
Min – A smarter web browser - alvil
https://minbrowser.github.io/min/
======
cocktailpeanuts
I think the main reason people are hating on this is because it's selling
itself as something it's not: A smarter browser.

Should stick with its original goal. I think they created it as a "minimal"
browser, hence the name.

~~~
bananicorn
If you're going for minimal, it won't get much more minimal than this:

[https://surf.suckless.org/](https://surf.suckless.org/)

But at least the smart part may be of merit. And we all know what HN thinks of
electron, but at least bundling chrome with a browser seems reasonable. Not
for a minimalistic browser though, I think hence the branding as "a smarter
browser".

Oh boy, I actually set out to defend the project, but now I realize while
there's clearly been some work put into it, some areas haven't been thought
out too well...

At least it looks nice and clean, that's something.

edit: corrected my wording in the first sentence.

~~~
chriswarbo
> If you're going for minimal, it won't get much more minimal than this:

> [https://surf.suckless.org](https://surf.suckless.org)

Minimal UI maybe (or maybe not; is there still a truckload of stuff when
right-clicking, or pressing hotkeys, or visiting `about:something`?)

I'd say lynx, w3m, links, dillo, netsurf, etc. are all more minimal _in
general_.

~~~
anthk
Ahem, no.

Links has right click, even Netsurf has that.

About general minimalism, dillo is perfect.

For cli, w3m and links are NOT minimal. That is netrik.

~~~
chriswarbo
Didn't know about netrik, thanks.

I wasn't implying that 'right click == bloat', only that there are two
meanings for "minimal": a minimal amount of code, or a minimal UI.

surf doesn't have a minimal amount of code, since it wraps WebKit; although it
seems to have a minimal UI. My point about right-click, etc. is that much of
the (GTK?) WebKit UI might still be lurking there.

I agree that dillo is really nice. Not minimal in the UI sense though (tabs,
toolbar, search box, etc.)

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la_oveja
Based on Electron. So this is Chromium, but with less features?

EDIT: It also claims less battery consumption. May I ask some proof?

~~~
pls2halp
A. FUCKING. ELECTRON. BROWSER. ಠ_ಠ

Just so I don’t get this comment killed, here’s some text calmly explaining
that electron is based off blink, and implementing a browser in it is like
using a text editor’s scripting feature to reimplement the cursor.

~~~
chr1
This is like using web rendering engine to implement a browser, which is not
ridiculous at all.

The difference from chromium is that the browser ui is implemented using the
web tech, instead of native, which is not unusual either.

Firefox have been using slightly modified version of html and javascript to
implement the browser ui forever.

Vivaldi and brave browsers use the same method as well.

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cyberferret
Seems pretty cool, but I wonder at the claim that it will use less battery
power. From the specs, it is built on Electron, and from my understanding to
date, even the basic Electron framework shell is fairly resource hungry in its
own right, which could impact power usage on a laptop?

Perhaps it could have been a better initiative to build it using native code
and utilising WebKit as the rendering engine? Much like the Vivaldi browser
(which I use a lot of these days)

~~~
dangoor
I wouldn't think that the browser part of Electron is significantly slower
than Chromium, which it's built on. From what I remember, the Node part of
Electron runs in a separate process.

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darklajid
Ignoring the general 'Electron seems a waste of resources' (with which I
partially agree with) comments: Requires 'Ubuntu' or 'macOS'? I seem to know a
lot of Electron based apps that run on other Linux distributions or - gasp -
even Windows.

Clicking on the 'Download anyway' link brings up the GitHub release tab. With,
among others, a file called 'Min-v1.6.3-win32-x64.zip'.

~~~
icebraining
_> With, among others, a file called 'Min-v1.6.3-win32-x64.zip'_

"If it compiles, it is good; if it boots up, it is perfect"? Just because the
build has a Windows target doesn't mean it's a supported platform.

~~~
darklajid
That ignores the "We target one random Linux distribution" thing and kinda
doesn't address the point that Electron is cross-platform already. I would
expect an Electron app to work where Electron works, but admit that I haven't
targeted it. Any input on why that might not be the case would be appreciated.

------
earenndil
> Find anything instantly

Aside from fuzzy search, all of this is already possible.

> Effortless tab management

All the things in here are already possible in firefox using addons.

> Built-in ad blocking

I honestly don't care if ad-blocking is built in. It's not like it's a chore
that affects my day-to-day use of a browser to install an addon _once_ for
adblocking.

> Fast and efficient

It literally uses the same engine as chrome so it won't be any different from
it.

> Open-Source software

Like most other browsers today

~~~
nkkollaw
So..?

What's your point? It's just as good as any other browser

~~~
shakna
It advertises itself as a smarter web browser, but, as you said, it's only "as
good as any other browser".

The only pull it has... is that it might be adequate.

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SwellJoe
YC commenters are brutal. Not a single positive comment, so far. That feels a
little unnecessarily mean, given that it's a free software project.

~~~
dang
They're mostly reacting to the title, because that's all that most HN comments
react to. This is a much stronger effect than I think people realize.

Had the title said "Min, a first attempt at a minimal browser that we hope
might have some value someday, perhaps you could take a look", commenters
would bend over backwards to find nice things to say, because that would be
the only way to contradict the title.

