Nook Browser

https://browsewithnook.com

by ray__ • 8 months ago

138 119 8 months ago

browsewithnook.com

idle_zealot• 8 months ago

What's up with all the Arc clones? Did people really like the 3-tier tab sidebar thing that much?

hjkl0• 8 months ago

Yes

chrysoprace4• 8 months ago

Zen (Firefox-based) has been really refreshing. You could probably accomplish the same thing with some user scripts and user CSS, but the concern with those has always been that they could break at any time with a new update. That shouldn't happen with a fork like Zen as they have control over updates.

orbital-decay• 8 months ago

Does it do anything that Sidebery doesn't?

anjel• 8 months ago

Who knew you could yearn so much for mousewheel scrolling?

dartharva• 8 months ago

Precisely what I was wondering

linkage2• 8 months ago

How is built-in ad blocking not the foremost priority? Brave and Comet both have it. uBlock Origin is not as effective as it used to be as of Manifest v3.

TheRoque• 8 months ago

uBlock is still as efficient if you're using Mozilla, blame the browser not the extension

darthcircuit• 8 months ago

Very correct. I’m on Zen and UBO works great for me. Chrome based browsers are screwed for ads

LoganDark4• 8 months ago

I think I like the idea, but the structure of the code doesn't look the best. What most sticks out to me is the "Managers" directory. I've seen similar patterns before, even at my current place of work, but they seem to correlate with less experienced implementations. For instance, I clicked on one of them randomly and already found an issue: https://github.com/nook-browser/Nook/blob/09a4c6957a2e9fd7c5...

I guess `www.` (and only `www.`) is always special, and the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br"`?

I don't know how critical this "Manager" is (what even is a "boost"?), but a web browser should absolutely have a proper list of TLDs!

normie30003• 8 months ago

the only TLDs with two components are `"co.uk", "co.jp", "com.au", "co.nz", "com.br".

Is this sarcasm? The public suffix list will give some ideas for omissions: https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat

LoganDark4• 8 months ago

That was me pointing out what was plainly implemented in the code snippet I linked. It is obviously nowhere near the truth.

valleyer• 8 months ago

Right; top-level comment is saying that those are all missing from the linked code.

grodriguez100• 8 months ago

Uh oh. Looks bad.

SoKamil• 8 months ago

What most sticks out to me is the "Managers" directory. I've seen similar patterns before, even at my current place of work, but they seem to correlate with less experienced implementations

What is wrong with such structure? How would you structure this code? Genuinely asking

LoganDark4• 8 months ago

There are no peer-reviewed studies yet for me to corroborate this with, but I've seen this pattern primarily from a specific type of autistic, and it's similar to an actor pattern: a Manager is expected to entirely "manage" whatever feature it's concerned with. This is usually different from a simple module by not collecting related functionality regarding the feature, but rather trying to contain the entire feature itself.

This typically creates artifacts like each "Manager" owning too much of its implementation (not benefiting from or contributing to shared structures, such as a proper domain suffix list), inconsistency between different parts of the app (since different "Managers" don't necessarily share common patterns between them), and tons of hooks into random "Managers" all over the code.

To me, it feels a bit like an "emotionally driven" architecture, where the organization of the code is based on the list of features of the app, and not based on the implementation of those features. So rather than having, for example, a drag and drop component for the tabs to use, you would have, for example, a ReorderingTabsManager, and the implementation may behave differently than drag and drop in other places. So rather than factoring out code into modules for deduplication, you're making modules ("Managers") based on where they are in the product, and duplicating functionality across each module, to varying standards of completeness and/or quality.

Now I don't know if this project is quite that egregious, but it hopefully illustrates why I raise an eyebrow when I see a project architected this way.

Zambyte3• 8 months ago

The website says:

Open-source forever
Transparent code, permissive license, and a community-driven roadmap.

Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever. But the license is actually GPLv3 instead. So still contradictory wording, but the "permissive" is the part that isn't correct :-)

dragonwriter• 8 months ago

Which I was going to mention is contradictory, because the point of permissive licenses is that it does not have to be Free forever.

No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do.

Neither has any effect whatsoever on what future first-party licensing can be; a commitment to "open source forever" by the copyright owner is mostly orthogonal to what kind of open source license the copyright owner offers. (Now, its true that if the owner accepted contributions under a copyright license rather than under a CLA, they would likely have no practical choice but copyleft now and forever, but that's an issue of the license they accept on what they can offer, not an effect of what they offer itself.)

