
Raven - a Mac site-specific web browser - nephics
http://raven.io
======
BonoboBoner
Nice looking site, but I dont understand what Raven does. As an example here
is the explanation for the Smart Bar feature:

"Raven uses a technique called "site specific browsing" to create a dedicated
browser instance for certain websites and their features. It debuts with the
most widely used websites including Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Quora.
Within each app Raven provides yet another instance for key features. This
provides a whole new level of multitasking within a single window. The Smart
Bar unifies navigation across many different websites allowing access to
features quickly, without effort and with little instruction."

I have no clue what this means. This clearly needs to be dumbed down to be
understandable by average users.

~~~
zerostar07
"It debuts with the most widely used websites including ... Quora." Wait,
what?

~~~
kmilden
Yes, I widely use Quora. ;)

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jsherer
Checked this out and have a few thoughts. I wasn't expecting a full browser
interface (specifically, tabs, etc). A site-specific browser, to me, is not a
browser replacement, but rather an alternative application for a specific
site. The moment you add more than one site to a SSB,it defeats the "site-
specific" aspect. The reason I used Fluid or Prism (other SSBs) is that I get
separation of browser instances for each of my webapps. With Raven, this seems
to get "lost". I do like what they are calling the smartbar, as it adds quick
shortcuts to various areas of the webapps that are running. This is nice, but
again, this detracts from the SSB aspect. At least you can hide it, unlike
other apps using this UI concept. The other thing that I feel is missing, or
at least I could not find easily, is a way to install userscripts and
userstyles. For me to switch to a different SSB platform, I would need to be
able to bring over my customizations. Other than this, the app UI is nice, the
icon is nice, the name is nice, and the domain and website are nice. Look
forward to seeing where this app ends up in the long run.

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Udo
I just tried it out. It's _not_ a site-specific browser at all, it's a normal
web browser with a few nice interface ideas in it. Raven is using the
WebKit/Safari engine, and shares its data repositories (such as cookies,
history, offline data).

Between the misuse of software jargon, the buzzword overflow, the overall site
design, and the potential for abuse I'm having a difficult time trusting this
thing with my data.

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kmilden
My name is Kevin and I am the designer behind Raven. We believe there is a
better way to discover and interact with web apps. That browsers could do a
better job. At this moment we may not have the exact receipe right but we'll
get there with time and iteration. The dream is that we will all someday have
a centralized place to find web-based solutions and reduce the friction of
signing up for them.

~~~
alttab
_centralized place to find web-based solutions and reduce the friction of
signing up for them_

So this is a lead-generating and advertising business model? I agree with the
other posters that the value proposition based on your website is still a
little vague.

All that said, changing the BROWSER of a user causes a whole bunch of other
problems that you will run into.

First, you want to reduce friction of web-service adoption, but require that
users change their browsers first? This creates friction where there was none
before. A vast majority of internet users still use IE because they think its
the internet - not because they made a conscious decision. Its clear you will
miss these users (not just because its Mac only).

Other segments could be blocked by IT departments, internal web-app support (I
only assume you mask webkit somehow?), or the choice of browsers already
installed by other users (kiosk, family computer). Most of the consumer market
is covered web-service wise with GMail, Dropbox, and Facebook. Most of this
market uses the services their friends use, not something an esoteric browser
will suggest to them.

There are other businesses out there that help you 'discover and sign up' for
web-based services, including but not limited to getapp.com, appdirect.com,
and more integrated solutions with identity management and SSO for
organizations.

Now that you have your beta - don't be too inclined to start building complex
discovery features that no one will see. Adoption of your browser as the top
of the funnel is your primary goal. You first have to overcome reasons to use
Safari, Chrome, or Firefox with a unique value proposition they could only get
through your browser. Right now a user can use Chrome and go to one of those
sites I mentioned and they never had to download and install your product to
do it.

I understand the 'lets flip it on its head and get them at the browser level'
but thats a war usually fought for different reasons, requires a level of
investment probably not worth what you are trying to do with it, and all
during an era where desktop browsing is declining in favor of mobile-web and
native app experiences are taking over.

Still, I could have completely missed the reason for Raven and what it is
trying to accomplish and my response is only based on my experience so YMMV.

~~~
simonbrown
> A vast majority of internet users still use IE

IE may be the most popular browser, but it's not used by the vast majority.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers>

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scott_s
Auto-downloading just because I visited your download page is obnoxious. I
just asked you your name, and you immediately tried to jump into my bed. Not
cool.

~~~
nonrecursive
To the other repliers: it's downloading when you click on the download link in
the top-level navigation. This was surprising and annoying to me as well.

~~~
scott_s
Yes, it downloads when you visit the download _page_ , not just by pressing
the button.

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flexd
This looks really nice! I like that there is a difference between favorite
bookmarks and reference bookmarks. I have tons and tons of bookmarks of stuff
I just want to keep/remember but do not visit every day.

