
Link Bubble - A new browser for Android - intull
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble.playstore
======
RyanZAG
The general idea of creating overlays for actions that take awhile to complete
should really be integrated into the system itself. It's a really good idea
that the desktop gets around by allowing multiple windows at once. On a phone
with only 1 window, it's a really obvious solution that surprisingly hasn't
been used much before.

I think the origin of the idea is probably Facebook's Android app where
contacts are little icons floating on your screen. That use case was so-so and
only really useful if you were messaging one or two people constantly. This
takes that idea a step further - but it could be taken even further by making
all asynchronous actions use the system by default. Maybe in Android 5? A good
first step would be to generalize this into an easy to use library that app
devs can include without fuss. Maybe if I get some time next week...

~~~
brian_cloutier
> The general idea of creating overlays for actions that take awhile to
> complete should really be integrated into the system itself.

This was the feature of Android that got me really excited when Google first
announced it. The whole idea of Intents is that you can have a stack of things
you're doing; clicking a link will open a new Activity on the top of the stack
and hitting Back will pop that Activity off the stack.

As Android was originally pitched, Applications shouldn't be the fundamental
unit of navigating through your phone because you don't usually think in terms
of "and now I want to open Chrome", but in terms of "I would now like to open
this link". If you're reading an sms and click a link your buddy sent you,
then from that webpage click another link that opens twitter you've found
yourself in a "Task" with three separate Activities in it. You can then
context switch to a different task and eventually back to this one with all
your Activities waiting right where you left them.

But it seems Google has given up on that vision. Developers were given too
much control over tasks and the "back stack" and too little education on
thinking with Activities so they happily went along and tried to make
monolithic applications. Like web browsers which tie all your tasks together
into one app that has a bunch of tabs. What does the back button in Chrome do?
Nobody ever knows. The back button in Chrome conflates your tab history with
your Task history and makes them interact in convoluted ways. If it didn't
expose tabs open in other tasks and treated every forward navigation like
creating a new tab the Back button would be perfectly intuitive.

I mainly blame Google for never making your back stack explicit. To this day
it's difficult to tell where the Back button will send you because Android
never shows you (Also because some apps try to get smart and rewrite history
at terribly inappropriate times, have I mentioned I hate Chrome?). The app
switcher shouldn't be a list of the last Applications you've used but a list
of your last few Tasks.

So, I don't agree that overlays should be part of Android 5. I think that the
App Switcher should be given some real teeth, Intents should be overhauled,
and all the default apps should rewritten to show developers how to think
using Tasks.

~~~
JTon
I've always wondered about the broken back button. Thanks for shedding some
light. BB10 OS sort of implements the application stack as you described, but
it's focused on social and messaging applications (so you don't need to drop
out of your current app to share)

------
fidotron
OK, this is completely and absolutely inspired. Brilliant, especially the
redirect handling.

The design needs a bit of polish, but the core concept is just so damn good
it's blatantly going to be copied.

~~~
EddieRingle
> The design needs a bit of polish, but the core concept is just so damn good
> it's blatantly going to be copied.

Chris Lacy (the author) delayed the release because he was encouraged to
patent the idea. Looks to me like that was a good move.

~~~
wmt
Indeed, patenting ideas is an excellent way to prevent free software from
usign those ideas while proprietary software can just get the licensing costs
from their profits.

~~~
oscargrouch
Also, if the browser concept was patented, how could someone else innovate
over browsers, if theres a need to pay for the privilege of being inventive?

------
sigvef
This is one of those ideas that seem so obvious in hindsight. Waiting for a
web page to load on mobile is one of the most annoying things to do on a smart
phone - much more so than on desktop because of variable network conditions.

------
jggonz
I really like the idea of apps that overlay data and interact with the
currently focused apps. Over at blekko we have incorporated a similar
technique within two of our Android apps. We wanted to add functionality to
the Android system that we felt was missing, so I developed an overlay search
box that can be used from any app in the system. It takes some coding tricks,
but the results are very useful.

The apps are :

izik - our tablet/mobile friendly search engine

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.izik.izik](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.izik.izik)

rockzi - a discovery app that lets you browser or search within topics.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockzi.roc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockzi.rockzi)

Video explaining Rockzi:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpq6G1o7pmM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpq6G1o7pmM)

------
rkuykendall-com
This is a brilliant idea, and I can't wait to use it.

Quick question for chris_lacy:

Sometimes I open links on my phone to read them on the subway when I'm
offline. However, Android Chrome often decides that the 3 tabs I opened
yesterday are too much for it to handle and throws them away. I try to open
them on the train, it shows me a greyed screenshot of the page and a "loading"
bar, then replaces the page with "You are offline." Then I scream inside my
head, "No shit! That's why I opened them earlier!"

Will Link Bubble have the same problem? If so, would it be hard to address, or
worth it for most users?

Edit: Also, if someone is going to link me an offline article reader, that's
okay and maybe appreciated, but understand that I know those are out there and
don't think my browser should be throwing loaded websites away.