(OTOH, using "permissive" for GPLv3, a copyleft license, is actually contradictory, as you correctly note.)

Zambyte3• 8 months ago

You keep saying "no" and then agreeing with me.

No, the point of permissive licenses is that third-party derivatives, which have no impact on the licensing of the original, don't have to be free ever, while the point of copyleft licenses is that they do.

This should read "Yes, [...]".

The point of permissive licenses is for people to sublicense it. You can use this to sublicense the software using a license that actually enforces it must remain Free (see Redict for an example) but it is almost always the case that someone uses this headlining feature of permissive licenses to lock the code up and extract rent.

Your next paragraph frames single contributor or CLA as the two primary development patterns, when that those are absolutely the exception, especially if we exclude repos for things like AoC our homework, which are mostly single contributor.

prmoustache• 8 months ago

The license of the code released under a permissive license is guaranteed to stay the same.

Only the code that is yet to be released is not.

From an end user perspective BSD/MIT and GPLvX licences offer the same guarantees. It only is different if you are a contributor or if you intend to distribute modified or unmodified code yourself.

Zambyte3• 8 months ago

The license of the code released under a permissive license is guaranteed to stay the same.

It's guaranteed to have at least the terms of the permissive license (usually requiring attribution), but no, it does not guarantee code released under a permissive license will remain available under permissive terms. That is literally the point of the permissive terms: so people can apply more terms under a sublicense.

From an end user perspective BSD/MIT and GPLvX licences offer the same guarantees.

No they don't. I can decide to stop distributing a BSD/MIT licensed application in both source and binary form, in favor of only distributing it in binary form under a sublicense. As a user, this is not "open source forever". This is "open source until we use the distinguishing feature of the license to make it not open source".

GPL, assuming multiple contributors and no CLA (both of which are extremely common) ensures this cannot legally happen (unless they somehow get all contributors to agree against their exercised rights).

jonathantf2• 8 months ago

Thought this was a browser for my e-reader

cjohnson318• 8 months ago

Same.

normie30003• 8 months ago

I still want something constructive to do with mine - what a sweet bit of hardware.

1317• 8 months ago

read books?

neilv• 8 months ago

I won't be surprised if B&N does a C&D on this particular trademark infringement.

Nook is a well-known brand in consumer tech, ereaders aren't that far removed from Web browsers, Nooks have a Web browser, and B&N also has a "Nook for Web".

Hackbraten• 8 months ago

I was hoping for an Animal Crossing themed browser where instead of an AI assistant, we'd get Tom Nook.

monooso• 8 months ago

Both the browser and the website look remarkably similar to https://zen-browser.app/.

pmkary• 8 months ago

Because both are trying to be response to the death of Browser Company's Arc. (https://arc.net)

twostorytower• 8 months ago

The browser designs look identical to Arc, yes, but the website of these two new “Arc responses” also look the same, down to the background color.

robot-wrangler• 8 months ago

Switched to zen recently, and although I only expected a slightly different experience to firefox, it's hugely better. Profiles/containers/workspaces especially are great.. this level or organization fits my mental model much better and and I never need to manage bookmarks or use multiple windows. (Performance with large numbers of tabs seems much better too, presumably inactive workspaces are reclaiming the memory in smart ways).

bdcravens• 8 months ago

Given the background color of the site, I initially thought it was a Barnes and Noble project.

65• 8 months ago

It's nice, but it feels like Yet Another Browser.

I'm interested in seeing all the new browsers that will come out in the next few years that are based off Ladybird. Or alternatively what Ladybird will enable in terms of customization. I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered.

normie30003• 8 months ago

I think the days of Chromium/WebKit/Gecko forks are numbered.

