
Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser? - mod50ack
I&#x27;d think customizability and security are top concerns, what do you think?
======
exodust
A browser where the security updates aren't married to "interface
enhancements".

Just give me the security updates for the version I have, because I don't want
your designer's latest idea of what a browser should look like, and unwanted
new features forced down my throat with the security updates.

Choice about what new features to install - much like Windows updates, would
be nice.

At the very least provide ways to keep things working and looking exactly how
they are at the moment. Needing an add-on to bring back the status bar in
Firefox is a joke.

~~~
mod50ack
Keep a separate UI and backend component and this should be trivial.

------
1arity
See the history as a tree, not as a list, so branch points can be preserved
and you can navigate back over everywhere you've already been.

A detailed development roadmap.

Privileged browser Apps and Extensions working on mobile. C'mon, it's 2015! (
no PhoneGap required )

An automation API.

The same really committed team who optimized V8.

Source on GitHub ( not necessarily all of it mind, some can be privileged
access, tho a place to post issues that is no more code.google or crbugs,
just, why? ).

~~~
Excavator
For a history tree, something like FromWhereToWhere¹ and Session History
Tree²?

A roadmap like this?:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Roadmap](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Roadmap)
Curious why you want one though?

For an automation API, would the RemoteDebug APIs³ work, or perhaps the
command-line⁴ API for Firefox? See node-firefox⁵ for an example of using the
RemoteDebug API to automate some functions in Firefox.

What makes you perceive the V8 team as more committed than other teams?

You can use your GitHub login to sign in to Mozilla's Bugzilla⁶, is that not
enough of an integration for you?

1: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/fromwheretowh...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/fromwheretowhere/)

2: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/session-
histo...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/session-history-
tree/)

3: [https://kenneth.io/blog/2015/03/12/remotedebug-one-year-
late...](https://kenneth.io/blog/2015/03/12/remotedebug-one-year-later/)

4: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options)

5: [https://github.com/mozilla/node-firefox](https://github.com/mozilla/node-
firefox)

6: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/)

~~~
1arity
I watched a couple of video presentations V8 did about optimization. It was
really coherent. And their skills were really advanced. Also, visceral
experience of the speed and stability of Chrome.

Also visceral experience deving Chrome apps and extensions ( man, I love their
clear APIs ) versus doing the same in Moz with XUL ( omg, die ).

Browsers are as much about branding as anything, and I'm never going to come
to the Mozilla camp. I don't believe a browser works to be a political cause,
nor do I believe Mozilla is anything like the narrative they have about it. I
mean what the hell is the committee of the Mozilla foundation doing? Wasting
time with meetings about the grandiose purpose as a "movement", instead of
making a better browser.

They pretend they're so "righteous" and yet all that pedantic dogmatic
nitpicking and differentiating themselves is actually costing a lot of
efficiency, which doesn't work for people who browse or for people who code.

Aside from that, I like the way Chrome does JS, and I don't like the way Moz
does. Custom Elements, c'mon!

The masses have voted anyway. Chrome FTW.

Your answer was clear, it just seems we're on different sides of the browser
divide. I wonder why there's so much loyalty? The browser is such an important
piece of software.

------
brudgers
Jails for cookies, history, etc.

I want to be able to stay logged into Google/Facebook/Linkedin for convenience
without other browser tabs knowing anything about it...or isomorphically, I
want to be able to browse the internet while logged into those services
without the pages I am browsing leaking data back to those sites. I'll take
the hit of downloading 100k of jquery on my 20mbit pipe a few extra times.

I want my browser to sandbox my information to the same degree I can achieve
by running separate browsers or setting up special browsing VM's.

~~~
knome
Wouldn't creating a second user in chromium do what you want here? You could
have a specific "social media" user.

~~~
brudgers
I'm not sure what you mean. If this involves "sign in to Chromium" then that
seems to involve signing in to Google, and that sort of defeats the purpose.

Incidentally, Chromium is what I use for Facebook...and only Facebook, on this
particular computer. And signing into Chromium with my Google account seems to
me to be a big information leak.

~~~
yincrash
Chrome/chromium has the distinction of user profiles[1]. You can have separate
windows have separate profiles (but not separate tabs). This has nothing to do
with Google accounts. Each profile has their own 'jail' of chrome resources
(cookies/history/tabs/etc). This is really useful when you need multiple
persisting sessions while doing web dev or whatever else.

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/user-experience/multi-
profiles](https://www.chromium.org/user-experience/multi-profiles)

~~~
brudgers
Thanks. The command line can be used to launch Chromium with a specific user
profile as described here:

[https://superuser.com/questions/377186/how-do-i-start-
chrome...](https://superuser.com/questions/377186/how-do-i-start-chrome-using-
a-specified-user-profile/377195#377195)

------
Aoyagi
Basically Opera 12 or pre-Chromium Opera in general..

\- Obvious things like encryption support, tabs, full cookie options,
(customizable) "smart" address bar, speed dial, history, favourites, optional
synchronization, extension support, spell check...

\- heavily customizable UI,

\- plenty of other customization through settings or Opera's neatly done
opera:config,

\- easily togglable (is that a word?) side panel with M2-style lightweight
E-mail client, notes, history, page info, and whatnot,

\- detailed page loading (speed, domains, amount of transferred data) and file
download information (what, where from/to, when, how much),

\- in-built "plugin-on-demand" and noscript,

\- Dragonfly (I just can't seem to get used to Chromium's developer tools),

\- easy image properties (
[http://puu.sh/jEqjh/ab197d996e.png](http://puu.sh/jEqjh/ab197d996e.png) ),

\- mouse gestures and switching between tabs with right-click + mouse wheel
up/down or something similarly effortless

\- tab stacking,

\- and last but not least: if you want to make money off me, instead of
sneakily tracing where I go and what I do and partnering with Google, ask me
for it on first start and maybe with a discreet "donate/subscribe" button on
the start page / speed dial.

...

Things that would be just nice:

\- tab sandboxing

\- their own rendering engine

\- Unite

\- One process per browser, not tab

\- "reading mode" as seen on WP IE

...

I guess I want more of a browsing bundle, heh.

~~~
glenstein
I would second the wish for a return of Opera Unite. I thought their vision
for what Unite could be was incredible and I was really sad to see it go.

~~~
Aoyagi
Yep, same. I considered that to be a rather revolutionary feature. Even if it
was standalone I would use it as I haven't seen anything similar yet.

------
pvdebbe
I think Firefox + Vimperator is pretty decent by itself, it could be slightly
better.

* Even better extension support -- enable writing extensions in any language: expose a file system based API for a full Unix philosophy experience. uzbl has something like this but it's not nearly as ideal as Vimperator is for my use case.

* As others mentioned, lose mandatory UI downgrades and other crap Mozilla's been pushing us lately: give us a platform to customize instead. (Practically running a Firefox compiled from sources helps with some of the issues people have, but sadly there will be a day they overhaul the UI in such a manner it hinders the usability. And because of the security stuff I just can't go back and use an old one forever.)

* Yeah, better bookmarking. Firefox could use a better system, and Vimperator doesn't solve it either. Full-text search among history + bookmarks would be pretty good.

The well exposed API for external apps could solve it all, save for crap UI.
For instance, the bookmarks could be crawled to an org-mode document where I
could annotate, categorize and tags things to my heart's content.

