Bone – Minimalist Display of Websites

by graderjs • 5 years ago

53 23 5 years ago

spindle• 5 years ago

The excellent qutebrowser (and probably several other browsers?) can easily be set up to not have tabs or status bars or anything.

I'm sure the other features of Bone are interesting though, like the tiling.

metalliqaz4• 5 years ago

F11 in Firefox gets rid of all of it.

godDLL3• 5 years ago

Does that work with tiling? No, right?

metalliqaz4• 5 years ago

tiling is one of those things that always look cool to me on project websites but I would never, ever use myself. I admit I just can't convince myself that people actually use these projects in their day-to-day. Are they just neat projects? Do they just make great screenshots?

I always browse in only one of two configurations: maximized window, or two maximized in vertical split (Win+left and Win+Right key combos). Anything smaller, such as giving a page just the lower-right quarter of the screen as in the screenshots, would just be way too small for any modern pages to render in a useful way.

Ok so making one split may technically be tiling, but I don't think that's what anyone really means when they are talking about tiling. They're talking about at least three subdivisions.

Surely I can't be the only one like this.

csdvrx• 5 years ago

In Windows, I have a AHK script that turns a window into a small rectangle at the bottom of my screen, with 70% transparency, always on top, no titlebar: it lets me continue on my current task with minimal distraction, as it's see-through.

I use that to keep an eye on long running operations, on notes I take in notepad during a conference call, etc.

I press again the key, and the windows becomes another normal window again.

I guess that's tiling?

Otherwise, I do as you do for most of my apps: I run them in full screen mode, but no task bar, not even a titlebar as I find that too distracting. I strip down most of the details until only the app itself remains. It helps me focus, and remove useless cruft.

About cruft, IDE are among the most awful offenders, full of so many ribbons, margins and other gimmicks that they ressemble Word in its hayday ( check https://i.huffpost.com/gen/714057/thumbs/o-MICROSOFT-TOOLBAR... if you don't get what I mean ), with less and less of the screen usable for the actual principal function: writing (and reading)

metalliqaz4• 5 years ago

that's a neat idea, put it on github :)

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

I tile (in the traditional sense) when I have the screen real estate to do so. Particularly when using large (>=32") screens with at least 4k resolution. However, I do find Windows built-in window arrangement tools (Win+arrows) to be suitable for that task.

metalliqaz4• 5 years ago

I have a quad-monitor setup, perhaps all my maximized windows are technically "tiled"...

gonehome• 5 years ago

Yeah - I used xmonad on arch for a bit in college for the novelty and agree. Magnet on macOS is good enough. The other thing about tiling window managers is often the graphics of the window are really ugly with bad fonts - not specifically a tiling issue but another thing I didn't like about using it.

I use a large high res display too - the advantage from tiling just isn't that real or important imo.

jeppesen-io• 5 years ago

I can relate. I've tried various tilling solutions, but they never actually work in the real world. Always an edge case or you lose basic functions like adjusting everything when you dock a laptop

That was until I used paperwm. It's diffent from most tiling because it works out of the box for everything I do daily. Slack, zoom, terminal and chrome mostly

It does this by scrolling horizontally and all windows default full height. Matches perfectly to my mental model of window workflow

Works so nicely because you hide windows without minimizing, just scroll away

I've always thought of it as tiling for humans, in a joking manner

Zababa• 5 years ago

I always browse in only one of two configurations: maximized window, or two maximized in vertical split (Win+left and Win+Right key combos).

I only ever use my computer this way, except for a few floating windows like quick terminal stuff or using a file picker.

I do think a tiling window manager would be fine, I would just switch to a new desktop if I need new windows, and I wouldn't have to manage the windows manually.

godDLL3• 5 years ago

I'm on the other end of that spectrum.

I can't for the life of me understand why any website would need to have more than a half of my vertical screen. And if the UI design lets me get away with it, less.

The only scenarios for a full-screen window in the browser, for me is while watching a video (not always, sometimes) or reading a lengthy single-page thing, or perhaps looking at a cloud provider dashboard with many, many things presented in as much detail as their UX engineer can not contextualize for you.

So mostly full screen video, sometimes.

Other than that, no, I have things on my screen open for work or context. No fullscreen windows, please.

jokethrowaway• 5 years ago

If you have a good tiling manager you just need a lightweight single tab browser with mostly shared libraries and one process per window / tab / whatever abstraction is supported by your tiling manager

godDLL3• 5 years ago

Yes.

Name one.

bibble• 5 years ago

Hoped this was going to simplify the CSS on websites, down to just the basics, without fully disabling it :D

winternett• 5 years ago

A new and rebranded return to 1997 HTML?

"Web -3.0"?

Seriously though UI/UX and Human Design seem to be lost arts these days as template sites took over. Because of mobile phones and many different screen formats, sites are crazy in form and function. We should probably seriously all consider going back to a Human Centered focus, and to revert to the practice of perfectly simplifying function, controls, and features in everything we develop.

luxuryballs• 5 years ago

Web 0.3!

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

Bone is meant as a tool to display websites without the overhead of tabs, decorations, and other interface elements that can make it bloaty.

Checks source code... JavaScript. LOL, when will they ever figure it out?

thih9• 5 years ago

I think I prefer opening a new browser window; the tab bar isn’t displayed for windows with just a single tab open (at least in safari) and I get to use my system’s window manager.

jareklupinski• 5 years ago

i like the tiling / layout focus

i'm frequently using one tab as a 'reference' while skimming for information in 5+ other tabs, pausing at each one when I find what I need, before I can finally use the product of all the tabs concurrently to finish the thing i'm working on (schematic / layout / datasheet / forum post / github page is a common one)

i would love a way to 'split' a single tab into two so i can keep something on one tab in view while I search for the related info in the new split view, then be able to split one of those new tabs into two, then one of those into two... :)

windows just managed to figure out "drag window to side of screen to tile" (mac still cant do this!) and it's helped a lot, but when you're trying to fill a 21:9 screen with info just to make sure a specific chip register is on the right bus...

schwartzworld• 5 years ago

Not a browser, but iTerm2 has this functionality built in. I could see how it would be awesome in a browser.

opan• 5 years ago

eww in emacs can do this. Open desired page, then create a split / new window. It defaults to the same buffer you already had open. Scroll one, and the other stays where it is. If you change the web page, they will both change.

fowlie• 5 years ago

Nice, but this does not make any sense for people who are using tiling window managers. There already exists minimalist web browsers without menu bars etc. like Suckless software's surf, or the qutebrowser.

Bone – Minimalist Display of Websites

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