I'm going out on a limb here and betting they're numbered in the high thousands minimum.

agoodusername63• 8 months ago

chromium/blink is going to be ship of theseus'd before it "dies" imo

theoldgreybeard• 8 months ago

This looks exactly like Zen...?

forgotpwd162• 8 months ago

Similar to Zen, it's an open source Arc* clone but WebKit rather Blink/Gecko-based that Arc/Zen are. *Explains "not owned by Atlassian" in about since Arc/Dia dev company was bought by Atlassian.

enthdegree• 8 months ago

Another thing called nook? Another browser? Bad, presumptuous name. How many months will this project last?

balamatom• 8 months ago

inb4 rebrand to "nuke"

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

I see we're heading back to the days of MDI web browsers, slowly but surely. It's really strange to me how web browsers used to allow so much configuration (like the option to use MDI tab/window management or just generic tiling) but don't anymore. I've been hoping a browser comes out that is just Opera 8/9 but with the ability to browse the modern web so maybe with the advent of all these new browsers I should start taking a look.

art0rz• 8 months ago

Opera 9 was peak browser

jauntywundrkind3• 8 months ago

Opera 10 was getting into some wild stuff. 9 was obviously just winning. But I loved how 10 literally gave you the user your own endpoints on the web. The browser is the server (by way of proxy)! Massively inspirational decentralization. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

To reply to a comment that was deleted by the time I finished writing:

"I've been experimenting with old UNIX systems recently and have come to somewhat similar conclusions. (Regarding software like window managers becoming more simplistic and some programs having to poorly attempt to pick up the slack themselves)

It feels like open source software projects shifted from making 'program' and instead tried to make "alternative version of windows program". Looking at these old systems I see all these options and intuitive ideas, even down the metaphors used to describe actions. Last time I used a modern UNIX desktop environment it felt like everything was just trying to be a simplistic Windows alternative instead of a good operating system."

SSLy3• 8 months ago

It's painful how good WindowMaker could've been

nicman232• 8 months ago

killing xul was the worst decision after the australis redesign

m000• 8 months ago

People seem to be forgetting how clunky and resource intensive XUL was, and how many times they had to kill xulrunner.exe just to keep their desktop running.

hdjrudni• 8 months ago

Vivaldi allows quite a bit of customization...

paradox4602• 8 months ago

Vivaldi has had tiling for a while now. It's not quite free form mdi, but it beats opening two windows next to each other

paradox4602• 8 months ago

Vivaldi has had tiling for a while now. It's not quite free form mdi, but it beats opening two windows next to each other

amadeuspagel• 8 months ago

You can right-click on a tab in chrome to "add tab to split view" now. You can then choose another tab to display together with this one.

Suppafly3• 8 months ago

they added tabs to tabs

gitmagic• 8 months ago

When enabled, they provide helpful tools such as chat assistance, summaries, up-to-date web insights, and more.

I find this sentence to be a little odd. Who are “they”?

petesergeant• 8 months ago

AI features, presumably

jb1991• 8 months ago

The previous sentence introduces the subject.

amitav1• 8 months ago

The AI.

udave• 8 months ago

the sidebar was the best feature in Arc imo. I gave zen a shot just because of that and it was not a great experience to be honest. First, migration was buggy, then the sidebar lacked some basic features like renaming the tabs even though it looked similar. Nook seems to follow in the same footsteps I just hope that they nail the sidebar like Arc. Tab management is a mess and this has so much potential. All the best to both Zen and Nook.

bpavuk3• 8 months ago

modern Zen is a lot better than then :)

the only missing from the sidebar thing is Library as a central place to manage downloads, spaces, and history. and although the downloads window looks a bit unsexy, it's totally enough

jakozaur• 8 months ago

Looks like Arc, would love to migrate out of it after migration, but always worry about maintenance. Creating a browser is "easy", keeping it up to date is a lot of work, and many open-source browsers look semi-abandoned to me.

bpavuk3• 8 months ago

Zen is actually solid these days. being a Firefox-based browser, it has its quirks, (i.e. Theo complained about gradient rendering or whatever, but who cares?) but it's still the best Arc-like we currently have.

plus, you get synchronization across desktop (Zen) and mobile (Firefox for iPhone/Android). since Google limited theirs only to official Chrome, this feature is basically exclusive to Firefox and forks, Arc <-> Arc Search, and Chrome for desktop <-> Chrome for mobile.

SSLy3• 8 months ago

Well, Vivaldi and Brave also can sync with mobile products.

tamimio• 8 months ago

Zen was solid, after a while it turned to a browser full of bugs, crashes, and too much UI changes it rendered it unstable for me had to ditch it. And reporting the bugs goes to nothing and never getting resolved, one simple bug was the pinned tab, where it supposedly to be pinned but scrolling will take it out of your view, and it was never resolved for months last time I used the browser.

wyre• 8 months ago

Am I the only one that thinks "No selling of browsing data. Ever." implies that you're still harvesting browsing data? That is a level of telemetry that I don't want my browser having.

aorth• 8 months ago

Right, as I read that I also thought, "Wait a sec, do they have the user's browsing data?" They should say "Your browsing data is local and we don't even have it!" instead.

