagels.
Re: In unrelated, but similar news ... (Score:2)
And he,d come up with a bagel that had the hole on the outside.
One web pioneer thinks it’s time to reinvent (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Putting the address bar at the bottom is not better, because now you can bump it accidentally while trying to do something else, like scroll or select some text. Use gestures for forwards/back and you won't have to touch it so much.
doing something == being productive (Score:2)
Why? There's limited screen 'real estate', there's limited short-term memory and there's limited task-switching cognition. Unless someone is opening a tab for each (book) page, that's nowhere near a "million". This is people thinking they can have everything waiting and immediately start working on something else: In short, enabling narcissistic delusions such as "doing something" == "being productive".
Re: (Score:2)
It's time to stop reinventing it (Score:2)
Firefox has that shit covered, and almost everything they do is irritating. What we need is for someone to just focus on making a browser that works and doesn't have a bunch of shit shoehorned into it. As it is, there are several features built into Firefox that should be extensions, but already aren't. We do not need another browser that tries to include every feature, we have it and it's getting steadily worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. "Second System Effect" and "Gold Plating" all over. Amateurs at work.
First, fix CSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Before anyone can really re-invent the browser, we really need to fix CSS. By "fix" I mean "throw most of it away". CSS is no longer a standard, it is a set of ever-changing modules, which offer periodic "snapshots" of their current state. The overall complexity is insane. Behavior is poorly specified. It reminds me of the old MS Office document standard: The standard was whatever Office actually did, bugs and all. CSS is much the same: the behavior is whatever the current engines do (and sometimes they do different things).
As far as TFA is concerned: Their browser, Arc, is a skin over Chromium, adding different ways of handling favorites and such. Vivaldi does much the same thing, but also includes a lot of privacy enhancements, which Arc apparently does not.
I find it interesting that there was a German Wikipedia article about Arc, but it has been deleted. About the only technical information available is from beta testers on reddit. Why is that?
Re: (Score:2)
CSS is indeed farked. CSS is either rocket science or spaghetti. To non-experts, both are the same. I wish browsers had better direct- coordinate options so that the server side and/or custom JavaScript could get one a better layout engine rather than wrestle with CSS. I'm not saying take away what CSS does, just make other options easier. (The existing coordinate system is especially screwed up for text. It's why HTML can't render PDF's faithfully without drawing letters at bit level.)
Chrom* (Score:4, Interesting)
>"The Browser Company's Darin Fisher Thinks It's Time To Reinvent the Browser" "The Browser Company and work on Arc, one of the hottest new browsers on the market. "
Yawn, is it just another Chrom*, still leaving Google in control of what defines and ultimately the web, like all other multi-platform browsers except Firefox. Diversity in only the UI while leaving all the important stuff firmly locked down in a mono-culture and following whatever pseudo-"standard" Google wants to force on everyone is the dangerous "IE-Only" path.
If you care about privacy, security, and actual standards, then support non-Chrom* options before none are left.
Arc is just another skin for Chromium (Score:1)
There is absolutely nothing new about Arc. It is just yet another skin for Chromium, leaving Google in charge of monitoring your browsing habits and selling your personal information to the highest bidders.
Is this really reinventing the browser? (Score:2)
Until I kept reading and I realized it was about keep doing the same stuff but with a different UI experience.
I like how the article tries to sell this hottest new browser, Arc, which is so hot and exclusive that it's invite-only beta software. What? I can't test this beta Arc? Oh! It makes me even more intrigued and wanting to use it!
Sarcasm aside, Arc is
So, like edge? (Score:2)
(I work for Microsoft in an area unrelated to Edge. This isn't paid shilling, but I cannot expect you to take my word for it.)
Edge has vertical tabs, tab search (ctrl-shift-A), tab grouping, collections, and (enterprise only public preview Edge v106+, not generally available yet) "Workspaces" which let you define a browser window you can share with a team (Additional data) [microsoft.com]. There is also a tool for generating Citations in preview buried under the more tools menu. It's a 10/10.
It used to have (pre-edge chr
Re: So, like edge? (Score:2)
Instead of all that stuff no one asked for, how about they bring back a usable menu bar.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, I haven't heard anyone ask for that. Do you mean like the file - save as and edit - refresh menu?
All the functionality is in there, it's just tucked under the ... menu (Alt-E).
Re: So, like edge? (Score:2)
No, a full horizontal menu bar along the top all the time and while MS is at it they could go back to Ui school and ditch the metro/mdl/flat/"modern" (for 1980) UI that makes it hard to distinguish controls and data.
Change for the sake of change (Score:2)
People who invent things get bored. That doesn't mean that we should keep reinventing the wheel for the sake of arbitrary change. Browsers are fine - fix the security and make speed improvements but the paradigm as a whole doesn't need to be changed - focus that energy on something more useful.
Its sort of like a hardened soldier during peacetime. They never can accept that the fighting is done.
Hmm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He worked on Netscape, Firefox, and Chrome. Of course his idea of a better browser is to build in a toaster oven and a Keurig machine - that's exactly what each one of those browsers did over the last 30 years.
pull off a CORBA-like app platform (Score:2)
Think like word processing where you'd have a test editing component doing standard font, paragraph, layout with another component being
Slashvertisement (Score:2)
An article that starts by announcing that somebody wants to "reinvent" something, is just blowing marketing hot air trying to make their take on something seem cooler than the competition somehow.
So basically:
- Move the tabs to the side
- Combine bookmarks and tabs
- Note taking feature
Oh yes, and it "feels different."
Does that about cover it?
Nonsense (Score:2)
If it is not broken, don't fix it. There is not a lot to gain anymore because modern browser UIs work well. Well, maybe the always slow child "Microsoft" has some room for improvement, but even they have mostly caught up and only break things occasionally these days. (In the browser, that is.)
Hence this whole fake hype is entirely self-serving and nothing of real value will be in the offer.