
Show HN: Task-Based Electron Web Browser - ahakki
http://alloy.simoncaminada.ch
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pfraze
Clever UI concept. I'd like to have it as a chrome/ff extension, because I
don't want to change my browser. Looks nice, though.

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gkya
Firefox already has the tabgroups feature.

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kragniz
Hasn't tab groups been removed in the most recent release of firefox?

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jamessb
Yes, but the functionality is still available as an Add-On:
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-
removal](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal)

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gkya
From the linked page:

> The Tab Groups (Panorama) feature will be removed from Firefox in version
> 45. We know this may be inconvenient and we apologize. Removing the Tab
> Groups feature will make it easier for us to improve Firefox.

This is plain stupid. How much effort could it be to maintain this feature?
Compared to Hello, or Rust, or Servo? None of these are useful to most Firefox
users, but tab groups were. How more complex is this than the WebMaker or
Persona, stuff that practically no-one uses? Is this harder that writing their
current homepage, with blocks, pictures and fancy? I'm not touching a Mozilla
product again.

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axit
As mentioned in the above link you can still use it as an add-on, works just
like before: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-
pa...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/)

Personally, I love tab groups but I can see most normal users not using it.

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osrec
Really like the concept; I do something similar with a tab groups extension.
Would be great if we could store little snippets of text/images within each
task, and perhaps sync with a note taking app like Google Keep. What
underlying rendering engine do you use?

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ConAntonakos
Is this open sourced?

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bx_
Really love the UI and simplicity of adding tasks/task groups, but this app is
(for some reason) a beast on my battery life. I sent you an email about this
as well, but it was using well over what I had anticipated. From the OS X
10.11.4 Activity Monitor:

    
    
        Alloy
        Energy Impact: 651.4
        Avg Energy Impact: 24.6
    

This is compared to Google Chrome, which, with 15 tabs open, has an impact of
11.2. When I looked into it, the energy impact of Alloy is near that one would
expect on a stress test (ex: [http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/use-activity-
monitor-energy-tab-...](http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/use-activity-monitor-
energy-tab-os-x-mavericks)).

Any ideas what would be causing this much energy consumption?

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sdegutis
Interesting, but a full-featured browser (like Chrome) brings a lot more than
UI and a renderer to the table. There's other features (security stuff,
developer tools, etc.) that it would need.

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TranquilMarmot
I don't think the use-case for this is as a web development tool; I see it
more as a way of keeping sets of things that have been looked up grouped
together. I.e. fixing a bug could be a task and you could have three related
stack overflow questions open, researching a new language could be a task with
a few different examples open, figuring out what to do for dinner could be a
task, with restaurants, recipes, etc. all open in tabs.

I guess, I would use it for anything specifically _not_ requiring security or
dev tools.

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jarek-foksa
Security-wise, it's a rather bad idea to build a web browser on top of the
Atom Electron framework at the moment [1], at least unless you are willing to
fork or contribute patches to Electron each time when a new Chrome version
with security fixes is released.

[1]
[https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/5210](https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/5210)

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jamesrcole
Sounds interesting.

As an aside, I've long thought that having support for tasks as a central
feature of the UI at the operating-system level could be a useful design.

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greggman
I don't know how Electron is engineered other than that it's based on
Chromium.

I know that Atom which runs in Electron has access to all your files where as
Chromium does not. Does Alloy have the same security as Chromium or is it
running on Electron's (I'm a native app so my JavaScript can access your
entire system) level of security?

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adamrezich
This is exactly how I use Chrome today, using Chrome windows as a tab grouping
mechanism ("social", "personal project A", "personal project B", "work",
etc.). I prefer your UI much more :)

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ScottAS
I would love a fully functioning version of this. However, it didn't load the
first web page I tried (www.tradingview.com).

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garrettr_
Key feature for me would be the ability to switch/manipulate tasks through the
keyboard only. Nice PoC!

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mitchtbaum
Why Tabs Must Die: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must-
die](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must-die)

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frik
The articles talks about "client side tabs". Opera 4-5 (?) implemented tabs
based on MDI. That was the gold standard and most versatile tab
implementation. You could resize child windows and arrange them so that
multiple child windows were visible in the main window while still the tab-bar
was useable. (examples: older Opera and older Dreamweaver had MDI and a tab-
bar)

Sadly, Microsoft never updated the MDI functionality (eg auto arranging child
windows, snapping child windows to a side, icon mode, etc). MDI used to be so
great in Win3x and got broken in Win95. The icon mode isn't implemented in
Win95 (and later) nor has Microsoft added a native tab-bar based on MDI child
windows. On the other side Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel (at
least in v2010) still are MDI based programs which all the legacy downsides
that confuse users (who never heard about those partly hidden UI concepts).

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jti107
very cool...only thing i miss is the predictive search that is in chrome

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adeel4
Very cool. Will try it out.

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fiatjaf
Very nice idea.

