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Show HN: Breach – A modular browser built on Chromium and Node.js

405 pointsby spolualmost 11 years ago

56 comments

skrebbelalmost 11 years ago
I&#x27;m trying to put this as constructively as I can: Proudly dismissing Windows on the second line of your copy makes me not want to take you seriously. There&#x27;s nothing wrong with not supporting certain platforms, but bragging about it makes you seem a bit snobby.<p>EDIT: And I&#x27;ll grumpily admit that this also bugs me because Windows is me favorite OS and Breach looks like a thing I would actually use. I hope its just circumstance. And not some goal in itself to not support it out of some far fetched principle.
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shawnzalmost 11 years ago
What about this doesn&#x27;t also apply to Firefox? It too is open source and modular, and also written in Javascript (though combined with XUL rather than HTML, and using Gecko instead of Webkit).
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petercooperalmost 11 years ago
OK, it&#x27;s not quite the same but last week Robin Berjon wrote &quot;Web 2024&quot; which spoke as if from the future and he said: <i>&quot;This is 2024. In terms of the ecosystem, not only do all browsers have large chunks implemented in JavaScript but at some point someone started a pure-JS browser from scratch. It was initially meant as a joke, but this &#x27;Inception&#x27; browser caught the fancy of the ever-resourceful JS community and quickly grew in usability.&quot;</i> <a href="http://berjon.com/web-2024/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;berjon.com&#x2F;web-2024&#x2F;</a>
psawayaalmost 11 years ago
This is a great idea. I&#x27;ve wanted to build something like this for a while, but never got around to it.<p>I think people here are missing the point. Firefox and XUL is also a JS-scriptable UI over a browser, but it&#x27;s a terrible environment to work in.<p>The UI is the main thing that differentiates web browsers. Our tabbed browsers have looked the same for years now. This is going to enable all kinds of awesome experimentation and customization. I&#x27;m super excited to see where this project goes.
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hysanalmost 11 years ago
Is there an RSS feed for the blog?<p>Sidenote: It&#x27;s a huge pet peeve of mine when people put up &quot;blogs&quot; without RSS feeds. How are people supposed to follow your updates?
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rakooalmost 11 years ago
This is a neat hack on current technologies. Reminds me of uzbl [0] in the separation of modules, each one being good at only one thing and doing it well.<p>What eventually killed uzbl [1] was the difficulties working with IPCs; I hope you overcome this and build something even greater !<p>[0] <a href="http://www.uzbl.org/readme.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uzbl.org&#x2F;readme.php</a><p>[1] <a href="http://dieter.plaetinck.be/luamail_a_mail_client_built_into_luakit.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dieter.plaetinck.be&#x2F;luamail_a_mail_client_built_into_...</a>
elwellalmost 11 years ago
Not the most assuring name for an application I send nearly all my personal data through.
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dbpokornyalmost 11 years ago
I suspect that asm.js will obliterate the existing space of web browsers soon. They are bloated dinosaurs from the last millennium. In fact, a &quot;browser-in-browser&quot; project along the lines of jslinux and vim.js, where the entire browser tool chain is emulated (in the browser) is possible.<p>If a browser can be shown to be a lightweight dev tool with integrated toolchain servicing CPython, C, and JavaScript, rather than a glorified porn watching device, then there is hope for civilization.<p>It is really very nice that the source code is available. I do hope that open source will eat Capitalism alive soon. Not to mention copyright law. Right now, the tech industry looks like a bunch of crackpot inventors and psychopath totalitarian wannabes.
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Mikeb85almost 11 years ago
Cool project. The fact the whole UI and app is scripted&#x2F;built with JS should make modifying your browser trivial. I like.
