Refresh: concept for a new kind of web browser

by davidbarker • 8 years ago

575 146 8 years ago

vxNsr• 8 years ago

Looks really cool. I wish there were more of these types of fully fleshed out design thesis. A couple years ago someone did one on Windows 8 and it had an outsized effect on the development of windows 10, someone had a similar idea for office, but I don't know how much of an effect it had. either way it was fun to read and look over.

hello_asdf• 8 years ago

Wow, looks great, good job. I really wish this was available.

asdfasdfdavid• 8 years ago

Yeah, I so want this. Funny how these features take so long to arrive then seems obvious afterwards.

evo_9• 8 years ago

Pretty nice. I use a Safari add-in called Sessions to create sets of browser tabs I can recall later. Super handy when you are researching something new or just want to persevere your current multi-tab browsing session for later.

https://sessions-extension.github.io/Sessions/

Moter8• 8 years ago

Unfortunately:

Sessions will not install on Safari 12 or later, as Apple has officially deprecated Safari Extensions.

protomyth• 8 years ago

Which is being replaced by Safari App Extension Platform. Did I read it correctly that App Extensions can only be downloaded from the Mac App Store?

saagarjha• 8 years ago

Safari Extensions from the Safari Extension Gallery still work, but standalone ones don't.

Rjevski2• 8 years ago

Disappointing that a website about making the web better still wants to track me with cookies for god knows what reason (also non-GDPR compliant despite them being based in Germany).

elliottcarlson• 8 years ago

They clearly state that they use cookies for analytics. They are not collecting PII. Their Google Analytics implementation uses `anonymizeIp`.

Rjevski2• 8 years ago

I would not trust a company whose bottom line is proportional to how much personal data they collect to just honour an "anonymise" argument.

Not to mention, analytics still wouldn't require a cookie unless they want to know which other sites I visited, which is none of their business.

HaHa31• 8 years ago

Nice idea, I have definitely felt that the browser market space has become to stagnant and bland. I am surprised you are using cookies for what mostly seems to be a product outline.

spython6• 8 years ago

Glad to see the concept of work spaces realized quite thoroughly - I wrote about the need for such an approach before: https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/

I am intrigued, though, how well the browsing history concept scales up to dozens of tabs. In my experience, I only use the newest tab on mobile, while the other open tabs become some kind of living bookmarks.

juliussohn3• 8 years ago

Your article has a place in our reading list ;) https://refresh.study/reading-list

spython6• 8 years ago

Oh wow, awesome! Glad my text was, in part, a source of inspiration :)

erikpukinskis• 8 years ago

This is correct. Browsers need to become “spacers”.

The spaces need to be publishable and moderateable and multiuser and all the other things we expect for web objects though.

Nice progress made on this project.

workona4• 8 years ago

You should check out Workona's workspaces. We've built some of what you've mentioned as a Chrome extension backed by a web app.

Our workspaces (persistent windows with names) remember your tabs automatically, are multiuser/collaborative, and even have a URL (like any good web object). You can also access your workspaces on multiple computers, so you can start a project at work and finish it at home.

We're officially launching out of beta next month, but you can sign up now if you're interested:

https://workona.com

kodablah4• 8 years ago

Somewhat coincidentally, I also used the term workspaces for a similar approach [0], and "bubbles" for what FF calls containers [1].

0 - https://cretz.github.io/doogie/guide/page-tree#workspaces 1 - https://cretz.github.io/doogie/guide/bubble

spython6• 8 years ago

I kind of like your project just for the simple goal of not hiding complexity. As it is through hiding complexity that we get products whose minds we can not read.

As your approach is "Browser as IDE", have you thought of.. actually putting tabs next to tabs, inside of the main window?

Like Jupyter Notebook, but for websites?

After all, we all mostly do research and there is an action that springs out of our browsing activity. If that action is 'writing stuff down', why not do it directly in the browser?

niutech3• 8 years ago

There is Panorama View for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view... and Spaces for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spaces/cenkmofngpo...