~~~
ecoponderosa
I second better bookmarking, a lot better than what is currently offered. For
me it is the easiest and fastest way to keep up with places I have visited and
want to return to. I have bookmarks from back as far as Netscape Communicator.
Moving between browsers on multiple machines and keeping bookmarks the same on
all is impossible other than by pinning a link to a saved bookmarks.html file.
Bookmarks should comprise at least 15-20% of all browser activity. Restoring
archived .json and .html bookmarks files never seems to work unless you have a
small collection. There has to be a better way. Maybe I will just pin a text
file and add URLs to that each time I need to save a location.

------
wtbob
\- works on X, the terminal and Android (yeah, that's a tall order, but it
sure would be nice to have the same keystrokes available in X and on the
terminal, and the same information available everywhere)

\- securely shares passwords across multiple hosts (emphasis on 'securely,'
unlike Chrome and Firefox)

\- blocks ads

\- blocks JavaScript, but makes it very easy to selectively enable it

\- supports <script type="text/python">, <script type="text/common-lisp"> and
<script type="text/smalltalk"> (hey, you did ask for _ideal_!)

\- written and extensible in Common Lisp (elisp or Python would be minimally
acceptable): the goal here is to be able to have 'the emacs of web browsers'

~~~
ikeboy
Wait, what's insecure about Chrome password syncing?

~~~
VLM
Find a chrome users unattended computer

open a tab to chrome://settings/passwords

Click on a saved password and click "show"

Write down their site / password info. They'll never know you have their login
data, no access logs or warnings.

Note that the people freaking out the most about this are incredibly
uncreative, because they think this is the only way an unattended computer can
be powned, usually combined with weird beliefs about "Security" being a
boolean value. Obviously, if you have physical access, you stick a keylogger
on there, steal the whole DB of passwords at the binary file level, take over
the whole operating system, etc. Also for extra comedy the people most likely
to be outraged stereotypically have the same password for all saved sites
(LOL) so you really only need to write down one password for that user, and
also stereotypically its a variation of "1Password" or their kids name, etc.

~~~
Dorian-Marie
Just tried it and it asked for my admin password (Mac OSX).

~~~
VLM
It may vary depending on version.

Sites that are heavily automated / packaged / locked down will not be up to
date.

I can verify it works fine on linux 44.0.2403.107.

I have access to a 41.0.2272.101 on windows that is extremely heavily locked
down and centrally distributed but I don't use that out on the internet, it
would be non-trivial to test.

------
mike-cardwell
Its development should be managed by a group who are not concerned with
generating money from advertising/tracking or any other privacy reducing
endeavors. A group who put user privacy and security at the forefront of every
decision made.

~~~
mod50ack
I agree. There should be three main aspects of a web browser's development
team's plan.

1\. Stability and Features

The browser should be stable and free of major bugs, reasonable feature
requests should be fulfilled when fairly trivial or found to be important.
Programmers should be knowledgable in the language the browser is in.
Personally I'd write it in C++/wxWidgets, using Blink as the engine since
that's the most popular and compatible renderer it seems.

2\. Privacy and Security.

The user's ability to control their information should be key, and it should
be kept locally unless the user explicitly chooses to send it off.

3\. Customizability

The user should be able to make changes to how the browser operates through
extensions, userscripts, userstyles, etc.

------
kenOfYugen
Modularity. I would like to see a browser that is designed as an engine,
meaning that no UI/UX, or 'browsing' features are included. Much like a raw
linux kernel in philosophy. I would like this ideal browser to have
interoperability with various JS engines, HTML and CSS renderers, as well as
the standardized specifications for the underlying network protocols. It
should be 'safe' by being written in languages where safety can be guaranteed
( with the exception of human error of course ). In essence, if an open source
core for a browser existed, maybe we could all work together and build the
ideal browser.

"Ideal" isn't one thing. Allowing for personal customizations while following
closely the standards make the base for implementing many "ideal flavors" of
browsing experience.

~~~
onion2k
I'm having a really hard time working out whether or not I agree with this
idea. On the one hand my inner developer loves the idea. The notion that
everything is a module, with well documented and robust APIs for communication
between modules, is perfect. The browser could be all things to all people.
But on the other hand there would be absolutely no additional value for a
typical user. 99% of people (generalising, don't know the real number, but
it's high) do no customisation to their browser. They don't even know they
can.

A modular browser would only benefit developers, and we can already cope with
delving deep in to the internals of many browsers if necessary. So is there
really any point in a modular browser? Who would it be for?

~~~
kenOfYugen
Allow me to present an analogy between operating systems and browsers.

You can install Arch/Debian Linux or Ubuntu, and there is no collision there.
You build your OS the way you want it or you run an automated installation and
soon you are doing work, browsing, watching movies, etc.

My point is that if Debian wasn't what it is, you wouldn't have Ubuntu which
offers additional value to a typical user, and be stuck with Windows forever.
Choice is of value.

Do you want to be stuck with Firefox, Chrome etc. knowing how hard they adapt
to real needs and ignore bug fixing in favor of new features?

A browser is not your 'typical' application. Browsers are in my opinion true
virtual machines and should be treated as such.

~~~
onion2k
_Choice is of value._

Choice also has costs.

I like the OS analogy, and it highlights the potential benefits well, but we
also need to consider the downside.

It would load a _huge_ amount of complexity on web developers. Rather than 5
browsers with a couple of versions of each, you'd need to start testing
against a vast _matrix_ of renderers, CSS engines, JS engines, chrome (as in
browser chrome, not Chrome) plugins, etc, with versions of each and every one.