The only thing I do not like so far is that I can't use mouse gestures (three
finger slide) to navigate back/forth like I can in Chrome. I'm addicted to
that feature.

~~~
Terretta
> _I like that there is a difference between favorite bookmarks and reference
> bookmarks._

The sentence "We have finally started to make sense of the differences between
Bookmarks and Favorites." bothered me.

I find the difference between a typical browser's bookmarks menu and its
bookmarks bar quite clear. The menu is reference for later, the bar is
everyday items.

My bookmark bar is cruft free, no favicons, just lowercase abbreviations for
bookmarklets and one or two uppercase letters for often used sites:

    
    
      read paper pin j.mp P Y TM LF G R A O T G FB F
    

For example, Y is this site. If I have too many to fit horizontally, I look
for whichever ones I haven't been clicking and thin them back out.

My point is modern browsers all have this difference: visible daily use
bookmarks, and bookmarks menu bookmarks, and there is a difference between
them.

~~~
flexd
That is a valid point. I do only have the most used bookmarks in my bookmarks
bar. But as for all the others I often do not take the time to organize the
bookmarks properly when adding them (mostly due to lack of time). The fact
that there is a option of choosing between a bookmark that is clearly one of
the favorites or just something I would like to read later or keep for
reference is what makes it nice. I know I can easily do the same in any other
browser simply by using folders but just having a favorite/reference checkbox
option upon bookmark creation really simplifies things. It's not a amazing new
feature but just something simple that's easily added while improving the feel
of adding a bookmark greatly. Or it does so for me anyway, perhaps I'm just
too easily swooned by things.

------
tpowell
All I can think about is that scene from Big, where Tom Hanks raises his hand
and says "I don't get it."

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nicktrav
Loving it so far! Nicely done.

The concept makes perfect sense ... to me anyway. Having the 'web apps', with
their own unique drop-down context menus only a click of a button away makes
for such an awesome alternative to wasting time looking for appropriate
links/buttons on websites.

The potential for making a user's web-browsing experience less cluttered and
more organised is definintely there.

Looking forward to see where this is at in six months.

~~~
dimillian
Thank you so much, this is really what we try to achieve, making all websites
have the same controls. So every you have a consistent experience across all
websites.

~~~
alexcabrera
Do you have plans on providing hooks websites can use to access OS level stuff
like Camera, Microphone, or Notification System?

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cookiecaper
Can we get more technical detail? How closely is this attached to OS X? Heavy
integration with Cocoa and other OS X APIs? Is there much portability to other
OSes? Do you have any plans to release the source (or has the source been
released already)? What license? What rendering engine do you use (presumably
WebKit)? Is this a serious effort or more of an exploratory or proof-of-
concept thing?

~~~
dimillian
It is made in full cocoa/appkit. Not external UI things or framework. So it
heavily integrated in OSX, and we will use the full power of Cocoa as we have
a ton of feature planned.

We are considering making an iOS app that will sync with Raven for Mac, and
maybe later some ports to Android and Windows.

We don't have any plan to open source the project at the moment, as most of
the code is linked to our UI and very specific, currently we use the webkit
version installed and your Mac, s tied to Safari (and act the same as Safari
too), that why our download is so tiny. When we will start our own fork of
webkit we might consider share the sources as it will be interesting.

But if you want technical details about our Smart Bar UI for example I'll be
glad to anwsers your questions :)

~~~
nikcub
Isolated cookie store?

I noticed yesterday that Fluid uses the Safari cookie store - which makes it
useless atm as a private browser.

~~~
dimillian
Actually as set by default by Apple we share Safari's cookies. We will have a
switch soon that will be turned off by default.

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mvkel
Aw, man. Would love this if it were an extension and not a full-on browser
replacement!

~~~
dorian-graph
Reminds me of Flock..

~~~
kmilden
Best post ever.

------
awflick
I quite like the browser. While it kind of creates a bit of a walled garden
effect. The truth is that most people browse the same websites most of the
time. The potential with Ravens approach is that they can leverage that.

Quite often people will browse about one topic and then want to go to one of
their other sites to get a different perspective, or to watch a video of it
etc. It would be good if there was built in "search" where it can work out
what topic you are reading and automatically search your other main sites for
the same topic. Then you can click between your main sites to get each
perspective/content on that topic.

------
cicloid
It totally misses the point of SSB, first it shares its data with Safari
(cookies, history, etc) and somehow wants to become the web on training
wheels.

Filling web forms? Sign up? This problems are trying to be addressed by SSO
using providers like Twitter, Facebook or some new kid in town with
OAuth/OpenID/YouNewHipsterProtocol.

The idea of having a Site Specific Browser was to have a independent "browser"
just to go to X site and be encapsulated from crashes or oddities from plugins
from your main browser. It may also have some nice OS specific eye candy or
features like system wide shortcuts.

Not becoming the web on training wheels.

------
Derbasti
I quite like it. Check out the "Web apps", to understand what Raven is about.

But please, don't close all websites when I close the window. Closing tabs on
closing the window makes sense for Chrome, where each tab represents something
ephemeral to begin with. But in Raven, a "tab" might be my Twitter page or my
Hacker News feed. I want that to be readily available when I reopen Raven.
(For the time being, I might just use CMD-H instead of CMD-W)

Or maybe that is not what Raven is intended to be after all?