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616calmost 11 years ago
As a newfound convert to the Conkeror browser, which basically allows you to configure everything through JS and use MozREPL to talk to your browser instance purely through JS, how is this different (notwithstanding the obvious choices in architecture and JS engines)? I mean, it seams like the minimalist JS-run browser has been around for a while (and if not JS, Uzbl did Python as mentioned below, Luakit does Lua). Granted the others do not really run up and down the JS stack, with or without a separate conf language, but I do see this as Conkeroresque.<p>Am I wrong?
0x420almost 11 years ago
This is very cool - I just figured out how to shrink the top strip to 25px from its original 45px in about 5 minutes. Very refreshing compared to modifying Firefox.
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ianbickingalmost 11 years ago
You should check out the Browser API in Firefox OS: <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Using_the_Browser_API" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;API&#x2F;Using_the_B...</a><p>Is a similar concept since all apps on Firefox OS are built on HTML, including browsers.
robert_akalmost 11 years ago
Why does it connect to data.breach.cc at startup?
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jacob019almost 11 years ago
Was hoping to find a JS interpreter written in JS (like pypy) with browser on top.
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OutThisLifealmost 11 years ago
Neat, wish I could test on Windows. I&#x27;d love to see the performance.
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davidcollantesalmost 11 years ago
Serious question: how hard is it to sign an OS X application?
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LukeB_UKalmost 11 years ago
Atwood&#x27;s law in effect?
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dav-almost 11 years ago
Seems to be very unstable on Yosemite Beta 2. I tried loading this thread, and it the HTML view froze immediately. I then tried to load up Reddit, and it just wouldn&#x27;t load.<p>It&#x27;s a really cool concept, though, I look forward to seeing where it goes. It would be super cool if it became stable enough to be my main browser, because I love the customizability.
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shib71almost 11 years ago
I would be very interested in seeing a tutorial for how to build a custom developer tool in this.<p>Something I&#x27;ve been very interested in over the last couple of years is the idea of creating once off, task specific, development and introspection tools. Breach seems like the perfect environment for that kind of thing.
jannesalmost 11 years ago
I find the amount of files these JavaScript projects require astonishing. On OSX this app&#x27;s application bundle contains 4046 files and 1018 directories.<p>Contrast that with Google Chrome wich has &quot;only&quot; 388 files and 577 directories in its application bundle. (a lot of empty directories apparently)
stuaxoalmost 11 years ago
So V8 was taken from chrome, it is then used to launch chromium which has its own copy of V8 on the inside.
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iamtewalmost 11 years ago
I would like to try this out but it crashes when I try to start it and dumps core.<p>I raised an issue here: <a href="https://github.com/breach/breach_core/issues/95" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;breach&#x2F;breach_core&#x2F;issues&#x2F;95</a>
fn42almost 11 years ago
I like this a lot, the module handling is excellent + certainly brings another level to browser extensions<p>dunno if anyone else had this problem but I had to manually set $CHROME_DEVEL_SANDBOX on arch<p>CHROME_DEVEL_SANDBOX=`locate chrome-sandbox` .&#x2F;breach
saraid216almost 11 years ago
This seems oddly relevant: <a href="https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.destroyallsoftware.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;the-birth-and-death...</a>
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o_____________oalmost 11 years ago
Loaded initially, installed mod_strip, crashed, now crashes upon load. OSX 10.9
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integratonalmost 11 years ago
Well, I think this is extremely cool. The concept is great, the minimalist mod_strip is thoughtfully designed, and even as someone who isn&#x27;t a fan of JavaScript I think it makes a lot of sense in this case.
Artemis2almost 11 years ago
The idea is great, but in a world where browser performance is a competition, writing a web browser in Javascript <i>might</i> not be the best.<p>The interest here is learning, and it looks like Breach is very good on this point.
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hexleoalmost 11 years ago
Every companies can build their own browser. It&#x27;s a good thing for WEB developers. The companies can limit their works internet behavior. For me, may be some day I can use this to build my own browser.
alexvodaalmost 11 years ago
This feels quite similar to <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/chromeless/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mozillalabs.com&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;chromeless&#x2F;</a><p>To bad Mozilla abandoned that project years ago!
snarkyturtlealmost 11 years ago
Anybody reminded of Sencha? I don&#x27;t think any UI should be coded in JS, especially one that&#x27;s built for the browser. At least Sencha&#x2F;Ionic et al is targeted for phonegap apps...