Testing software on Linux is hard enough that the economics mean an
overwhelming majority of software manufacturers don't bother, or they do but
they only support a very limited range of versions, or they release
unsupported software that it's up to you to get working. That's definitely not
something I believe we want to do for the web.

~~~
kenOfYugen
Well fortunately in the web we have already got standards committees. As long
as those standards are supported there should be no problem.

Unfortunately current mainstream browsers don't comply with the standards to
the fullest, although I admit compliance is orders of magnitude better than
years ago.

Aren't Chrome only apps and web sites harming the web?

I agree with testing Linux software completely. It's maddening how much the
notion of testing is ignored.

Well it's a win-win situation, build the ideal browser, then you have already
built the "ideal" OS ;)

------
hollerith
I wish it were easier to select text with the mouse.

On "complicated" web pages, tiny changes in the position of the mouse while
dragging (selecting text) can result in large changes in the selection (the
parts of the page highlighted in light blue). Sometimes a tiny change in mouse
position even causes a whole 'nother column of text to be highlighted.

It sometimes takes many tries simply to select the contiguous words I want to
copy. It sometimes takes planning and learning from experience. I would prefer
for selecting text with the mouse to be so easy that I can always keep all of
my planning and learning faculties focused on the ideas discussed on the web
page.

Even on pages (such as the page where this comment will appear) where
selecting text with the mouse is relatively straightforward, I would prefer to
be able to select a contiguous series of lines (or paragraphs if individual
lines is too hard) by dragging in the left margin the way that it is possible
to select a contiguous series of lines in TextMate 2 or in Sublime Text 3 by
dragging in the gutter (the left margin where the line numbers appear).
(Neither Firefox nor Chrome lets me do that with HN's pages.)

In general, I would prefer for my browser to be optimized for "active reading"
or "reading broadly understood" (reading plus related activities like copying
a short passage from a web page and pasting it into a text editor).

I would probably make heavy use of such a "browser optimized for reading" even
if it barfed on "complicated" web pages (i.e., failed to render all or part of
pages that use a difficult-to-implement modern web API) provided there were an
"Open in Firefox" or "Open in Chrome" item on the right-click menu whenever
the mouse is over a link -- or some similar easy-to-implement convenience.

In other words, I think I'd use it and love it even if it was unusable with
most pages on the modern web as long as it provides a good experience on
certain sites with relatively simple pages, like HN and Wikipedia.

------
gunn
From a previous HN post - I want a browser standard for an easily optimised
subset of html technologies. To conform to this standard, pages would be
restricted in the ways they can manipulate the DOM, have a simpler DOM, use
only a small fraction of CSS properties, and not use some JS features e.g.
eval, delete.

We can use the asm.js model for opting in. Browsers that support it run the
pages super fast, other browsers run them just as fast as usual.

A browser engine supporting just this standard would be considerably smaller,
more embeddable, and a nicer base for current webkit based apps (e.g. spotify,
steam, or atom). It might also help apps that want to use something like
webviews for embedding content but need to be careful with memory /
performance.

------
TheLoneWolfling
No antifeatures / downgrades. I am aware that this is a fuzzy concept.
However, a few specifics:

* Think _very_ hard before adding things to make sure that they actually need to be in the core browser. Looking at you, FF Hello.

* Don't baby the user. Everything should be configurable. And existing options should not be changed on upgrades. And general solutions are (always) better than centralized services. Looking at you, Firefox "You cannot install unsigned extensions, period".

* Don't introduce "features" that hurt the end user. Looking at you, Pocket "you now are bound by the terms of Pocket's user agreement when you run FF".

* Don't try to do cat-and-mouse games. Looking at you, Firefox "we must try to prevent malware on the user's computer from taking over FF".

* Don't assume that everyone has the newest and best computer. Looking at you, Firefox "electrolysis tripling memory usage is fine, right?".

* Don't couple security updates with _anything_ else. Looking at you, Firefox "you must downgrade to australis or else your browser will be unsecure aah!".

~~~
jszymborski
Sorry, but I'm going to call this arbitrary FF hate.

With the exception of the Pocket and Hello arguments, Chrome has all of these
problems. Electrolysis, the malware stuff, etc... all comes from Chrome stuff!

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
It's not arbitrary FF hate. It's frustration that the browser that I used
because it didn't have any of these problems has decided to emulate the
antifeatures of a browser that I don't use because it does have these
problems.

As you said, it all comes from Chrome. Well... Guess why I don't use Chrome.
And guess why I've switched away from mainline FF.

------
1arity
I know this is crazy but I want there to be a service where I can subscribe to
a number of websites, and every week I get a printed hardcopy of all the
content that I can leaf through. Eco-greenie-ologists be damned, I want my
degradable, ephemeral paper to leaf through while lounging in a rocker chair
drinking ice tea. Civilized. Now that's a browser.

Solves the security issue right there, aint nobody tracking me now. I'd like
to see 1337 kidz xploit that paper. Escalate that privilege , from my rocking
chair! And let me choose from a number of layouts. The smell of that fresh
printers ink, nothing like it!

Bits and scroll bars and cookies. No taste, it's just trash.

~~~
halotrope
Well, I think such a service exists:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2715617/The-D...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2715617/The-
Daily-Me-PaperLater-lets-turn-favourite-online-content-custom-5-newspaper-
sent-direct-door.html)

~~~
1arity
Thanks for the find. I feel ( from the pics ) this could be done better. And 5
quid for a newspaper!!!!

~~~
burkaman
You're asking for a individually customized newspaper with no ads or
classifieds to support it, that probably needs custom editing every "issue"
since no automatic formatter will work 100% of the time. I don't think 5 quid
is so unreasonable.

Although the service did fold so maybe it was too much.

~~~
1arity
Ads are okay. Classy print ads are classy. 5 quid is way too much. Regardless
of how the product is seen internally, 5 quid for what is perceived by the
customer as a commodity ( a newspaper ) is too much.

------
throwaway6845
Less nannying.

Yeah, browser manufacturer, I know you want me to use HSTS and you want me not
to browse to HTTPS sites without certificates and all that. That's fine. I can
understand that (for example) Google wants to be the only org that can track
where I'm browsing, not my ISP or the NSA.

But for the love of dog, give me an option to turn all that nannying shit off
as and when I want to. My computer, my connection, I'll choose how much
information I want to share with people. Not you.

~~~
benbenolson
Firefox gives you the option to turn all of that off. I saw this the other day
on Hacker News:

[https://github.com/dfkt/firefox-
tweaks/blob/master/firefox-t...](https://github.com/dfkt/firefox-
tweaks/blob/master/firefox-tweaks.txt)

~~~
VLM
To the best of my knowledge and reading of the provided link there's currently
no way to disable "weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key in Server Key Exchange
handshake message. (Error code: ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key)" type
errors.

Its impacting me on an intranet-ish site that doesn't need https level
security but the admins set it up incompetently. If they had set up https
correctly, that would be a waste of time but it would be OK. If they had run
the whole thing on http that would have been OK because there is no (... known
...) sensitive data on that site. But no they had to do a halfway job.

There may be market space for a bifurcation. Merely being able to render html
doesn't mean all html rendering has to be done by one app, much like .ps or
.pdf does not work best with the "one true app to rule them all". I could see
a market with a iron clad virtualized one virtual (OS?) image per corrupt and
insecure domain, and a hippie flower child browser for intranets and local
files that blindly trusts everyone but by design won't talk to non RFC1918 ip
addresses or maybe it blindly trusts the user not to do anything too stupid.