~~~
chris_lacy
Link Bubble won't throw out those resources, so the page(s) will still be
there.

~~~
billynomates1
Hey Chris. Sorry to hijack this thread. Just to say I'm loving Link Bubble and
think it's a great idea. However the other day I was listening to a song in
the background, using youtube.com in a link bubble, as the youtube app doesn't
play in the background. But the bubble closed halfway through the song and it
stopped playing. It might be a good idea to somehow detect if music was
playing (like Chrome does, not sure how hard that would be) and not kill the
bubble. Or maybe not kill youtube/soundcloud/whatever bubbles until the user
does it manually. Just a suggestion! Cheers.

------
rakoo
So, "Open Link in a new tab" ?

~~~
nilkn
Functionally, yes. But it makes that functionality available universally on
Android. You don't have to already be in Chrome/etc.

~~~
mistermann
Somehow I didn't pick up on this fact from the video.....

------
Geee
This is incredible. This accomplishes exactly the way we browse on desktops:
Open links in new tabs and switch to them when they're loaded, and then close
them one by one to finally return to the original page. I remember thinking of
how to solve this before but didn't come up with a good solution.

~~~
chris_lacy
Many thanks :)

------
dps
Nicely executed. The choice of giving one [configurable] app for free and all
apps for $5 is also an interesting business model.

~~~
chris_lacy
Figuring out the line between free and Pro is always a challenge. I think the
value proposition is clear from the free version, but I'm always listening to
opinions otherwise.

------
sigvef
I wish Android had more granular default app settings. I'd love to use Link
Bubble for opening links in the twitter app, but I'm not ready to give up
Chrome as the default browser for everything else. One option is to not set a
default at all, but then I have to click through this[1] all time, which isn't
exactly smooth.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/HrGadaj.png](http://i.imgur.com/HrGadaj.png)

~~~
RyanZAG
This isn't really a feature that needs to be added to Android - you could
create an app that filters Twitter links to X and other links to Y without
much fuss. Given how obvious it is, there's probably already an app that does
this on the market?

If you can't find anything let me know, it's about 15 minutes work to make
something like that.

~~~
gotninjaskills
Please do. I would like to use Link Bubble for opening links when I'm using
Twitter, Reddit or HN app. It's pretty awesome but like what he said, I'm not
yet ready to give up Chrome fully.

~~~
chris_lacy
I already have the code to allow you to specify this via Link Bubble's
settings, but I've opted not to enable it so far.

I tend to subscribe to Apple's philosophy of trying to avoid adding
configurable options unless absolutely necessary, but frankly, that position
can be a tough sell to early adopting Android users.

~~~
gotninjaskills
I bought the app! However, I'm not sure if I was hallucinating when I saw an
option before to define certain apps that will use Link Bubble because I can't
find it anymore.

Anyway, again, this is a very awesome and useful app.

------
STRML
This is great, Chris! I bought it right away after playing with it for a few
minutes.

Just a few questions/suggestions:

1\. It would be good to highlight in the tutorial that the free version only
works for links from a single app (usually Chrome). I spent quite a bit of
time trying to figure out how it worked - and when it didn't - before I found
the correct setting. Perhaps I missed something?

2\. Is there a way to close an individual bubble in a group?

3\. Is there a way to move a bubble into a new group?

4\. The contrast on the number indicator could be much higher; in any sort of
outdoor setting it is completely unreadable. Would be great to just use white
on black.

Cool app; keep going!

------
agumonkey
And soon you'll have tab-swell. Causes severe burnout on the long run.

~~~
chris_lacy
Yes, further optimizations are necessary. It's V1, and I needed to get it out
to see if the app would be well received first. That said, I do envisage Link
Bubble will be used more to quickly read a few links rather than keep 40 tabs
open at once like Chrome.

~~~
agumonkey
I was only half sarcastic, and not criticizing your app at all (just in case
it felt that way). It's just that sometimes, something that remove friction,
thus seems like a win, will cause issues down the road. I love the dynamic
floating 'tab' idea btw.

\-- sent from my tabfull browser :)

------
Newky
Presuming this is closed source? Although it looks like a neat concept, it
would be a more attractive option if I knew something that was dealing with my
browsing history was open source.

~~~
chris_lacy
Yes, it's closed source. I can't see a realistic alternative to this given I'm
trying to make a living selling the app.

But FWIW, I can promise you I don't transfer your browsing history. My policy
on such data is I simply don't want to ever have a copy of it. If that means I
can't sync your history between Link Bubble installs, so be it.

~~~
fpgeek
I think an interesting middle ground would be to connect to existing browser
sync storage. Personally, one of the (few) disadvantages of Link Bubble is
that my Link Bubble history is separate from my main browser history (I don't
really want to remember whether I read something in Link Bubble or elsewhere
if I'm trying to find it later). Connecting to existing sync services would be
a nice way of dealing with that.