PurpleRamen• 8 years ago

Looks like Tab Groups or Tab Trees, just 10 Years later.

superkuh2• 8 years ago

That's exactly what I thought until I saw the proposed timeline mechanism for exploring session history. That feature looks very useful.

sigi45• 8 years ago

It looked entreating but i still can't come up with a use case; I'm very very rarely browse through my history. I only search for a specific item

boramalper2• 8 years ago

This looks really nice, kudos! Here are my few (hopefully constructive) comments:

- The website looks great but quite heavy:

  29 requests, 17.66 MB transferred, Finish: 40.09 s

  Maybe see if you can re-encode `history-device.mp4` and `spaces-device.mp4` since they constitute the 78% of the traffic. =)

- I liked all the features you've introduced, but loved the way you've designed them!

- Kudos for getting the tagging right! Many developers expect users to tag their content, and tags were the next-big-thing at some point where there were tag-based file systems[0], photo and video galleries that expected you to tag each of your photos, and so on; but what really worked was automating the process of tagging! Everyone can agree that Google or Apple Photos are miles ahead of digiKam or Picasa when it comes to finding what you are looking for. I am glad that you didn't delegate that responsibility to the user.

- I think you should've put it on the AppStore first before sharing it; I would download it right away right now, as with many other people, but how many of us would remember Refresh a month later?

- I'd love to have branching history as well: so I have a tab and it has a linear history through which I can either go "forward" or "backward". Now, if I move backward in history, and click on a different link in that page, the history should branch at that point so that I won't loose the track of my previous "forward" pages when I click on a link in a previous page.

- Maybe not as satisfying, but I'd also consider developing add-ons for Chrome and Mozilla; some people would be reluctant to change their browser, but they'd be more comfortable adding exciting add-ons on a reliable browser.

All the best!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagsistant

skrebbel• 8 years ago

I think you should've put it on the AppStore first before sharing it

It's not a browser. It's a browser design. (plus a bunch of not-really-functional prototypes).

I hope it becomes reality but so far this is basically the The William[0] of browsers. The William also never happened even though we all really wanted it to.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wBe3SDCcz8

TeMPOraL3• 8 years ago

Holy hell! Never seen that before, and I very much want it now. Do you know why it didn't happen?

boramalper2• 8 years ago

It's not a browser. It's a browser design. (plus a bunch of not-really-functional prototypes).

Oh, sorry!

micheljansen2• 8 years ago

Actually a lot of the ideas of The William are in real products now. Touch screens and timers are common nowadays and there are stoves that automatically reduce power before anything can boil and spill over.

Even the flexible zones are showing up in real products now (albeit with a lower resolution): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwljz2R0Z_M&t=54s

spython6• 8 years ago

The William is actually quite problematic from the UX point of view, most notably:

- There's a disconnect in space between the space being heated, the diagram of the heating patterns, and the heat control diagram. So you have three points of attention instead of, ideally, one, and traditionally, two.

- The whole interface has no undo. If I remove a heating space, reset clock, recalibrate weight, there is no going back.

- Removal of cookware deletes all associated data and programming.

- Touch interfaces while cooking are horrible and I hope they will never win.

Though, of course, the concept is from 2010 and the idea to add programmable heat curves (or, ideally, IFTTT of cooking) is a nice one.

detritus• 8 years ago

The nerd in me appreciates the concept underpinning the numerous wee smart inductive heat zones, but as someone who prefers to cook with gas, the entire thing seems utterly misguided to me.

jraph• 8 years ago

I'd love to have branching history as well: so I have a tab and it has a linear history through which I can either go "forward" or "backward". Now, if I move backward in history, and click on a different link in that page, the history should branch at that point so that I won't loose the track of my previous "forward" pages when I click on a link in a previous page.

Implemented in Netsurf, with a nice history tree with screenshots :-)

I'd really like to see this in mainstream browsers.

seandougall• 8 years ago

Would be a real nice concept for the undo stack as well, UI challenges aside.

niutech3• 8 years ago

There is an extension for Chrome called Visual History: https://joelgustafson.com/projects/visual-history/

or Histree: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/histree/lngppkkhji...

or Tree History: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-history/kfgne...

or Brancher: https://brancher.io/

bytematic• 8 years ago

Great design and media, got me interested!

arikr• 8 years ago

I hope they build this!

