58 points by ray__ 4 hours ago|37 comments
GaryBluto 43 minutes 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 33 minutes ago
Opera 9 was peak browser
udave 18 minutes 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.
gitmagic 43 minutes 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 29 minutes ago
AI features, presumably
monooso 3 hours ago
Both the browser and the website look remarkably similar to https://zen-browser.app/.
pmkary 3 hours ago
Because both are trying to be response to the death of Browser Company's Arc. (https://arc.net)
twostorytower 2 hours 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.
LoganDark 4 hours 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!

normie3000 2 hours 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

valleyer 2 hours ago
Right; top-level comment is saying that those are all missing from the linked code.
LoganDark 2 hours ago
That was me pointing out what was plainly implemented in the code snippet I linked. It is obviously nowhere near the truth.
jonathantf2 3 hours ago
Thought this was a browser for my e-reader
neilv 57 minutes 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".

normie3000 2 hours ago
I still want something constructive to do with mine - what a sweet bit of hardware.
cjohnson318 3 hours ago
Same.
enthdegree 2 hours ago
Another thing called nook? Another browser? Bad, presumptuous name. How many months will this project last?
Zambyte 3 hours 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 33 minutes 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.)

65 3 hours 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.

normie3000 2 hours 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 2 hours ago
chromium/blink is going to be ship of theseus'd before it "dies" imo
linkage 4 hours 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 3 hours ago
uBlock is still as efficient if you're using Mozilla, blame the browser not the extension
darthcircuit 2 hours ago
Very correct. I’m on Zen and UBO works great for me. Chrome based browsers are screwed for ads
idle_zealot 4 hours ago
What's up with all the Arc clones? Did people really like the 3-tier tab sidebar thing that much?
chrysoprace 3 hours 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 3 hours ago
Does it do anything that Sidebery doesn't?
chrysoprace 3 hours ago
An integrated experience. In the past I found that the vertical tab options in Firefox had the tabs duplicated across the side and the top, which I always found to be a subpar experience. Again, probably something you could accomplish with user.js and user.css but there's a good chance an update could break your modifications.
gcr 3 hours ago
If you haven't tried firefox' vertical tabs recently, try it again. Firefox's default vertical tabs UI is quite nice now.
chrysoprace 2 hours ago
Seems quite similar to Zen's experience, except it seems to be missing folders (which I admittedly don't use often, but they're sometimes handy to group a Jira ticket with a PR, or similar). I'll probably still stick with Zen while it's around, and maybe I'll hop over to LibreWolf as I'm not too happy about Mozilla's recent stance on privacy.
FuturisticGoo 2 hours ago
Is it similar to tab groups? It's available on Firefox Nightly, don't know about stable.
chrysoprace 5 minutes ago
Maybe! Folders in Zen let you group, label and collapse tabs, so if that's the same thing then yes.
anjel 2 hours ago
Who knew you could yearn so much for mousewheel scrolling?
hjkl0 3 hours ago
Yes
bdcravens 3 hours ago
Given the background color of the site, I initially thought it was a Barnes and Noble project.
theoldgreybeard 3 hours ago
This looks exactly like Zen...?