KitN• 8 months ago

I was looking for a good browser. I’m finally interning, and Brave has taken over as my official browser(I don’t like the concept of workspaces/profiles). I used Comet for a while but found it extremely annoying. I like Zen, but I’m not a fan of sidebars in browsers. Currently settled on Helium. This would have been good, but I can’t seem to understand the obsession with sidebars.

splatter98592• 8 months ago

I need someone to explain to me, at length, at some point in my life the value proposition of Brave and what it brings to the table that other browsers do not.

For example, most of the key differentiators of Brave could be accomplished similarly in Firebox with a litany of extensions -- such as UBlock Origin as just one example -- or Privacy Badger if you'd like to be less 'heavy handed'.

The only other differentiator I see is the use of cryptocurrency as a way of compensating users for watching ads and the use of a crypto wallet; which if your not interested in such functionality is meaningless.

Yet I see very educated, competent, and intellegent people I've known for years be advocates and at some points "zealots" over the browser.

I would love to understand this. I'm honestly open to discussing this in good faith as I would like to understand the benefit here, and if I am somehow missing something will be the first to admit I was ignorant.

marcwebbie• 8 months ago

For me the reasons for using brave for over an year now are: - no ads, no trackers and they are transparent about it - I can install chrome extensions - I don’t feel like I am handing all my data to Google - overall feels faster even with dozens for tabs open

pseudo_meta• 8 months ago

I use Brave, and for me it's really just the least bad option.

Firefox-based browsers do not support macOS automation (AppleScript/JXA). Safari lacks features/extensions. Orion/Vivaldi had bugs any time I tried them.

From the Chrimium-based browsers I tried, Brave blocks ads, supports PWAs, the crypto stuff can be turned off, and is stable. Brave does not excite me, but it's good enough.

linkage2• 8 months ago

At least a year ago, Chromium-based browsers were significantly more secure than Firefox, as measured by the rate at which high severity vulnerabilities were discovered every month and the ease with which Firefox would be hacked in competitions.

The trouble with Chrome is that it is deliberately configured to maximize Google's ad revenue. The omnibar does not show you recently visited websites when you start typing something because they want you to do another Google search so they can serve you more ads. The new extension model deliberately neutered the most effective ad blockers available.

Brave is Chrome without the perverse incentives. Their developers take a security-first approach to everything, to the extent of explicitly _not_ having a centralized sync service for bookmarks, passwords, etc. They have an excellent content blocker built in, thereby doing an end-run around Chrome's new extension model. The crypto wallet and Brave ads are optional - you can disable both in the settings very easily. And since it's a Chromium variant, you can use all of the existing Chrome extensions for third party software like 1Password and the like.

chasil5• 8 months ago

I will admit to you that Brave historically had many problems with bad behavior:

https://old.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1j1pq7b/list_of_b...

The lobste.rs site has taken hostile speps towards Brave:

https://lobste.rs/s/iopw1d/what_s_up_with_lobste_rs_blocking...

Still, Brave does offer a few unique advantages.

- it is equivalent to Chrome on sites that require it, and does not have the compatibility problems of Firefox

- Ad block is built in

- it is easily available if you are not running Play and GMS

- it is a mature browser, where most everything works as expected

- the bad aesthetic choices that have been introduced to Brave so far are easily undone

No, it's not perfect, but there are use cases.

lynndotpy• 8 months ago

I use Brave, and I second the sentiment that it's the least bad of many bad choices. I say this as an opinionated person who has put a lot of effort into looking at alternatives. I've even spent time trying to use Epiphany and Lynx as my daily drivers.

I assume we would both already exclude the likes of Chrome, Edge, Opera, Safari, etc.

This will be a long reply though.

The TLDR is: Security is number one, so extensions are bad and built-in features are good. I hate the cryptocoin/adware/AI features but the degrading act of disabling it all is mercifully short. It also has to run on Linux, so I can't even consider browsers like Nook. Most important to me are the (1) Chrome features and (2) the Shields feature tacked on. I use profiles and shields very extensively.