------
rndn
Per-tab CPU and memory profiling and volume control.

Never remove old history items when revisiting a page, but leave the history
intact.

Treat tabs more like temporary bookmarks (and thus allow bookmark actions to
be used with them like search (full-text), (batch) re-naming, arranging in
folders, sorting).

Notes that can be attached to tabs and to websites.

A history of closed tabs.

Scripting support with REPL that allows to quickly process content of multiple
tabs at once.

Transparent access to cookies and localStorage.

Something like Privacy Badger included.

Place dialog boxes always near the cursor, not in a tiny bar or in a pop-up
near the top.

Bandwidth stats during page load.

Speed: No full-screen transition animations, lazy tab loading, smart tab
unloading, ability to quickly and temporarily disable img, embed, video,
script etc.

~~~
hodwik
>"Treat tabs more like temporary bookmarks (and thus allow bookmark actions to
be used with them like search (full-text), (batch) re-naming, arranging in
folders, sorting)."

That's an awesome idea, does any browser have that?

~~~
rndn
Unfortunately, no. The closest one is the Tree Style Tabs extension for
Firefox.

------
beefman
Tree-style tabs and the bookmark model to go with it (a bookmark can have a
parent, so you can restore subtrees of tabs, each with its history intact).[1]

Scroll below bottom of page as necessary when navigating to anchor links.[2]

Put focus in urlbar when switching to a tab unless the user has already moved
it onto the page.

Continue to allow bookmark keywords for custom searches from urlbar (e.g. "w
fun" to search wikipedia for "fun"). This still works in Chrome and Firefox
but it gets harder to configure with every release.

History should be sortable by most recent view, where closing or switching to
a tab counts as a view. Makes separate "recently closed tabs" menu
superfluous.

Full-text history search.

Support for MAFF archives.[3]

Built-in ad blocking.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

[2]
[http://lumma.org/microwave/#2006.02.24.3](http://lumma.org/microwave/#2006.02.24.3)

[3] [http://maf.mozdev.org](http://maf.mozdev.org)

~~~
brador
Why ad blocking? You know the internet runs on ads right? Without the ads all
you'll see is paywalls and backchannel press releases.

~~~
therealunreal
That's debatable. The internet was without ads once so I'd say you'd lose
some, win some.

~~~
brador
That was a long time ago and even mailing lists and BBS had ads.

You can see it already on sites like Reddit and Buzzfeed, users block ads so
the only solution is paid content hidden as user content. Be happy that, for
now, it is more lucrative to separate the ads from the content, because the
alternative is even worse.

In some ways, this last shred of free journalism we all enjoy online is
_because_ of those big ugly ads. Without them, no journalism, just illusion.

~~~
aw3c2
Let me counter that with: As long as the quality of online journalism is
measured by clicks and ad impressions, its purpose is not journalism.

~~~
brador
What else would you like it measured by? Paid subscriptions? Because we all
know how that goes.

The breadth of online journalism we see today is precisely because of those
ads everyone claims to hate. It allows anyone to quickly join the pot and lets
the market decide their value. Without ads we'd be stuck with the 4 fuhrer
model we had for the last 100 years.

~~~
klibertp
Why wouldn't donations work? Something like Gratipay (formerly Gittip) for
journalists?

~~~
brador
Because a journalist needs a minimum of $50 a day, it's a hit based business,
and readers are fickle. Everything you say must be in complete agreement with
their world view to get a donation. One mistake and they're gone.

Also, it's been tried before and has failed every time.

A subscription based donation system might still work though.

~~~
klibertp
Ok, thanks. It was an honest question, btw, thanks for taking it as such.

------
halosghost
Okay, so, let me premise my answer with the acknowledgement that probably
/very/ few people want what I do.

1\. Terminal-only (^Z is a thing that I want)

2\. Capable of some basic CSS support (e.g., colors, basic text decorations;
whatever can be simply translated to ANSI escape codes)

3\. Capable of doing <div>-based page layouts fairly consistently.

4\. Just enough Javascript support to login to a couple of webpages I like and
nothing more

5\. Some basic support for cookies and bookmarks (though, a session save would
be an acceptable alternative for me)

6\. Basic support for privacy/security features (think DNT header, HSTS, etc.)

7\. (optional) libsixel integration for image/video output

Having the above presents me with the ability to leave GUI web-browsers behind
entirely. Ads and the like would essentially be immaterial if JS and images
are toggleable and everything would be glorious. Of course, no one appears to
want this kind of thing enough for it to have been created yet. So I will
eventually probably break down and make it myself :P

~~~
nailer
elinks (not lynx, which is a different app) does most of these.

[http://elinks.or.cz/](http://elinks.or.cz/)

HSTS support would be a welcome patch.

~~~
halosghost
It's true that elinks covers a fair bit of what I want. But it does not have
libsixel integration, does not have enough JS for me to login to the websites
I'd like (afaik, perhaps that has changed since I last tried it) and does not
handle <div>-layouting very well.

Admittedly, those three things are the hardest ones in the list.

------
samuellb
Mostly security, privacy and usability related stuff. Here's a quite long
list:

* Browser written in a way that prevents most exploits.

* Built-in Javascript and cross-domain request blocking.

* Single-process sandboxed browser where only the active tab is allowed to run.

* Tab content written to disk so it can be restored in the event of a crash or running out of battery.

* Ability to "swap out" tabs to disk so they consume no memory.

* Ability to freeze all javascript code on a tab temporarily.

* Deep searching of history (i.e. page content).

* Created by a privacy-friendly organization/people who aren't trying to spy on you.

* Avoid doing things automatically (download files to a folder, search for misspelled URLs, send URL to Google when typing it in, etc). Don't have keyboard shortcuts that are hard to undo (also, don't have single-key letter/number shortcuts at all).

* Don't have an over-engineered build process. The browser should be possible to build (not necessarily fast) on an old or low-end computer.

~~~
awinter-py
freeze is critical -- I don't need scroll events running once my news article
loads.

+1 on easy build process

------
ronreiter
The web needs to split into two:

* Reader browser

* Application browser

The reader browser should show you the "web" in a kindle-like readable
experience, just as it does today.

However, the application browser, although it does receive a URL, should not
have any HTML page as a default view. Instead, a JavaScript should be first
loaded, and from there, following the permissions it requests, it can open new
windows, notifications, or any other desktop feature needed, which websites
that just need to be read do not need.

~~~
barnacs
Reader browser: I would argue that it should be a reader/writer browser, where
authoring, changing and interlinking documents is just as trivial as browsing
them.

