Min – A smarter web browser

[cocktailpeanuts]

I think the main reason people are hating on this is because it's selling itself as something it's not: A smarter browser.

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

[bananicorn]

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

https://surf.suckless.org/

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

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

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

edit: corrected my wording in the first sentence.

[la_oveja]

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

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

[pls2halp]

A. FUCKING. ELECTRON. BROWSER. ಠ_ಠ

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

[cyberferret]

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

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

[dangoor]

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

[darklajid]

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

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

[Gaelan]

Pure speculation, but I bet it's a combination of:

* Lack of a windows machine to test on

* Forgetting to update the site when a Windows build became available.

[icebraining]

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

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

[Kesty]

Electron main selling point is being cross platform.

Having it only Ubuntu/macOS seems counter-intuitive.

[earenndil]

> Find anything instantly

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

> Effortless tab management

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

> Built-in ad blocking

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

> Fast and efficient

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

> Open-Source software

Like most other browsers today

[nkkollaw]

So..?

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

[SwellJoe]

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

[dang]

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

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

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

Edit: I started calling this the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[pvdebbe]

Isn't it great, though, that we hold FLOSS projects to the same standards as the big-bucks closed software?

[Traubenfuchs]

It doesn't add any value, compared to Chrome and does a very bad job at selling itself.

Find anything instantly -> Chrome does this already.

Effortless tab management -> Someone's favorite plugin gone native, I don't need or want this. Does CERTAINLY not belong in a raw browser.

Built-in ad blocking -> A very little bit useful. Does not belong in a raw browser though.

Fast and efficient -> Dubious claim. How did you measure it?

Open-Source software -> I don't care.

[sadgit]

It seems like this comment is a little understated. Maybe the commenter could think more about how to catch the attention if the persons he/she wishes to target. /s

[minaguib]

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

[jdavis703]

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

[another35]

> and get suggestions before you even start typing

I really don't want that!

[Kesty]

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

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

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

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

[arm]

Honestly, I’d say qutebrowser¹ is both smarter and more minimal than Min.

――――――

¹ — https://qutebrowser.org/

[blux]

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

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

[jijji]

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

[AstralStorm]

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

[bobosha]

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

[_Codemonkeyism]

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

[earenndil]

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

[herewegoagain]

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

[beojan]

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

[pikzel]

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

[mrmondo]

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

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

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

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

[userbinator]

and is so flat that it doesn't offer any directional hinting at all.

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

[rqs]

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

Part of that is because of Electron.

From the day Electron was released, I knew somebody will build a Web Browser upon it. Now that day finally came, again. LOL

[andriesm]

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

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

[asteinbr]

Electron.. thanks for nothing.

[colept]

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

[cryo]

I instantly like the clean distraction free look.

That's Min.

[davidp670]

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