logo

drewdevault.com

[mirror] blog and personal website of Drew DeVault git clone https://hacktivis.me/git/mirror/drewdevault.com.git

visurf-announcement.md (4430B)

    

  1. ---
  2. title: visurf, a web browser based on NetSurf
  3. date: 2021-09-11
  4. outputs: [html, gemtext]
  5. ---
  7. I've started a new side project that I would like to share with you:
  8. [visurf][0]. visurf, or nsvi, is a [NetSurf][1] frontend which provides
  9. vi-inspired key bindings and a lightweight Wayland UI with few dependencies.
  10. It's still a work-in-progress, and is not ready for general use yet. I'm
  11. letting you know about it today in case you find it interesting and want to
  12. help.
  14. [0]: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/visurf
  15. [1]: https://www.netsurf-browser.org
  17. NetSurf is a project which has been on my radar for some time. It is a small web
  18. browser engine, developed in C independently of the lineage of WebKit and Gecko
  19. which defines the modern web today. It mostly supports HTML4 and CSS2, plus only
  20. a small amount of HTML5 and CSS3. Its JavaScript support, while present, is very
  21. limited. Given the [epidemic of complexity in the modern web][2], I am pleased
  22. by the idea of a small browser, more limited in scope, which perhaps requires
  23. the cooperation of like-minded websites to support a pleasant experience.
  25. [2]: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html
  27. I was a [qutebrowser][qute] user for a long time, and I think it's a great
  28. project given the constraints that it's working in — namely, the modern
  29. web. But I reject the modern web, and qute is just as much a behemoth of
  30. complexity as the rest of its lot. Due to stability issues, I finally ended up
  31. abandoning it for Firefox several months ago.
  33. [qute]: https://qutebrowser.org
  35. The UI paradigm of qutebrowser's modal interface, inspired by vi, is quite nice.
  36. I tried to use Tridactyl, but it's a fundamentally crippled experience due to
  37. the limitations of Web Extensions on Firefox. Firefox has more problems besides
  38. — it may be somewhat more stable, but it's ultimately still an obscenely
  39. complex, monsterous codebase, owned by an organization which cares less and less
  40. about my needs with each passing day. A new solution is called for.
  42. Here's where visurf comes in. Here's a video of it in action:
  44. <video src="https://mirror.drewdevault.com/visurf.webm" controls>
  45.   Your browser does not support HTML5 video, or webm. Here's a direct link:
  46.   <a href="https://mirror.drewdevault.com/visurf.webm">Watch this video</a>
  47. </video>
  49. I hope that this project will achieve these goals:
  51. 1. Create a nice new web browser
  52. 2. Drive interest in the development of NetSurf
  53. 3. Encourage more websites to build with scope-constrained browsers in mind
  55. The first goal will involve fleshing out this web browser, and I could use
  56. your help. Please join #netsurf on irc.libera.chat, [browse the issue
  57. tracker][4], and [send patches][5] if you are able. Some features I have in mind
  58. for the future are things like interactive link selection, a built-in
  59. readability mode to simplify the HTML of articles around the web, and automatic
  60. redirects to take advantage of tools like [Nitter][6]. However, there's also
  61. more fundamental features to do, like clipboard support, command completion,
  62. even key repeat. There is much to do.
  64. [4]: https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/visurf
  65. [5]: https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/visurf-devel
  66. [6]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
  68. I also want to get people interested in improving NetSurf. I don't want to see
  69. it become a "modern" web browser, and frankly I think that's not even possible,
  70. but I would be pleased to see more people helping to improve its existing
  71. features, and expand them to include a reasonable subset of the modern web. I
  72. would also like to add Gemini support. I don't know if visurf will ever be taken
  73. upstream, but I have been keeping in touch with the NetSurf team while working
  74. on it and if they're interested it would be easy to see that through.
  75. Regardless, any improvements to visurf or to NetSurf will also improve the
  76. other.
  78. To support the third goal, I plan on overhauling [sourcehut's][3] frontend[^1],
  79. and in the course of that work we will be building a new HTML+CSS framework
  80. (think Bootstrap) which treats smaller browsers like NetSurf as a first-class
  81. target. The goal for this effort will be to provide a framework that allows for
  82. conservative use of newer browser features, with suitable fallbacks, with enough
  83. room for each website to express its own personality in a manner which is
  84. beautiful and useful on all manner of web browsers.
  86. [3]: https://sourcehut.org
  87. [^1]: Same interface, better code.