Application browser: but then why limit it to JavaScript?

~~~
mod50ack
I agree with the r/w web, and that was the original vision, but it's not
really practical at this point because nobody supports such editing in a
standard fashion

------
zkirill
The reason why I originally switched from Firefox to Chrome was because Chrome
was minimalistic and very, very fast - a chrome for the web.

Now I'm seeing Chrome become bloated, and slow. On top of this, it's now
trying very hard to identify me by asking me to sign in with my Google
account.

I want my next browser to make me forget that I'm using a browser in the first
place, and also to not care about my identity.

~~~
hadrien01
Why not Opera? The new Opera is Chromium with what I think is a better
design[1] that respects your OS[2]. You don't have to sign in to sync, but you
can if you want. It's not open, but they're not an ad company. And finally,
it's said to be faster than Chrome.

[1] I prefer Firefox so I use the FxOpera theme

[2] Well, it tries its best on Linux (unlike Chrome), but it's near perfect on
Windows and Mac OS

~~~
sup
>but they're not an ad company

I got bad news for you

~~~
hadrien01
TIL: [http://operamediaworks.com/](http://operamediaworks.com/)

But still, I don't think they track searches and history like Chrome.

------
nitin_flanker
I want a web browser that let me open multiple accounts of a similar site at
once.

~~~
mod50ack
I've always thought the same. It'd be great to have a browser that allowed
fully independent sessions to be running simulataneously

~~~
jitl
Chrome has this feature with dedicated profiles, and you can accomplish this
in firefox pretty easily using some good extensions.

~~~
mod50ack
Yeah, but that's really a hassle and such a workaround shouldn't be required.

And firefox's extensibility is great as usual, but its bloat and the new UI
and the ads on the tab pages disillusioned me

~~~
gamman
In chrome, you can make a shortcut for a profile by providing a flag
--profile-directory="YourProfileName" It will be created if it doesn't exist
and you can even set it to point to a TEMP folder for throwaways.

------
arh68
POST support from the URL bar. Let me type in POST bodies and edit Content-
Type/User-Agent/etc headers by hand.

Show TLS negotiation in detail by default (which ciphers are supported? which
was selected?).

Let me edit DNS blacklists & whitelists in text. Let me turn off the blacklist
for trusted domains, so they can show ads and make money. Let me disable JS
except for trusted domains.

Render .md/.markdown files directly. Support some extras (GitHub-flavored, for
example).

Store my settings & bookmarks in git repos. Let me snapshot my bookmarks
manually/periodically and see side-by-side diffs.

Perhaps as a large plugin, let me pull up magnet links to fetch & serve
documents over BitTorrent.

------
realharo
When a link is opened in a new tab, that tab should keep the history of the
tab it was opened from.

There used to be a Firefox extension for that, but that now doesn't work
anymore because of changes in Firefox. Chrome closed a feature request for
that with WONTFIX
([https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1639](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1639)).

EDIT: Oh, and also a simple user-friendly way to block autoplay of all audio
and video elements. Maybe a "quiet mode" switch or something like that.

------
pjungwir
I would love to have a bookmarks file that is text, not SQLite, so I can use
rsync or git to keep a master copy on a server and have all my computers share
it.

Same with a passwords file, except make it encrypted with a master key.

~~~
DaveWalk
Are you worried about privacy? Are bookmarks an attack vector of any kind? Or
am I just naturally paranoid about these things?

I've always been wary of who can see my bookmarks, but not for any particular
reason. It kind of reminds me how US libraries are vigilant to shield your
checkout history from government searches.[0]

[0] An ongoing issue in the age of the PATRIOT Act.
[http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000060501](http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000060501)

~~~
pjungwir
Yes, I care about privacy. That's why I want my shared bookmarks to live on my
own server, not on delicious or Google Drive or whatever.

If they are encrypted before they leave the client so much the better. I would
consider that a hard requirement for the passwords, so might as well do it for
the bookmarks too.

------
smasty
Something like the old Opera:

\- Extensive customizability of the interface

\- Proper tab management (tiling, cascade, positioning) and tab stacking

\- Mouse gestures

\- Content blocker baked in

\- RSS reader included

\- Better cookie control

\- Per-site privacy mode

\- low CPU/memory usage - no "one tab per process" \- I want 10s of tabs open
without wasting few GBs of memory

\- fast JS

\- advanced search from address bar - custom search engines with search
suggestions

\- customizable Speed Dial baked in - no extensions needed.

\- Dragonfly instead of DevTools

\- detailed page loading info, not just "Loading example.com..."

I'm hoping to get at least some of these things out of either Vivaldi or Otter
Browser when they're mature enough...

------
kbody
Scalable tab management. Being able to (name) group them without restrictions
and being natively implemented on the browser without separate screens etc.

------
jokoon
An open webpage file format which is not markup. Something of the like of
YAML, or something simpler to read for a human.

Or maybe compiled HTML (like microsoft .CHM), except open (duh).

Reason ? Parsing XML or HTML is very CPU-intensive, and cheap smartphone's
small CPUs (which have a very low L2 cache) have a very hard time dealing with
it, not to mention classic desktop browser memory footprints. If not even
regex can do it, why the hell not ? I'm sure the memory footprint of firefox
and chrome is incompressible because of the raw nature of HTML. And for the
life of me, if nobody can read a HTLM page generated anymore, what's the point
of it ? Why not just compile it ?

I guess I could submit it to the IETF, to be honest. I'm not even a software
engineer so basically I'm not sure if my idea is right or not, but I'll always
find weird that the app-version of websites perform so much better than their
HTML version.

In the internet explorer days, this was not possible because firefox and
chrome were not mainstream, but I'm sure now is a good opportunity. It could
eventually even replace or substitute .DOC and PDF files.

------
leni536
To not make me jump through 7 hoops until I can enter a self-signed https site
and verify its fingerprint. Meanwhile they don't complain about http sites
(which is reasonable), I don't know if they complain if you fill out a form
with a password field on a http site though.

It would be nice if they showed a nice visual fingerprint too, although it's
hard to prove their safety.

------
adrusi
Great question.

\- No tabs, that's the job of the window manager. I get that most window
managers are too underpowered to replicate browser tabs. Stop using those
window managers I guess. Note that this gets you tab isolation for free, since
every "tab" is just a completely different browser process. It hardly wastes
any memory, too, because of dynamic linking.

\- No features. I want to be able to set the url, search, have back/forward
buttons, zoom the text. That's it.

\- Extensible in a Unixy way. Press a key and execute a program with some
hooks to modify the browser.

So far suckless's surf browser fits the bill. I currently use surf with a
patch that lats me search duckduckgo from the dmenu url field.