Making web browser software can be very profitable if you get a large userbase. Mozilla had $520 million of revenue in 2016!

More browser innovation would be great, considering how many human hours are spent browsing the web. Small browser level increases in efficiency with better tools for web browsing could have massive impact.

And, building browser companies can be a path to making lots of money, so it's not a charity.

TinyPants• 8 years ago

I'd love to see this built out - I was disappointed there was no download link.

xasd43• 8 years ago

I want to see something like https://web.hypothes.is made native in browsers, so you can have community overlays on websites and commenting based on a group you subscribe to, automate common operations teams perform on web pages and leave notes for them etc. with out the websites itself being entirely in control of the entire ux and functionality.

juliussohn3• 8 years ago

We actually thought about adding a similar function in the beginning, but discarded it later since we wanted to focus on the existing key problems, rather than adding productivity features for power users. Nevertheless it is an interesting topic worth exploring.

xasd43• 8 years ago

I think the vision is more that it’s a meta web rather than a power user feature. Glad it’s on your radar

spython6• 8 years ago

In the same vein it would be interesting to explore mechanisms of automatic discovery - e.g. proposing tabs that have close horizontal proximity in other people's collections. Sure, it opens up the questions of privacy and data collection, but it could provide a much needed alternative to using search engines for discovery.

amelius4• 8 years ago

I'd like that too. And perhaps the browser should know about the concept of "user-reviews" (where the reviews are customized per-user, i.e. computed based on the groups you are in, and who you trust, etc.) Thinking about it more, that's what the web needs most: reviews that we can actually trust.

niutech3• 8 years ago

Do you remember Google Sidewiki? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjJOsx84MA

xasd43• 8 years ago

Haven’t seen that before, my thought is that it’d be more like a close knit group and also have workflows.

sincerely• 8 years ago

Didn't Genius do something like this? I remember seeing random political articles with annotations from pundits a while back.

bugmen0t• 8 years ago

Reminds me of Firefox Container Tabs and other advanced ffeatures

shawn2• 8 years ago

Here’s an interesting question to turn over this lovely Sunday afternoon.

What stops you from implementing this yourself? Why?

Chrome is supposedly open source. So is Firefox.

It’s an important question, because the answers lead to the reasons why we’re subservient to megacorps. And it also shows merely being open source and free to use isn’t enough to ensure freedom.

We tend to believe that (a) browsers are an open ecosystem, yet (b) we can’t modify them. This is a contradiction.

conradev• 8 years ago

We tend to believe that (a) browsers are an open ecosystem, yet (b) we can’t modify them. This is a contradiction.

I think the idea of it being "open" is that you can do whatever you want within the boundaries of the sandbox you are provided, right? Closed ecosystems can restrict what you can do beyond the APIs provided (no VPNs, no porn, etc.)

shawn2• 8 years ago

Even the “no porn” is giving up freedoms.

The megacorps wouldn’t have allowed the web to evolve into such a massive sandbox if they’d known how much of an effect it would have. Just like Apple didn’t, with the App Store.

The same situation has already happened with Chrome, but with browsers themselves. Try submitting a PR to chromium that implements a new web standard and see how far it gets, let alone a change to the UI.

All of that begs the question: why is it like this? Theoretically there’s nothing stopping you from writing a browser in JS and delivering it as a website. Then users could customize it however they wish. And if you deliver it as a standalone executable, you can do things like add native torrenting support.

Ezhik• 8 years ago

Business gets in the way of a lot of things, I'd say. "No distractions" mode here would strip the branding, the ads, the engagement tricks utilized by websites...

It'd be fun to see this as an OSS project, though.

amelius4• 8 years ago

Firefox already has a so-called "reader view", which basically strips away the distractions. It would be nice to see this implemented more thoroughly, so navigation menus are retained and become standardized/clutter-free.

codedokode2• 8 years ago

Building Chrome requires a supercomputer and not everyone has one around.

Why is that so? Because there are enough crazy people who cannot stop writing new web standards. For example, things like Shadow DOM and web components, that are not really necessary and can be implemented using existing specs.

antt2• 8 years ago

Building Chrome requires a supercomputer and not everyone has one around.