~~~
dimillian
I'm Thomas the developer of Raven :) We're still deciding about the window
behavior, should we have only one window which keep trace of every tabs and
app you open ? But then how to reset your main browser window ?

We have a lot of to consider, we don't want to provide a too limited
experience, that why at the moment Raven behave as other browser, but we will
adjust it soon.

~~~
Derbasti
I would like Raven to be this physical place that contains my most important
web fixtures. That is, whenever I want to access Hacker News, instead of
opening Chrome and hitting a bookmark, I'd just go to Raven and know that HN
will be right there, no loading required. And right next to it, there will be
Reddit and Github and Gmail.

But that creates an interesting problem: Twitter and Gmail will auto-reload
its contents. Hacker News will not. Therefore, I'd like to set some fixed
auto-refresh interval for the HN "app" (but not Gmail).

I don't know whether that is in line with your vision for Raven, but it
certainly is something I would like!

Additionally, I'd like to have the option to open external links in my regular
browser.

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rgovostes
One of the benefits of using a single-site browser is that you can restrict
the URLs the browser will load, protecting you against phishing, cookie
stealing, etc.

Last I looked at Fluid, it had a whitelisting feature but it was horribly
broken in that it included default rules that were irremovable like
'userscripts.org*' allowing 'userscripts.org.evil.com'.

I haven't looked at Raven yet, but hopefully it has whitelisting that works.
That alone would make it worth looking into for me.

------
erickhill
Nice how they've placed Hacker News in in the promo for "The Smart Bar" right
on the homepage. That should earn some downloads right there. I'll give it a
spin.

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armandososa
I didn't understand anything the site said, but I liked the pretty pictures a
lot so I downloaded it. I think this could be appealing for highly visual guys
like me. Maybe replacing all that copy with a nice video will be a good idea.

I didn't quite get why there are "apps" and why they need to be installed. Why
are these more than just regular bookmarks?

That needs a better explanation.

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fido
The side pane for history, bookmarks, downloads, etc is so awesome! I really
wish I could do this in Chrome...

Basically, I love the left side of Raven. I don't like the tabs and address
bar...

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overshard
Be nice to get some of these to be a bit more cross-platform. I believe the
only cross-platform one out right now is Prism via Mozilla.

~~~
simonbrown
and Chrome's application shortcut feature

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canistr
This is missing support for gestures and a lot of the standard hotkeys like
switching tabs. Kind of disappointing.

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juanfatas
Where is the command + F "search" fucntion???

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moe
Flock, again?

~~~
dimillian
Does it look like Flock. I promise not

------
pace
nice name, nice domain

but i don't get raven's USP

~~~
kmilden
While we don't have payments in place yet this explains what our long term
goal is. We are web app developers. We understand the problems with finding an
audience for our services.

"The web has been plagued with required forms fields when signing up for
websites, apps and services. While auto-fill is helpful it hasn't made the
process of signing up for services any easier. Smart Bar apps provide us with
a 1-click process for adding an app to your browser. When we combine this with
an API for developers to integrate their "Best Offer" with subscription
services we can provide a 1-click sign-up and subscription management just
like you can with other software."

~~~
beaumartinez
It's a nice idea in principle.

> _The web has been plagued with required forms fields when signing up for
> websites, apps and services._

The solution isn't yet another standard (cue XKCD comic)—we already have
OAuth, OpenID, and BrowserID for authentication.

> _Smart Bar apps provide us with a 1-click process for adding an app to your
> browser. When we combine this with an API for developers to integrate their
> "Best Offer" with subscription services we can provide a 1-click sign-up and
> subscription management just like you can with other software_

A proprietary API usable only in a new OS X-only browser? Have you approached
the Mozilla Foundation?

~~~
dangoor
Mozilla is putting quite a bit of effort into apps right now. "App tabs" in
the browser is definitely one small step in getting a nice total ecosystem in
place for developers.

FWIW, when I looked at Raven, my initial thought was "it's a browser with app
tabs on the side". It's nicely designed, but doesn't seem groundbreaking to
me.

I do like the Instapaper integration, though! I also like people exploring new
browser ideas.

(obdisclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

~~~
dimillian
A good comment from someone working for Mozilla, thank you sir :) This is only
a beta, we're trying a lot of things at once.

------
Flam
fuck not another browser!

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sscheper
"It debuts with the most widely used websites including Google+, Facebook,
Twitter and Quora."

Lol, most widely used websites? Maybe for tech geeks. But for the rest of the
world, it's Facebook, Craigslist, YouPorn/PornHub, etc.

~~~
aparadja
I think it makes sense to cater to early adopters in this phase of the
product's life.

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Stratego
"Raven is a site-specific web browser for Mac"

You're welcome.