\- Support for privacy enhancing extensions. NoScript, µBlock, PrivacyBadger,
HTTPS Everywhere, etc. I'm trying to see how these could work as a component
separate the browser and I'm coming up blank on how to present the UI nicely.
Currently I use privoxy for this, but it's subadequate.

~~~
qu4z-2
How is the lack of "memory waste" caused by dynamic linking, if I may ask? I
thought multiple copies of the same binary already shared text whether
dynamically or statically linked?

Also, agreed: surf is lovely, except for the lack of adblock/selective
noscript. And the cookie jar was pretty rudimentary last I checked.

------
iveqy
Skip all those features, just give me speed, a lot of it.

Plugins would be great (I love vimperator) but speed and efficienty is the
real deal here.

~~~
mod50ack
Speed's a difficult thing to achieve, depending on your setup, how many
processes, RAM free, etc

------
craigds
Google Chrome is pretty close. Some extra things I'd like:

* Fully open source, with clear and open licensing.

* Extensions with a permissions system that works at multiple levels of granularity. So I should be able to trust an extension but deny it some specific things (without breaking it.)

* A headless mode, with python/ruby/other bindings, so I can use it as an automation library.

~~~
mod50ack
1\. I totally agree with the open source part. Although I use a closed source
OS often in everyday life (OS X, so at least it's a *nix) I'm a big fan of
Linux (which I use on the side, and way before Windows) although personally I
like the MIT and BSD type licenses over the (L)GPL

2\. Granularity is a great thing to have as well. Extensions could maybe be
broken into multiple sections, so you could have a- Permission to inject into
page 2- permission to access saved passwords c- permission to access local
files etc etc etc, and then you could set its local file root or what sites it
can run in.

3\. A headless browser sounds pretty great but with the nonstandard essence of
web design I wonder how one would use it usefully in automation.

~~~
fortytw2
In answer to 3 - ideally in a way similar to
[http://www.nightmarejs.org/](http://www.nightmarejs.org/), well worth looking
into if you've never played with a headless browser before

~~~
mod50ack
Interesting, I'll be sure to check that one out!

------
jakub_g
Apart from customizability, security and decoupling of UI changes from
API/perf/security fixes:

\- Option to stop all audio/video in all tabs

\- Lazy session restore

\- Reliable "save for offline viewing"

\- Decoupling of "read later" from bookmarks and a separate interface for both

Going wild:

\- Automagic unloading, archiving and clustering of opened tabs, perhaps with
an auto-extraction of TL;DR from long articles

I very often open lots of pages (from HN etc.) but have no time to read them
all at the time of opening. They linger as background tabs until the
background tabs count is so big so I have to close them all and probably never
come back.

Would be cool if the browser was able to somehow unload and archive unused
tabs (to free some memory), and perhaps automatically group them into several
categories: say, "angularjs", "bash", "youtube", "news" etc. and provide a
good interface to return to them later.

However due to sheer amount of links I follow, my problem might be unsolvable
:)

~~~
vdhus
solutions to some of the things mentioned above, that people are happy with
and using?

~~~
jakub_g
For session restore, I use (on desktop) Firefox + Session Manager + BarTab
Lite

"Save for offline" is quite good on Opera for Android

------
noja
1\. A per-website privacy mode. I don't want fb tracking me across all my
private-mode tabs.

2\. A separated out password store where the store prompts me for each
password request and I have to allow it. The store would work with more than
just browser passwords.

3\. Better cookie control: I need no persistent cookies, apart from whatever
Google uses for 2FA.

------
leni536
Make client site certificates easy to use so websites can start to reasonably
offer it as an alternative to password auth.

------
draven
* Speed!

* Something other than javascript as a compilation target when using something else for those of us allergic to JS (scalajs.) I've only looked at it briefly but WebAssembly looks like a good candidate for this

* Less feature bloat, remove as many features as possible from the browser core and leave any non essential feature to plugins.

------
ivank
Basically just Chrome with Tree Style Tab, a ctrl-tab that does LRU tab
switching, and an option to delay tab loading on startup until the tab is
clicked.

I'd also like the browser to ensure that websites can't read my identity when
I'm browsing in an unrelated tab. Something like a variant of RequestPolicy.

------
cessor
A content filter plugin, that allows me to block content semantically. Every
year I feel the net gets swamped by certain events which affects my browsing
experience. Halloween and the Superbowl are fairly regular, or the football
world championship. People on facebook, imgur, twitter or 9gag and so on then
just can't shut up about it. I would like to take notice of a new image of
Pluto and then click "seen" and have the similar pictures blocked on imgur,
twitter and news sites.

I would like to have this as a browser feature that I can control and easily
change, rather than just a plugin. Adblock Plus would be a similar idea but I
wish I could automatically teach it to block even more.

------
gregoire
Full text history search.

~~~
mod50ack
Through caching pages? Fetching on the fly?

~~~
gregoire
Caching might be the best way to do it.

------
thelastguy
Vertical Tree Style Tabs (aka, Hierarchical Tabs) where opening a new Tab will
make it a child tab of the original Tab.

Virtualized Tabs that unloads completely when it is no longer visible on the
Tab Bar to save memory and CPU processing.

NoScript built in.

Ability to write Extension in any Language, aka, the Extension API is
exposable to all Languages.

Tabs opened in the background should not start playing Flash automatically.
Only once the Tab is selected, does Flash play, and continue to play in the
background after moving to another Tab. Should be able to right click on the
Tab and Allow Flash to Continue Playing in the Background.

Most importantly is speed and low CPU usage (running a hundred Javascripts per
webpage literally kills speed).

~~~
kalmi10
Virtal tabs that save/restore their _state_ to/from _disk_.

------
yellowapple
My ideal web browser wouldn't be a browser at all, but instead a bunch of "do
one thing and do it well" components that I can piece together to do things
and swap in/out as necessary. I'd like to be able to swap rendering engines,
Javascript interpreters, UI components, plugins, extensions, etc. in and out
with maximum modularity and flexibility.

I'd also love for there to be a Unix-ish interface for browser
plugins/extensions that isn't dependent on a specific language (or, if it is,
for that language to be something C-compatible for maximum FFI compatibility).
The more I can do without touching a single line of JS, the better.

