
Show HN: PolyBrowser 1.0 – A new way to browse the web. What do you think? - polysuite
https://www.polybrowser.com
======
digitalcreate
We’re proud to announce the “Version 1.0” release of PolyBrowser, which
represents a culmination of years of work combined with community support and
feedback. We feel that latest release brings together the speed, features and
user experience needed to successfully introduce PolyBrowser to the world.

For those who are new, PolyBrowser is a “Panoramic Web Browser,” meaning that
it stitches your websites together, side-by-side, like a panoramic photo. You
can zoom out to see all of your websites at once, or zoom in to see the
details, plus much more. PolyBrowser enables you to browse faster by breaking
free of the limitations of current tabbed browsers.

------
binarymax
I'm writing this comment from a PolyBrowser tab :)

First of all - great job on shipping! This looks great for a first version,
and I think it has good potential.

Granted I've only been using it for about 10 minutes, here is some feedback I
have so far. I am using a fairly new Macbook Pro.

* panning between tabs is quite jittery and I get lots of jank when scrolling in general (vertical-in-tab or horizontal-between-tabs). Optimizing this might have been low on the list but I think it would make a huge difference in experience if it were smooth and snappy. I have a decent machine so I don't think it is a hardware constraint.

* The interface is a bit bulky, and layout can be improved, and I feel there is some wasted real estate. It may be a challenge to have visual cues for separation, but simplifying and cleaning up a bit would go a long way.

* When I focus on a text box or otherwise click on a tab, you should bring it into view. I understand there is a good use case for typing something while viewing another tab - but not if I cant see anything at all.

* Probably just an issue for folks with a Mac gesture pad, but the swiping to pan from tab-to-tab also triggers the back action for a page. Probably need to override the browser action and continue panning since that's the action I started with.

Thats all for now! Thanks.

~~~
digitalcreate
Thanks for the thorough review. All excellent points! You're right, we focused
on getting everything as reasonably polished as possible before launching
version 1.0, so that we could expand the audience and get more feedback (just
like this). :)

------
nickysielicki
I'm kind of a broken person, I can't use a web browser without getting
distracted if it doesn't have vim bindings. This kind of browser really
doesn't lend itself to that.

I don't see how this browser will ever suit me or people like me, which is
kind of a problem; how do you expect random non-techhy people to discover this
if the techhy people don't move first?

I do like the idea. I find myself wishing I could do a vsplit/split in
pentadactyl all the time... So much so that I've considered moving to
something like surf with i3. But it's not worth it because none of them are
polished enough.

I'd like to see Mozilla really take a stab at integrating pentadactyl-like
behavior into their new development browser they're creating. One thing that's
really interesting to me is that in recent years (~5ish) we've seen a real
split in terms of the browser that developers prefer. I think someone can take
that market if they did it well.

~~~
mynameisvlad
> how do you expect random non-techhy people to discover this if the techhy
> people don't move first?

I feel like non-techy people would be much easier to convince to try a new
browser than techy people, especially ones so deeply entrenched in things like
vim bindings. There's just a much smaller change involved going from a normal
browser in a stock consumer OS like Windows to this than going from something
like using vim bindings to this.

------
geographomics
I like the idea you've developed here, it's a really interesting take on the
multi-page browser interface.

However after testing your browser, I think I'm probably not your target
audience as I primarily use a rather old laptop with trackpad only (no mouse)
and a screen that isn't touch sensitive, which didn't lend itself to an easy
experience of the panning and zoom controls - right-click and drag is unwieldy
for me regardless of the target software.

Apart from that, just a minor comment on your website code - the Google Fonts
stylesheet link element should reference the https rather than http link.
Otherwise Chrome refuses to load it:
[https://i.imgur.com/GaW3Vay.png](https://i.imgur.com/GaW3Vay.png).

Also this is possibly a transient Cloudflare problem, but I received this
error on first visiting the website:
[https://i.imgur.com/inugvt0.png](https://i.imgur.com/inugvt0.png). It
resolved itself upon refreshing the page.

~~~
digitalcreate
Thanks for trying PolyBrowser. We were shooting to make PolyBrowser work even
on setups like yours (trackpad, no mouse). You can still use Ctrl +/\- to zoom
in and out, and Control Tab to switch tabs, plus drag with the right mouse
button. Thanks so much for the screenshots of those issues!

------
conradk
Looks interesting. Wondering about the performance of it. But it definitely
looks cool to have tabs next to each other instead of individually. I tend to
have two windows open a lot of the time, but the current browsers don't
optimize this use case.

As I'm mainly a Linux user, I'm wondering though: is a Linux build planned (in
a near future) ?