What?

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/xsoft/chromium...

Chromium comes in at 120 SBU, which while large isn't impossible. That comes to about 3-4 hours on my laptop.

Building software is not some esoteric pursuit only high priests can perform. It's good practice for software you're familiar with, require performance from and esoteric options most people don't care about.

sonnyblarney• 8 years ago

It would be a massive piece of work, is most of the answer.

People generally don't want to pay for software, is the other part of the answer.

dustingetz• 8 years ago

You can modify them, and a lot of the readers of this site have! The problem is convincing everyone to care. Or even one person. This is the same problem all founders struggle with all day long. Obviously, many are successful.

jeffchien• 8 years ago

What makes you say you can't modify them? Are you referring to modifying your copy, or are you referring to modifying the main branch and thus other people's copies? You're trying to blame this on "megacorps". However, as a user, I appreciate the maintainers at Mozilla for keeping Firefox well-tested and well-maintained, part of which is scrutinizing feature proposal and PRs/patches to make sure that their end users would want them. This is such a strange criticism of Chromium/Firefox. At least you can modify your copy at all.

Your other comment suggests trying to add a new web standard but IMO the unending stream of web standards is why only "megacorps" maintain browser engines, because only they have the resources and care enough.

Either way, it's a logical leap to suggest you need to modify Chromium or Firefox to implement this in the first place. The concept from TFA can be implemented with webviews without seeing any code from any browser. To answer your first question, the only thing stopping any implementation is time.

earenndil• 8 years ago

I think hanlon's razor applies here. The Web is ridiculously complicated and it takes a supercomputer to compile a browser capable of running The Web at full speed. Not to mention that people have done it -- see, e.g., qutebrowser or next-browser.

drdaeman• 8 years ago

Because open source monoliths is impossible to maintain unless you can dedicate most of your life to that. Split that to many small individual, replaceable and easily maintainable pieces first.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619141

HeadsUpHigh• 8 years ago

It's called the unix philosophy and anything that touches the web is far, far from it.

slifin• 8 years ago

On desktop chrome you can press ctrl+f find a link on a page using search then press escape and then press enter to follow the link without a mouse

I wish any browser on iOS could allow this, I use an iPad and I can shortcut myself to anything on safari with my hardware keyboard, except clicking links, it's really jarring to jab the screen for that part

Tehnix• 8 years ago

Really need something like Vimari/Vimium for iOS Safari with hardware keyboard. I wonder if there are any custom browsers that support that.

mathandy• 8 years ago

It's like Netflix for tabs

LukeB42• 8 years ago

Interesting triplet of Chrome extensions.

kiechu• 8 years ago

That's a browser I would love to use on my desktop. Two thumbs up!

ksec2• 8 years ago

I love the concept, but...

Ever since the early Internet; pre Firefox era, I have been a heavy Tab user. I am possibly on the higher end of spectrum, my Safari currently has 410 Tabs opened. It sort of expands and shrink during the weekend. In some days they could blow up to 500+ Tabs, more like a reading list.

Quite a few of them are youtube links that are acting like a mini playlist or file selection of music. So having a Video as group selection shown in this concept is a godsend. I have been wondering why Safari Multi Tab page doesn't have this. ( And Safari Tab Overview is kind of stupid, it reloads / reactive all the tab you have when you press overview, making huge memory and CPU spike as well as jack )

But over the years I have came to the conclusion, most of the consumers don't use Tab like us. That is why those mini Tabs in Chrome that shrinks to ridiculously small size don't annoy them. They don't check email on the web. Nor do they do much comparison. Their web browsing flow is very linear. While my web browsing flow is extremely jumpy. Reading on something could bring up dozens of other questions in my head.

So I am wondering if there is enough market for this browser? Don't get me wrong I love innovation in the browser UI space and I love the new History timeline. But I am slightly worry about its sustainability.

glandium• 8 years ago

To support your point, data gathered from the Firefox user population a few years ago showed that, IIRC, the median number of tabs was somewhere around 2. And a lot (I don't remember the proportion but it was unexpectedly large) of browser sessions lasted a couple minutes. As if lots of people opened links from outside the browser, read it, and closed the browser shortly after.