------
DanBC
MOBILE: when I zoom a page the browser should treat this the same as if I
change the window size on a desktop browser, and reflow the text. Mobile
browsing is a really lousy horrible experience because there are some
conflicting philosophies.

~~~
mod50ack
That should be an option. For example in my experience that kind of thing
would be devastating to me

------
Aardwolf
-Easier text selection on e.g. websites where all the text is links or weirdly placed dives, basically a mode where anything that's text or looks like text can be selected and copied as plain text. And somehow don't surprisingly select all text of the website just because you started dragging from the right side of some sentence.

-Less continuous disk usage for caching and stuff, batch all disk writes together every now and then or so

-Something to block the new type of popup, the type that brings some thing to the foreground and shades the background

-Something to block all the annoying European cookie warnings, I don't need them, I already know websites use cookies

------
espadrine
Improving bookmarks to:

\- Search through them better (by indexing their content and subject,
autolabeling while allowing custom labels). (As a side-note, star-searching in
Firefox is an undiscoverable feature; the new tab page should offer a way to
do that.)

\- Give a visual organization à la Desktop / iOS app layout. Currently, the
new tab page gives the six most common sites, which subconsciously forces me
to forget about the seventh most common site I visit.

\- Give a neat access to offline webapps. Right now, going to one is
inconvenient.

Most of all, include tab freezing by default (to remove the memory, stop the
JS, etc. without having to close the tab)

------
z92
More light weight. Less memory consumption, less processor usage and faster.
As far as it can go.

Firefox was built on that ideology. Until it became the same monster that it
was supposed to replace. The same thing is happening to chrome.

~~~
vardump
Less memory consumption is often at odds with less processor usage. For
example, a browser can consume a lot less memory if it doesn't cache decoded
images, etc. But then the engine needs to decode same images over and over
again.

------
awalGarg
My ideal web browser should be able to identify if a page really needs
JavaScript enabled or not, and disables it if all the page does with
JavaScript is load Facebook/Google/Twitter's iframes, advertisements, shows
animations and popups etc. which have nothing to do with the content. Disables
all autoplaying content, doesn't load images like large banners and footers
automatically.

Kinda like switching to that "Reader mode" of Firefox automatically based on
some AI.

------
mbrock
Usable keyboard navigation based on relevant elements.

Textareas that don't suck.

------
Myrmornis
I'd like a strong "project" concept: a project could be a set of multi-tab
windows, there'd be fast switching between projects and fast tab selection
based on projects. Most computers nowadays have a lot of RAM and people use
lots of tabs. It seems wrong that one resorts to public browser extensions to
find ways to navigate through the tabs.

Possibly also tree-like relationships between tabs so that subtrees of tabs
can be operated on as a unit.

~~~
superskierpat
Doesnt Vivaldi allow groupimg of tabs under one group? I guess they also give
you shortcuts to navigate more easily in that subset.

------
korginator
Speed.

Very lightweight, low CPU usage.

Extensible, easy to write addons.

Keyboard shortcuts, single-key shortcuts for everything.

A good bookmark manager.

Customisable till the very end, through a simple to understand menu instead of
the about:config way.

Minimal, no mail or RSS client, just the vanilla browser.

Superb in-memory caching for instant page navigation.

In fact, the old Opera had nearly all these features before they went and
messed it all up, making it a chrome clone in a different skin. I was a paid
user since the 2.x days.

------
profstyle
should be simple and easy to navigate, understand what i might do.

Even if i open many tabs shouldnt freeze or crash, Thats one of the most
important thing i care about, Mostly firefox does that, keeps crashing if you
open many tabs.

Would be great if allows to sync with mobile, like if i enjoy a website and
display right away on my mobile, instead of using extension it should the out
of the box. We are living on a mobile world now.

------
DanBC
Better bookmarking.

~~~
mod50ack
How so?

~~~
DanBC
I book mark often. Unless you have rigid discipline your bookmarks will end up
as a huge confusing list. Current bookmark managers feel like an afterthough.
<tinfoil>Google don't want you to use bookmarks. They want you to search so
they can mine data and serve ads</tinfoil>.

I'd pay money for a book mark manager that could organise my list of about
2,000 bookmarks. That software could have a "bulk bookmark import" feature so
that users can share some set of bookmarks. "Here is my list of best pages
about $ANIME_SERIES".

A bookmark manager that looked a bit like Pinterest, and that has options to
locally save some content, is something I'd pay money for.

~~~
panic
It's hard for large browsers to improve bookmarks because people use them in
such varied ways. Changing bookmarks to work more like Pinterest may work well
for you, but it may completely break someone else's workflow.

One solution would be to let you install third-party bookmark managers which
would replace the built-in bookmark UI. That seems even more ripe for abuse
than features like custom toolbars, though, which are already heavily abused
in current browsers.

------
kitsunesoba
• Native UI toolkit used for window chrome (toolbar, etc) - no HTML/XUL/etc,
it's gotta be real

• Good OS integration

• Prioritization of power efficiency over performance

• Built in request-based ad blocking like that found in iOS 9/El Capitan
Safari

• Tabs in a list on the side of the window

• Per tab processes

• In-browser video playback handled by embedded mpv

• General focus on being a vehicle for viewing websites rather than trying to
be an application platform

------
pieter_mj
Security and privacy would be my main concerns.

\- full libre gpl3'ed codebase including plugins and extensions.

\- immediate disclosure of all security problems (in the hope they get fixed
promptly). the socalled "responsible" delayed disclosures annoy me to no end.
let every exploit be a 0day exploit and leave it to the user to decide, at
least it'll be an informed user!

------
benbenolson
Firefox with Vimperator. It loads pages quickly, I view them, and I can
navigate them without touching the mouse. Perfection.

------
rasz_pl
Ideal web browser was here already, Opera between ~8 and 12 had everything
from technical and user experience point of view. I could configure almost
every option globally _and_ on top of that change behaviour per page. I could
do whatever I wanted with UI. I was in the driver seat at all times.

That browser is dead now :(

------
qcoh
Should work on an Atom 270 netbook without lagging. Currently I have to use
either dillo or Opera 12.something.

~~~
i336_
Try NetSurf, if you haven't already. It's not perfect but it's a bit faster
than Dillo is. (The build process feels a little wobbly to get used to but it
honestly takes 3-5 minutes to build.)

I used Dillo between 209 and 2012 on an old 800MHz AMD box. It was really
nice... being able to resume from hibernation, have 800 tabs open, and have a
hyper-responsive machine. :D

------
kentbrew
Browser extensions on mobile devices.

------
itsuart
From top of my head.

Fork of Chromium without:

\- all Google things

\- Non-browser things like accounts and pdf viewers.

With:

\- attempt https if protocol is not provided

\- blocking all js unless whitelisted

\- blocking all requests to 3rd party domains unless whitelisted

\- blocking all attempts to hijack right mouse clicks

\- blocking all redirect attempts unless whitelisted

\- destruction of all cookies/web storage on start/close unless whitelisted

etc.

------
varlock
My 2c:

\- It must be ultra lightweight: fast when starting up, fast when handling
load of tabs, just fast.

\- Doing _one single thing_ exceptionally well: enable the user to browse.
Built-in modularity means add-ons/plug-ins/etc can optionally be added to
expand the browser capabilities.

~~~
lhecker
If I could I would upvote this twice.