~~~
chris_lacy
What services are you talking about? The history Android permission, or
something else? Certainly I don't think there's any such API for Chrome.

~~~
fpgeek
As a Firefox user, I thought of Firefox Sync first, which seems to have enough
documentation to make a third-party client: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Firefox_Sync](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Firefox_Sync)

I find it a bit surprising that Chrome doesn't have something similar (or is
the relevant sync code just too buried in Chromium?).

------
d0ugie
Good stuff Chris Lacy, testing now on 2G on my train commute to work. I hope
that, in addition to rounding up a few dollars, this opens doors for you.

Any way for you to use Chromium as the engine instead of stock 4.4? Regarding
the Apple approach as you referred to limiting user options to cut down on
clutter, while that has its merits, I think your target audience with an app
like this has a higher concentration of nerds than usual, so maybe reconsider.

------
aeon10
Brilliant stuff. I'm too attached to chrome to let it go completely but this
is brilliant when quickly opening links from other apps. Nice stuff

~~~
chris_lacy
I see Link Bubble as an additional application rather than a complete
replacement for your existing browser. Drive the Prius (Link Bubble) around
the city during the week, take the truck (Chrome) out on Sundays.

------
hyp0
On the stock android browser (4.2.2), holding a link opens a context menu,
within which you can choose to open it in a background tab. There's a settings
options to not switch to that tab yet (under _Advanced_ ).

Also, a setting to preload links in the background (very appropriately under
_Bandwidth Management_ ).

------
luisivan
I always used to open a link on Chrome, switch to the previous app, keep the
page loading and then after a few seconds I would open Chrome and see the
fully loaded page - however this is a more elegant solution than my "hack".

Installed and already using it.

~~~
aakash
Browsers could take note of this and clear the previous page only when
blocking resources(CSS) finish downloading instead of current: First byte.
This should make us see less of those white pages.

------
joshbaptiste
One of the most useful apps I've purchased in a while as I'm constantly
clicking on Links from Twitter, HN App, Facebook and this just makes the whole
process more desktop"ish".

------
chaosmonkey
This is amazing! Now I am actually starting to notice how much I have to wait
when I click on a link from apps. Save to pocket, etc is a nice feature too.

~~~
lostsock
It really is a great feeling when an app solves a problem you hadn't even
recognised you had and makes your experience even better. nice work Chris!

------
Baadier_Sydow
Used it once and loved it. Upgraded to pro straight away :) This is going to
make Reddit is Fun a lot easier to use.

When is this coming to tablets, Chris?

------
dredmorbius
Interesting, though I'd prefer a choice of deferred reading services. I use
Readability and have a considerable library there.

~~~
chris_lacy
Change the Settings -> Left bubble value.

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks. Glad it's there.

------
e15ctr0n
Is this app just a wrapper around the default Android browser? 904k seems to
be a bit small for "an all-new browser".

~~~
chris_lacy
Link Bubble uses the Android WebView for rendering, yes. But the API is pretty
deficient in a few key areas, and I will likely have to switch to a custom
modified version of Android 4.4's WebView at some point.

~~~
e15ctr0n
If the app uses Android WebView for rendering, then its description on the
Play Store as an "all-new browser" is a little disingenuous. The article by
The Next Web[1] that is quoted in the description on the Play Store starts off
by comparing the app with Chrome, Firefox, Dolphin and Opera, which seems to
reinforce the wrong impression.

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/03/21/link-bubble-
reimagines...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/03/21/link-bubble-reimagines-
browse-web-android/)

~~~
chris_lacy
I'm talking about the interface that presents the web to the user, not the
underlying method of rendering the web.

------
yati
I'm using this for over a week now and can't imagine being without it.
Something so obvious, yet so profound :)

------
berdario
Seems a nice idea, I hope they'll release it on other app stores, so that I
might be able to try it out on my phone

~~~
chris_lacy
What stores do you mean?

------
jbeja
I don't know how anyone couldn't think of this before. Is so simple and
needed.

------
jamesfranco
Chris, do you plan to release this on iOS? Are there any restrictions from
Apple?

~~~
billynomates1
Pretty sure there is no way to do this on iOS. For the same reason the
Facebook Messenger app doesn't have persistent floating windows.

------
czzarr
Did the (now defunct) Facebook mobile app chat bubbles inspire this idea?

~~~
dag11
Why do you say defunct? Did that feature disappear? I still use it.

~~~
mschuster91
iirc only the desktop Messenger got shot. Dunno if Jabber survived, though.

------
zakelfassi
The app is incompatible with Galaxy SII ?

~~~
chris_lacy
It requires Jelly Bean or later.

~~~
zakelfassi
I'm running 4.1 (API level 16) - it should work I guess. Although, I can't
download it. Might be location restricted?

~~~
chris_lacy
Definitely shouldn't be. DM me on Twitter (@chrismlacy) if you like and I can
take a look at what might be going on.

------
staunch
Google needs to acquire and integrate.

~~~
buzzkills
Please no, I like to see what companies can do without being bought by large
lumbering giants.

~~~
staunch
Big companies integrating things like this are the best kinds of acquisitions.
There's no reason something like this should be standalone. Everyone should
have a better browser, not just the handful of people that find this app.

------
Sephr
jelly~

buzz