Qwertie2• 8 years ago

Comments like this remind me how out of touch I am with the average user.

MrEldritch• 8 years ago

This sounds like what I sometimes open Chrome up for - to try and see if something will work in a different browser, and then closing it back down and going back to Firefox.

kqr• 8 years ago

There's also people like me, who has in the past used tree style tabs and other ways to manage their crazy number of tabs while browsing, but since then realised that it's not for them.

I used tabs like they were bookmarks, so I started using bookmarks more. I used tabs to keep track of history, so I started using the history more. I used tabs to do things the web browser shouldn't do, such as check email or play media, so I started doing those things in the right application (email client and media player, respectively).

My tab use dropped immediately.

I now have a plugin that prevents me from opening more than n tabs (in my case, I have set n=7 right now), which forces me to linearize my naturally sprawly browsing. I need to either finish one task before going on to the next -- or make a proper core dump of it, which includes mental notes as well as links to browsing session. This has actually helped me pick it up faster later on!

It has also prevented me from stressing about unimportant things because they are open in the web browser, telling me that they are left unfinished. Now I can prioritise the important stuff easier.

ksec2• 8 years ago

Yes, bookmark and history are exactly what the function of those huge number of tabs. Along with reading list.

Example, I now have a list of International shipping website as well as import tax web site that will likely takes me hours if not days to finish. I cant finish them now and move on to next thing. I will have leave it there, and make it like a to do list.

dredmorbius• 8 years ago

The tyranny of the minimum viable user

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

Tabbed browsing: a lousy band-aid over poor browser document and state management

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...

What if the Web was filesystem-accessible?

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...

bestnameever• 8 years ago

how do you manage so many tabs? I struggle to find my active tab when i have 10 open. Maybe I should change my theme.

naravara2• 8 years ago

Their web browsing flow is very linear. While my web browsing flow is extremely jumpy.

I'm curious what you mean by "jumpy." The linearity I understand, and notice it when I'm researching with coworkers or shoulder surfing with someone.

I usually us saved links or bookmarks to preserve state or come back to things later. My primary use of tabs is to approach research as a sort of branching tree. Start with a page, any interesting link in it gets opened in a tab. I follow each branch in turn until I've got a handle on whatever I need to. Similarly, I use the tabs for comparison shopping, so they're useful for "shortlisting" items of interest.

benoror• 8 years ago

FWIW, you can get similar "Spaces" functionality with Toby extension: https://www.gettoby.com/

Vinnl5• 8 years ago

Panorama view for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...

classichasclass3• 8 years ago

Maybe it's the curmudgeon in me, but while I salute the ingenuity in this UI/UX idea, I think we need a new kind of browser engine at least as much as a new kind of browser interface, perhaps more.

I used to worry that WebKit would eat the world, for awhile Trident did eat the world, and now I worry about Blink.

tehabe• 8 years ago

Maybe you should take a look at Servo from Mozilla: https://servo.org/

A few things from Servo were integrated in Firefox 57. But the project is far from complete I think.

classichasclass3• 8 years ago

I'm aware of Servo. Servo is neat to play with, though it's pretty bad with older legacy HTML pages. Also, I'm not sure how likely Mozilla is to develop it into a product; it seems more like a testbed for later Gecko evolution (which, to be sure, is still a good thing).

Vektorweg• 8 years ago

The only thing I worry about is high complexity. If its so complicated, that only a few megacorps can implement it, it should be abolished. That would especially mean to scrap most web standard concepts and replace it with more general concepts.

tuxidomasx• 8 years ago

I made it 3/4 of the way through the video, then clicked around the website in frustration looking for the download button.

tr33house• 8 years ago

Just wanted to point out that Chrome has Chrome Profiles which can be used for "work" "thailand" etc spaces.

Maybe we can extend this with a better UI + ability to move pages between profiles (this creates some serious security problems though)

dijit• 8 years ago

Well, I think most of the concepts are design-centric.

We have history, tagging and bookmarks but I barely use them in modern browsers.

This UI makes it more orthogonal (it seems).