Actually the nice comments mostly come up for the same reason as the harsh
ones—contradicting what someone else said. First the harsh comments contradict
the title and then the nice comments contradict the harsh ones. Contradictions
R us.

~~~
vog
This is by no means specific for HN.

For example, a popular German radio moderator and podcaster once said:

"If I want to learn something about a topic, and ask a question on air, almost
nobody answers. But if instead I make a false (or naive) claim about that
topic, I receive lots of replies correcting me, and might even get an
interview with an actual expert on that topic."

[Holger Klein, paraphrased, rough translation]

~~~
dang
Yup, and Cunningham's Law also.

You're right about most generalizations about HN; I've noticed they're either
false or "too true", as in they apply to much larger sets and therefore say
little about HN specifically.

~~~
vog
Thanks for pointing this out. Indeed, it seems that Mr. Klein rediscovered
Cunningham's Law without noticing.

------
minaguib
"Using electron" and "uses less battery" are too close to each other.

~~~
jdavis703
It's not like they're trying to cram in a music player or IDE in to an
Electron app. This is a browser so I wouldn't expect the load to be
substantially worse than running Chrome.

~~~
pls2halp
And you wouldn’t expect atom to use more memory than sublime, either.

~~~
jhasse
This is different. Atom is a text editor implemented in a web browser engine.
This is a web browser implemented in a web browser engine.

------
another35
> and get suggestions before you even start typing

I really don't want that!

~~~
Kesty
I think there is a dissonance between smart personalized suggestion and being
against tracking.

Which is the main downfall of DuckDuckGo they use as the smart bar search
engine.

If you want good suggestions and smart personalization you need to track your
user.

If you don't want to track your user for privacy concern, it's all good but
then don't give user a product like suggestions that will always be subpar
compared to someone else that is for user tracking.

~~~
fenwick67
I think it's very telling that you don't consider what the user might want.

As a user I don't want to be tracked, but I want suggestions, and I'm willing
to give up a little accuracy. Example: on DuckDuckGo, if I search for "int
ball", it includes results for "int-ball". It doesn't need to know anything
about me personally to do this.

------
arm
Honestly, I’d say qutebrowser¹ is both smarter _and_ more minimal than Min.

――――――

¹ — [https://qutebrowser.org/](https://qutebrowser.org/)

~~~
blux
From the FAQ; "I believe efficiency while coding is a lot more important than
efficiency while running."

As a user, that would make me nervous at least.

~~~
lallysingh
Depends on whether that efficiency is used for higher quality or higher
feature count. For the firmer, I'd be pretty happy.

------
jijji
so its basically chrome-headless with a different UI and 20% slower because it
is running via an interpreted nodejs rendering that is then compiled into a
binary. why not just use chrome? If you're going to use an existing browser,
why not use Dillo or Lynx as the backend, which really are minimalist in terms
of memory usage.

~~~
AstralStorm
Or test Servo... (Mozilla's new engine.)

------
bobosha
Neat idea. Perhaps position this as a minimalist browser (vs "smarter")

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_Codemonkeyism
I think the only way to make a dent into the browser market is to create the
most secure browser and market it that way.

~~~
earenndil
I disagree. I think what can make a dent is something that's _significantly_
faster than all we have today.

------
herewegoagain
I tried this a while back, and the only thing I liked better than the
mainstream browsers was that it doesn't waste space at the top of the browser
and thus would theoretically be a good fit for e.g. watching something in a
small window in the corner of your screen while doing work. But in practice,
there is some crazy minimum window size limitation and thus it's useless for
the only use case I would have for it.

~~~
beojan
Chrome `--app` mode does the same thing.

------
pikzel
Tried on a site ([https://www.dn.se/](https://www.dn.se/)) which looked
completely broken. Tried it on another
([https://www.svt.se/nyheter/](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/)) and the browser
crashed. No thanks.

------
mrmondo
I don't see what's "smarter" about it.

\- The UI seems clumsy and is so flat that it doesn't offer any directional
hinting at all.

\- It's the same size as Firefox (160MB) despite offering significantly less
features.

\- It's resource consumption seems to be about 25% more than a fresh Firefox
instance.

~~~
userbinator
_and is so flat that it doesn 't offer any directional hinting at all._

These featureless, "wide expanse of pure white" UIs are one of the things that
most irritates me about "modern" software today. They give the impression of
being unfinished and opaque.

~~~
capex
Its not the flatness, its lack of design. See for example,
[https://www.sail.com.au/](https://www.sail.com.au/), which is flat too, but
with a cohesive design.

~~~
mrmondo
That site looks pretty awful to me, while I can clearly make out the buttons
from other elements it looks like a old stock Drupal theme or something along
those lines.

~~~
capex
Design is highly subjective, but from the designer's eye, there is no
comparison between the two sites.

------
andriesm
This is actually Inspiring me to consider making my own visions of browsing
can be improved come to fruition!

Thanks very much for the implementation idea and the source. I'm certainly
gonna play with both the product and the code.

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asteinbr
Electron.. thanks for nothing.

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colept
Competition is good. This also looks like a neat browser for staging designs.

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cryo
I instantly like the clean distraction free look.

That's Min.

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davidp670
I use Bookmark OS which allows me to sort my bookmarks. Does this have
bookmark sorting?

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linopolus
I build a browser in your browser, so that you can browse the web browsier.

It sounded reasonably nice (beyond the point that Firefox is all this with a
few addons), but Electron? Again?

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rerpha
how am I supposed to get to the other pre-built binaries?

