What's Good About the Arc Browser

https://chriscoyier.net/2022/12/08/whats-good-about-the-arc-browser/

by Amorymeltzer • 4 years ago

13 6 4 years ago

I’m not opposed to a different browser experience but I found Arc to look and feel pretty shotty. I saw no reasons to move from chrome which works great for me

dan-g• 4 years ago

Any particular things that felt shoddier than on Chrome?

partlysean• 4 years ago

Left a bad taste in my mouth when I was required to create a user account to just browse the web. Didn’t go back to it much after that.

alwillis• 4 years ago

Yeah, I didn't like that either, so I just quit it and didn't try it again for a couple of weeks.

It has some nice UI/UX features. For power users of Firefox or Chrome, many of the features can be replicated by various plugins, etc. What's nice about Arc is that it's all integrated and built-in.

For example, I had different user profiles in Firefox (work, personal, etc.) so the cookies and search history were separate and also tabs on the side instead of the top.

Lots of these features appear in different browsers; but arguably, Arc is one of the first to include all of them be default in an accessible UI. I think Vivaldi has many of the same features but it has so many features that it can be a little overwhelming. Arc's features are a lot more accessible.

zzo38computer• 4 years ago

Some of the feature seems good, but to actually make it good will need writing a new FOSS web browser, with rather different internals.

Some things that seems to me to be good ideas, mentioned there, includes: split-screen, tab renaming, boosts (hopefully, they will be documented), DevTools.

But, needing an accout seems a bad idea. A web browser should just as well be usable to display local HTML files even if you do not have an internet connection, too; and, to make it good should also need FOSS.

I think many problem that Chrome does, although, they say that the dev tools is good. Well, making a new web browser will need also the web dev tools, in order to be good.

Actually, I think that one thing to make a better one, will be that many things of extensions (e.g. user CSS, header overriding, etc) will be core features, and file formats and protocols will be extensions (some of which, such as HTTP(S), PNG, etc) will be included by default. (A few things will be built-in, such as the data: scheme, and the HTTP request/response model (but not implementation).)

(Being able to write extensions in native code also would be very helpful, but most don't do that, or do it badly.)

pleb_nz• 4 years ago

A good browser also needs to be cross platform, at least for my use case. I work and live across mutliple OSs so if a browser can't span and sync across the os's it's out the running.

What's Good About the Arc Browser

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