

First release of gngr web browser - digen
https://blog.gngr.info/v000.html

======
mrweasel
Maybe I'm not getting the point of this, but wouldn't it be easier and better
to fork Firefox or Chrome and strip them down.

If you configure Firefox to run in private browsing mode permanently and
remove all the Google and Mozilla services aren't you pretty much there? Maybe
add something random to the user agent to throw off sites using fingerprinting

~~~
hamai
Sure it would, but isn't diversity a good thing too? Specially if you consider
long term scenarios.

~~~
imaginenore
Developing a browser from scratch is a pretty damn hard task. Keeping it safe
and up to date is nearly impossible for a small team without funding.

In the case of gngr, it can't even render Reddit or Google.com correctly. Can
you imagine how badly it breaks on more complex sites? Can you imagine how
broken its core is?

Diversity is good, but it requires resources, lots of them.

~~~
mbrubeck
As a member of the Servo team, I think the gngr team deserves congratulations
on how far they've come. For perspective, Servo only recently (in the last
month or so) became usable for browsing Hacker News (though this is largely
because we chose a different set of things to implement first). Also, I think
it's good for a variety of reasons to have some simpler implementations
around, and not just the giant, crufty, heavily-optimized beasts like Gecko
and WebKit.

Compatibility is a slog, but it's a doable one. Remember, to be usable on a
lot of real-world sites you don't need to catch up with Firefox Nightly or
Chrome Canary - you only need to catch up with IE6, or maybe IE8.

Of course, I'm also disappointed that they didn't choose to build their
browser on Servo instead. ;)

------
hbbio
Big goal.

Little details. Especially, the page doesn't even mention it's a fork of the
Lobo project, [http://lobobrowser.org](http://lobobrowser.org) which was
halted a few years ago. Most of the implementation started before the focus on
privacy (even not specifically to this project, mostly as a trend) and all
commits in the GH repo seem related to the README.

~~~
hrjet
Yup, the credits page is not linked well (yet):
[https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html](https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html)

The complete set of commits, spanning almost an year, from lobo code to the
present gngr code is in this repo:
[https://github.com/UprootLabs/gngrPreHistoric](https://github.com/UprootLabs/gngrPreHistoric)

------
hrjet
Lead of the project here; answering some of the common points raised so far:

Yes, it is based on the Lobo browser. You can find a complete list of credits
here: [https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html](https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html)
(The website isn't hyper-linked well, yet.)

A little background about our goals and motivations:
[https://gngr.info/doc/introduction.html](https://gngr.info/doc/introduction.html)

------
swombat
Well, let's not be harsh before these guys even have a chance to get off the
ground!

Nice idea. Very competitive space, hard to make a dent. Good luck, see you in
a year or two!

------
SchizoDuckie
\- Focussed on privacy, how?

\- So, it's a browser, got some screenshots? What's the ACID test score?

\- What rendering engine does it run on?

\- Privacy, but no https?

\- It's an evolution of the Lobo project apparently?

~~~
xg15
There are screenshots and some more information on their main site,
[https://gngr.info](https://gngr.info) . Their approach so far seems to
consist mostly of a process isolation architecture though. And a belief that
Java is more readable that C.

~~~
hrjet
Thanks for clarifying, but a correction:

> process isolation architecture

At the moment, it is module isolation rather than process isolation. It
leverages the Security System of the Java Runtime.

Process isolation would help too but that's not on our immediate roadmap for
lack of resources.

------
colinramsay
Interesting. The project page says that it "champions privacy" but I can't
really see any details on _how_ they plan to do that. There don't really seem
to be any privacy-specific features mentioned.

A very brief look at the source code turns up mention of lobobrowser, a Java
project that seems to have stalled about 5 years ago...

[http://lobobrowser.org/](http://lobobrowser.org/)

------
calcol
I'm kind of confused by the notion that Javascript execution times and CSS3
animations aren't part of the core functionality. I'm assuming they're not
going to build their own JS JIT compiler and use v8 or spidermonkey. And while
I don't see the necessity of animations, there's no reason to not put CSS3 as
part of the core considering that every current major web browser basically
supports its current form.

I do understand that the purpose of this browser is to be privacy-first, but
what we _don 't_ need is a new browser that's just like IE6 in terms of bad
web practices but with better privacy settings.

~~~
_delirium
They use a fork of Mozilla's Rhino JS engine, according to
[https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html](https://gngr.info/doc/credits.html)

------
debacle
Is it pronounced "Gengar?"

Always happy to see a new browser enter the fold. How is development funded
right now?

~~~
hrjet
It is pronounced "ginger", the spice.

Currently, the development is sponsored by a for-profit company, and we plan
to accept financial contributions to the project soon. We realize that backing
by a for-profit company may not be perceived well for a project of this sort,
but we believe that's currently our best option; it allows us to sustain the
project through multiple avenues of income. Eventually, we would like to spawn
it off as a non-profit when we have the bandwidth and the critical-mass.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
I read it as Gungur for some reason. Not the best name if you want people to
recommend it to each other by word of mouth.

~~~
mhd
I read it as 'Grignr', which would be an even worse reference when it came to
a security-minded application.

------
imjacobclark
The fact that this is written in Java knocks it noteworthiness down tenfold.

~~~
feld
Write once debug everywhere.

I just can't take java software seriously these days. Sorry. It's not you,
it's me.

~~~
feld
Would love those downvoting me to respond with a piece of java software they
can't live without. I have zero. At my previous employer java software was
banned. We did not lose any productivity or features.

I just searched through the FreeBSD ports tree's list of java software and I
can't find any that I would ever need.

I can, however, say my experience with java software in the last 15 years has
consistently been negative. Every vendor provided software product that was
java based has been especially painful. A recent example: I'm looking at you,
Ubiquiti. (Who also uses MongoDB which requires manual intervention for
crashed databases -- unacceptable to not be using an ACID database)

~~~
slinkyavenger
I've seen tons of horrible Java apps/applets over the years, but I've also
seen tons of horrible C/C++/C#/Delphi/VB/Python/Ruby/PHP apps too.

Java is just more noticeable. It's the new client-side business app platform,
and there are a ton of UI toolkits that scream "This is a Java app!"

But on the other side of the token, some of the best software I've used has
been written in Java. Tons of Android apps, along with all the JetBrains IDEs
(I love PyCharm), and Mirth Connect - software for processing HL7 that one of
my company's products relies on heavily.