The TLDR TLDR is: Shields good

---

Caveat with the below is that Brave is full of bullshit to disable, with a new piece of bullshit added every year or so. That disparaging term is not one I use lightly!

The bad aspects are made worse by the fact the CEO of Brave is a person who I generally don't trust. I've been using Brave for years with the understanding I might have to jump ship at any moment.

Onto the good things:

One of the necessary things it provides is a browser which I can use to browse the internet, including captchas. For my mileage, Firefox has been broken for me on every platform I've used it on, every time I've tried to get back into using it, for years. I've exhausted all the time I ever wish to spend trying to fix a browser. Since I could not use Firefox to browse, it was not an option for me.

A second necessary requirement is that the browser should be available on the major desktop and mobile OSes, especially Linux. So, Orion, Nook, etc. don't count as browsers to me.

A third necessary requirement are timely security updates. Last I checked, Brave got security fixes from Chrome on a timely basis. Nice.

Then, there are a bunch of nice to haves. Brave has the Chromes profile which I use heavily (although Firefox is set to get a clone of Chrome's profiles soon-- the existing 'profiles' and 'containers' solutions were not usable alternatives.)

A second nice-to-have is telemetry - how often is my browser making requests unrelated to browsing, and to how many parties? I last checked this years ago, but I remember Brave performing well here.

The third nice thing is the Shields feature, which I've come to rely on. (If Firefox copied this wholesale, like they're doing with Chrome profiles, that would be a major improvement.) It's an easy-to-use interface to block ads and JavaScript. It works on mobile as well, which is a huge advantage.

Shields can be replicated with extensions, but I try to minimize the extensions I use. Each extension requires permissions for every site (!!!) So, if just one of these extensions developers were compromised, or the extension itself had a vulnerability, then I would be compromised too.

pixelmelt• 8 months ago

Would use Firefox on the main workstation if it had better devtools, other then that it just works and has some useful features, see: Tor and ipfs integration.

lachiflippi• 8 months ago

Here's an exhaustive list of why I, personally, have been using Brave for years:

- vertical tabs

- maintained by more than a single person

- support for extensions

- not owned by China

- not Firefox

- not Edge*

All the AI and crypto slop can be turned off completely, so I don't care at all about features I never see after initial install.

*Edge is fine if properly configured via GPO, which I can neither be bothered to figure out how to do under Linux nor have the patience to do on my private Windows machines. Works great at work though.

sph• 8 months ago

New browser starter pack:

* Fancy logo

* Blink engine so it's basically Chrome like every other alternative browser

* Mention of AI somewhere on the website

* Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari

* Heartfelt promises of speed and privacy

* macOS only

RestartKernel• 8 months ago

Minimal UI clearly inspired by Safari

More like Arc † nowadays.

frizlab3• 8 months ago

The engine of this browser is Webkit.

integricho• 8 months ago

Anyone can slap a fancy UI on an existing engine and claim they made a browser. So many of them exist now, they don't matter anymore at all. This one will die in the crowd like every other wannabe browser. Build your own goddamn engine and then claim you made a browser, at least the Servo and Ladybird devs are doing some concrete work, not just pointless marketing and empty claims.

Suppafly3• 8 months ago

The engine of this browser is Webkit.

Thank you, I looked all over their site trying to figure out which engine they were using.

ares623• 8 months ago

* made with <3 by humans

jollyjerry• 8 months ago

Lot of nostalgia today. This brings me back to compiling Camino, a gecko based browser, on my iBook G4.

stuartd• 8 months ago

I loved Camino. I think I still have the binary on my MBA just to look at the icon and sigh

rezaprima• 8 months ago

"This software does not run on macOS versions older than Sequoia.". Is there any reason I should upgrade from Sonoma ?

Suppafly3• 8 months ago

I'm sure Barnes and Noble will have no problem with the name.

TomMasz• 8 months ago

Interestingly enough, Kagi has a new browser, Orion, that's also WebKit-based. Besides the obvious macOS, it's in Alpha for Linux and "in development" for Windows. May the best non-Chromium browser win!

https://blog.kagi.com/orion

cyber_kinetist• 8 months ago

Kinda interesting that they were able to resurrect the WebKit engine on Windows, might have been quite an engineering feat. In the past (2007-2012) Apple distributed a Windows version of Safari, but it's been more than a decade since it was deprecated and the engine only supported Apple's ecosystem.

Nook Browser

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