Qwertie2• 8 years ago

Firefox has tab containers which are similar but can be open at the same time on the same window.

tanilama• 8 years ago

Kinda confusing TBH. Browsing should be simple, why convolute it with the Productivity App ideas?

nitinreddy88• 8 years ago

Containers is available in Firefox, however the usability and ease of usage should be something like shown in video. Its pretty awesome to shift between containers.

Timeline seems like barrowed from Windows. This will be another awesome feature I love to see

avshyz• 8 years ago

I used to use containers all the time (tab groups per activity/mind state is a thing I've always craved for) But they're buggy. Really buggy. Twice I've lost a trace of all the containers and tabs that were open (over 40).

baby• 8 years ago

Did this has tabs on the side?

huntie3• 8 years ago

This reminds me a lot of Firefox tab groups/panorama which was removed a few years ago. I like the history idea, there are some really good ideas there. I tried finding something in my history on Firefox recently and it was an awful experience, so maybe someone will be inspired by this.

Vinnl5• 8 years ago

This reminds me a lot of Firefox tab groups/panorama which was removed a few years ago

It's back: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...

huntie3• 8 years ago

I tried that addon, and it is not the same thing. Panorama was an overlay, but this opens a new tab to view your groups. This doesn't really work when you have hundreds of tabs. I'm pretty sure that the old Panorama view is not possible with webextensions, although I haven't really looked into it.

sAbakumoff• 8 years ago

> And while the web itself has undergone big changes in the last twenty years, browsers have remained largely the same.

Yeah, it's largely the same : we open app, enter the URL and it shows a web page..But cmon, stating that IE6 is largely the same as Chrome or Brave is kinda exagreggation.

nickjj• 8 years ago

Some of those features can be done today with any browser, such as spaces.

Just create a virtual desktop for each space.

It really does save a lot of time in the long run. The added benefits of virtual desktops is you can also recall more than just browser tabs.

On Windows 10, all you have to do is hit CTRL + Win Key + Right arrow to launch a new desktop.

konart• 8 years ago

This is entirely different concept and has no implementation on mobile which looks like to be a target platform.

abakker• 8 years ago

I'd use it.

vinceguidry• 8 years ago

Moving back in time was the most interesting new idea in the preso to me. Makes what you do in the browser quite accessible. Between this and web archival it might become possible to have easy, on-demand access to just about any personal web history. Imagine being able to travel back in time 10 years and see the websites you perused.

naravara2• 8 years ago

Moving back in time was the most interesting new idea in the preso to me. Makes what you do in the browser quite accessible. Between this and web archival it might become possible to have easy, on-demand access to just about any personal web history. Imagine being able to travel back in time 10 years and see the websites you perused.

That was a killer feature as presented. In practice it might wind up a little iffy though. Web links aren't static, so the "history" you see might not actually be the pages you were reading. Especially for landing pages for news sites.

I can also imagine it becoming a memory hog for people with certain types of browsing habits. My wife, for example, basically never closes tabs. She just lets them purge on occasions when she needs to restart, which is basically just for OS updates.

philipov• 8 years ago

Imagine giving every new browsing history tracker the ability to see what websites you looked at 10 years ago.

ibdf• 8 years ago

Interesting concept. Looks like a bunch of ideas from other extensions and apps that are already doing these things.

Tab management: Pin tabs seems to do this already.

Saving & recalling: Tons of "spaces" extensions already exist.

I'm not a big fan of the netflix layout.

Smart link previews: Nice to have an image preview but the auto categorization of links would probably not work so well. So this would be probably only be used for main well known sites.

Browsing History: That timeline actually looks really nice. Not sure how well it would work, but that's actually innovative for a browser.

Tagging: So... a bookmarking system?

Focus on whats important: Nope nope nope. I don't want my browser to become an app that strips out what makes a website unique. Most often this functionality just breaks the UI or strips away code that breaks the functionality.

jacekm• 8 years ago

Focus on whats important

Firefox has such feature (reader's view) and it works surprisingly well. It really helps, especially when the text is difficult to read (contrast issues, small fonts, etc) or when a page contains lots of elements that try to distract you from main content.

Refresh: concept for a new kind of web browser

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