~~~
digitalcreate
Definitely! For the first release, we had to focus on the biggest bang
(Mac/Win) but Linux is coming (as soon as we can).

~~~
gespadas
Nice! I hope the linux release don't take so long.

------
AJ-Ryner
Tried it on my MacBook Pro 17, Yosemite.

1) I agree with the other comments, UX/UI improvement is needed.

2) Sometime when I try to 'swipe' from my trackpad, it does 'to previous page'
on the tab, which is not active - next to the active tab. (two tabs opened
only - when it happened, didn't try with more tabs)

3) Scrolling/Swiping speed optimisation :)

Looking forward for more updates! Thnx!

------
andegre
Any site I try to navigate to throws the error that the site isn't trusted
(gmail.com ???). I click the "Add Exception", and then nothing happens. I'm
not able to open ANY website.

Love the concept, hopefully you can get this bug worked out. It's probably
because of my companies EXTREMELY strict firewall and proxy...

~~~
digitalcreate
We haven't experienced that issue, even behind corporate firewalls, but will
look into it. Thanks!

~~~
andegre
Anything logged on my end that I could send to you? (Edit: can't navigate to
your Feedback/Support page either)

~~~
digitalcreate
If you could send screenshots of the error, that would be perfect. Send to
(email removed).

~~~
andegre
email containing screenshot is en route.

------
mobiplayer
Can't wait to get home to try it on my Windows 8.1 tablet. Looks like the
ideal browsing solution for touchscreens.

------
Kiro
What layout engine is it using?

~~~
digitalcreate
Gecko. It's based on Firefox.

~~~
cyborgx7
So it should be open source, right?

Wasn't able to find anything on their website.

~~~
binarymax
Gecko is MPL - so can be mixed with proprietary code.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License)

------
yangyang
Some interesting ideas here.

One thing I noted in a quick play with it on Windows: if you right-drag
outside the window, it doesn't get the mouse-up event and you have to right
click in the window again to stop it panning.

~~~
digitalcreate
Thanks yangyang. Yes, that's an open issue that we're working on fixing.

------
digitalcreate
PolyBrowser is trending on Product Hunt...
[http://www.producthunt.com/posts/polybrowser](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/polybrowser)
Check it out!

------
mapimopi
Wow, this is most definitely interesting! Is it optimized, though? Are all
tabs active at once?

Also, I wonder, is this idea original or was there any attempts at making
something similar to this before?

~~~
digitalcreate
Yes, it's optimized for running multiple websites simultaneously. All tabs are
visible and running, but whatever you click on becomes the "active" tab, which
helps with resources. Also, non-visible tabs aren't rendered by your video
card.

We didn't base this designed on any previous ideas. There have been some other
attempts to solve similar problems (tile tabs, etc) but nothing that we felt
quite "hit it."

------
smrtinsert
Can you configure it to force all tabs to use only the space of one screen -
essentially as a tiling manager? I don't want to lose context when looking at
other tabs.

~~~
digitalcreate
There are still "tabs" that jump you to the chosen website, which always drop
you in the correct place (centered on screen) so you don't lose context. The
only difference is that if the website is smaller than your screen size, you
will see the neighboring websites to the side.

------
roehst
I really like the side-by-side navigation - felt much better than tabs!!!!

The rest of the browser needs a lot of work tho. It needs to run faster and
look much better.

------
k3oni
Seems that it fails to complete downloading, at least for me. Both Chrome and
IE complain about download being interrupted/network error.

~~~
digitalcreate
There is a mirror download link on the download page (hosted on Dropbox) if
you are having download issues. Hopefully that works. Please let us know if
you still have issues so that we can set up an alternative. Thanks!

~~~
k3oni
Tried both, same thing. I'll try again later :).

------
GeorgeHahn
Ctrl + click doesn't open links in new tabs. Cool idea, but this totally kills
it for me.

------
gespadas
Suggestion: Create a Twitter account to follow the updates!

------
chris-at
I couldn't find a license. Is it open source?

~~~
digitalcreate
Hi chris-at, the open source license is discussed on our website here:
[https://polybrowser.com/faqs/where-can-i-download-the-
source...](https://polybrowser.com/faqs/where-can-i-download-the-source-code-
for-polybrowser)

~~~
k__
So it is open-source, but the poly-specific source can't be modified, just
reviewed?

Interesting concept.

------
heifetz
search in the sidebar...circa 1999

~~~
digitalcreate
Hey, everything comes back around eventually. ;) No denying that it saves
space, and we are going for a search experience that maximizes screen real
estate.

~~~
softdev12
looks good. nice to see that people are still trying to rethink objects that
have been around for years.

------
weego
The outcome of "what if the web looked like our Trello board!?!" A question no
one should have asked or answered.