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politicianalmost 11 years ago
Absolutely love this! Great job, but I&#x27;m kind of annoyed that writing breach modules to improve my web experience threatens to derail <i>my</i> side projects.<p>PS- Spell check doesn&#x27;t work... Module?
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corditealmost 11 years ago
One thing that hit me was typing a URL wrong provided no feedback to me that my input might be wrong (no dns records found, or server not on https, but happens to be on http)
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waitingkuoalmost 11 years ago
Awesome! I&#x27;ve just posted this comment in Breach browser!! I hope that I can open a atom editor directly by some short cut (e.g. cmd + m)!
mateuszfalmost 11 years ago
This looks like a perfect core to build a real (no problem with shortcuts like in chrome) minimal browser with vim shortcuts. Sweet!
magnusgravitialmost 11 years ago
Like the design and idea. It is not usable at the moment but I&#x27;d like the project to get stable and ready for day-to-day usage.
iziettoalmost 11 years ago
I love the homepage! I like it even if it uses a thin font, which I find less readable. I hope the product to be neat as the website
meshkoalmost 11 years ago
I am still waiting for a browser written in PHP.
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TinyTimZambonialmost 11 years ago
This plus github&#x27;s Atom editor, and I can spend all day working only on Node.js with an html UI.<p>As soon as Node OS is done, I&#x27;m set ^.^
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cmiller1almost 11 years ago
Did anyone notice that the font they use in the default URL&#x2F;tab bar is Gotham, the font made famous by the Obama campaign?
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syldoralmost 11 years ago
I love the idea of modules, using web tools to hack our own UX should be the standard in future softwares. Great job !
krrishdalmost 11 years ago
I&#x27;m on Ubuntu 32-bit, and I&#x27;m only getting linked to the 64-bit download. Is there even a 32-bit version?
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joeblaualmost 11 years ago
Is anyone else having the problem where you resize the window on an rMBP and the whole screen goes blank?
logicalleealmost 11 years ago
The only question on everyone&#x27;s mind: how&#x27;s its JavaScript support? :) Enough to self-host?
bdcravensalmost 11 years ago
Pretty sure I&#x27;ll never suggest to a client that I add &quot;breach&quot; to their software.
JED3almost 11 years ago
While I&#x27;m aware of what you&#x27;re implying by &quot;hackable,&quot; that word has horrible connotations when it comes to browsers. I would never want to describe my browser as &quot;hackable.&quot; If I were you, I&#x27;d consider using a different adjective. Best of luck with the project!
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owaislonealmost 11 years ago
No HiDPI support :( Damn it.
epaynealmost 11 years ago
Exciting! Can you detail how it’s significantly different from node-webkit?
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knodialmost 11 years ago
O no, not more javascript. I need less javascript in my life not more.
spacefightalmost 11 years ago
Download link via bit.ly redirect? Seriously?
dimillianalmost 11 years ago
If anyone wondering, work on 10.10 DP3
AdrianRossouwalmost 11 years ago
my main concern is whether this could be used as a more flexible&#x2F;stable replacement for phantomjs
Kiroalmost 11 years ago
What CSS rendering engine is used?
gcb0almost 11 years ago
so its like most custom ui android browsers?
apolymathalmost 11 years ago
but not for windows.... fml.
portmanteaufualmost 11 years ago
Neat project, but the marketing&#x27;s a little disingenuous. It&#x27;s not &quot;entirely written in Javascript&quot;, it&#x27;s a Javascript layer on top of Chromium, an enormous codebase written in C++.
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serge2kalmost 11 years ago
Javascript except for the millions of lines of C++ code that make up the actual browser (chromium embedded using the content api).<p>Cool hack though.