So yeah: IMO a browser really should be just the browser with a good Addon-On
API. That's why I would add a third point to your list:

\- The Browser Team should provide (optional) Core-Plugins which are easy to
install and in turn provide basic but useful features. For instance those
mentioned in other comments here (e.g. uBlock, MAFF-Support, Mouse-Gestures,
...)

------
makeitsuckless
Yes, customizability and security (including privacy) are my top concerns.

Which is why I first and foremost want my ideal browser to not be owned or
beholden to a major corporation that will abuse it for it's own purposes, like
Google, Apple or Microsoft.

------
homakov
The fast way to handle 20-200 tabs. Something like built in tab search, with
tab caching.

~~~
scholia
Firefox does something like that. If you start typing the name of the site you
want, it will find the tab you already have open and give you a "switch to
this tab" option.

It's how I survived with 600+ tabs in Firefox ;-)

------
mod50ack
Also, I feel like inspiration from the early web browsers should be taken. Tim
Berners-Lee's book "Weaving the Web" fascinated me and I think that we can
learn from both the current and the oldest designs of browsers.

------
bakabaka9
I'd like its source code to be extremely hackable and easy to understand /
build / debug, quite unlike Mozilla's present day codebase (which I personally
find very hard to figure out).

------
UserRights
Long term cookie saving only with opt-in by default - Firefox still will give
every user the google cookie by default, handing millions of users out to
google tracking.

Make device fingerprinting impossible.

------
OnleMeMeMe
Bookmark sidebar as in Firefox (the thing I miss most in Chrome)

------
adav
A browser that knows and can retrieve quickly what information from the web I
want, or likely require, at that point in time and without any expressed
guidance from myself.

------
milkers
I want my browser to work like an IDE.

Tabbing should be separated according to the context.

Bookmarking should be improved.

Instead of a plain web browser the program should work as a knowledge
access/management system.

------
soyiuz
Pretty much this:
[https://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/](https://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/)

------
jhildings
A browser without all this new stupid checks of "malware sites", HTTPS
complaining and so on. I want to use it as a program, not as an secure
antivirus tool

------
asgard1024
I would like an ability to snapshot save the web page, with all the
dynamically loaded stuff (content, JS, Flash..). Just like some emulator
systems have.

------
cm2187
Control over who can run code on my machine. Have a block third party
javascript option like we have a block third party cookies.

~~~
TheCoreh
Sadly this would break a lot of websites and apps, since a lot of scripts are
served from the Google (and other) CDNs these days. A whitelist of sorts could
help though.

~~~
cm2187
The problem with a whitelist is that tracking and malicious websites would
just move their scripts to these CDNs.

It would certainly break compatibility with some websites, but so did removing
flash or silverlight support, or introducing popup blockers before that. And
with http2, scripts hosted on third party CDN are bound to disappear.

------
swah
Chrome is fine - its the best desktop app I use. It could use fewer resources,
though. Also I don't know what are the apps.

------
crististm
\- instant loading; think firefox/firebird 0.9

\- pet-peeve: "disable JS" ON by default (option now buried in the guts of
Firefox)

------
tiatia
UZBL Browser... [http://www.uzbl.org/](http://www.uzbl.org/)

------
noibl
A compiled cache of common javascript libraries.

Benefits: speed, privacy (less interaction with CDNs).

------
kalmi10
A minimal browser (like surf/uzbl) with Chrome-like security sandboxing.

------
tikums
\- Tab sandboxing

\- No phoning home

\- In-built privacy protection

------
bandrami
Annotation, curation, and archiving. Ideally in a console interface.

------
arvind_k
no ads in any form

~~~
mod50ack
I agree, the browser shouldn't contain ads, but an adblocker is also a
basically essential extension that many of us use.

Myself included.

It's basically impossible not to these days.

~~~
craigds
Nowadays I refuse to fix anyone's computer without installing ad blockers in
all installed browsers.

I'd consider it professionally irresonsible to let a non-technical user loose
on the web without a good ad blocker. It's just too dangerous out there.

------
agounaris
I would love to see chrome using less battery!!

------
renke1
Spatial navigation like in the good old Opera.

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kazinator
Each tab in its own address space (process).

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hoodoof
Compatibility with others browsers code.

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mgkimsal
Upload progress bar w/API.

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systemz
Lack of integrated services

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dang
Speed.

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i336_
I've wondered about where UI and UX is going for a few years now. I think it's
one of those areas where, if it weren't for the fact that corporate
involvement would categorically be too politically incorrect, good (GOOD)
ground-up UI/UX is a completely un-tapped field.

A few months ago I was thinking about the old MinWin improvements (to Windows'
basic core services), how Windows 8.1/10 are (arguably) smaller and lighter
than Vista, etc... and it clicked: Microsoft have realized they're no longer
the "hardware industry killer app," if you will, and have moved out of the
way... to let the Web take its place.

In my opinion, Web browsers are basically mind-bogglingly complex rube
goldberg machines, based on conflicting standards that are also rube goldberg
machines, and the whole scene is basically meta-rube-goldberg-ception.

A lot of the complexity and conflict is mostly due to the history and
tradition behind the technologies we're using: on the one hand, all you want
is arbitrary sandboxed code execution and sane UI; on the other hand, sites
start delivering content exclusively via JS and everyone gets mad. And in the
meantime, who audits their web browsers? What was that about "safe" code
execution, where the browser protects you from "nasty" code? We hear about
_the browsers themselves_ doing the wrong thing by users almost every week.

We need to fight this. I've come to the conclusion that the only way this can
be done is to simply _make the effort and do the hard graft to port a bunch of
existing applications to a new coherent, practical modality /paradigm_, dump
the whole thing on an unsuspecting world, and wait to see what happens next.
It might catch on. It might not. Get feedback, try again. Keep trying until it
goes viral enough to make a dent and improve people's lives.

There are so many interesting and fascinating UI experiments out there, but
nobody seems to want to commit to actually practically trying out a few of
them in real applications :( and I think that's what's holding everything back
- everyone's waiting for everyone else to make the first move.

Here's where I'd start: everything should be able to send messages to
everything else, to work around the language problem; everything should be an
object with arbitrarily settable properties - everything from the files in the
filesystem to the windows on the screen; with the appropriate security context
surrounding everything, you could do crazy things like programmatically share
the tags you attach to the files you share over P2P, or tag images with text
descriptions of their contents; the console should be inherently textual but
in such a way that it is exclusively touch-gesture-drivable; I strongly
believe in the anti-mac/post-mac UX paradigm; I believe that it's impossible
to create the "ultimate" solution that will work for everyone, and that all I
can ever hope to do is nudge everything in what _I_ think is a good general
direction. And the only sane way to release an implementation like this is to
put it into the public domain.

Agh, this probably reads like a rant, and I guess it is. I'm just not sure
where to start, although I do have some ideas. Incidentally, I frequently use
"asmqb7" on the web, including for my Gmail account.

