The excellent Arc browser is now available for anyone to download
The excellent Arc browser is now available for anyone to download
Arc is the biggest new thing in browsers in a long time — and the waitlist is finally gone.
It's chromium, it does that ambient color changing shit I hate, it "anticipates my needs" instead of just waiting my my instruction. This is a browser designed to make me angry.
I tried it for a bit, even daily drove it on my laptop for a while. It has a pretty slick interface, and uses containers so you could, for example, have one container that you are logged into your google account for (say, Youtube), and the rest of your containers you can not log into Google.
The downside is that 1) It's still not mature as of a month ago. They are making massive changes and adding new features constantly, and 2) It's still Chromium, so all of the downsides of that are still present.
If they switch to using Firefox or another open-source foundation, I'd be all over it.
Sandboxing/containerizing stored session data like that is really nice. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension maintained by Mozzila and was really the reason I stuck with Firefox even when it really kinda sucked there for a while.
The issue is that Firefox is, as far as I know, much much more difficult to simply use as just the "rendering engine" for some other customized browser.
There's the arcfox experiment thing that tries to make firefox look and feel the same as arc, but if arc isn't mature, then this thing is just simply unusable to almost everyone. It's still probably easier to do than to make a completely new browser using firefox as a base though.
Eh, just another Chromium browser.
Isn’t arc a chromium fork thus subject to Google’s shenanigans?
Yes
And you're forced to create an account to use it. At least it did a few months back
Yup, anti freedom, and also closed source so extremely privacy invasive as well.
No, it's not a fork. A fork is when you take the Chromium browser and change it.
This uses the same rendering engine as Chromium - but the browser itself was built from scratch, uses a completely different architecture, and on other operating systems it doesn't use Chromium at all.
As for "forced to create an account" Arc is temporarily free. Longer term you'll have to pay a subscription to use it. So it makes sense that you need to sign up.
From the article:
"The company is also thinking about how to integrate AI into the browser."
LOL - how absurd. I can't even tell if this is a real product or just a meme?
AI AI AI Generative AI
Have you heard about AI yet??
It seems like every app is trying to force integration of a version of ChatGPT. It would make way more sense if the OS just had their "assistant" use AI, and just let it recognize the app your using and help out if needed. No need for an AI integration with every app.
I'm not surprised. Edge has it integrated already and it's annoying.
I hate it already! ~Strawberry
"available for anyone to download"
. . .
"It’s still Mac and iOS only"
ಠ_ಠ
You can download the Mac binary on Linux or Windows
You can't do anything with it but it's technically correct.. the best type of correct.
I just downloaded to confirm if it still requires signing up for an account to use it (I was on the wait list and ditched it immediately because of this). It still does. I'm ditching it immediately.
I may be a browser whore, always trying anything new, but fuck that. Make it optional for sync and such but lemme use it without signing into your service to see if I want to do so first.
If you feel the same, you aren't missing much.
So that you will click on the article even though you are not using Mac and iOS.
anyone
Lol, it's just on mac. No windows version or even plans for a Linux one. Not that I'd use another chromium fork.
Tbf, it says download, not use.
As a non-Mac user, I'm not even sure if "Mac-only" or "yet-another Chromium fork" makes it less interesting.
Thought I'd throw my opinion into the ring here, since literally every comment is shitting on this.
Arc is a design project, that also happens to be a web browser. If you're just calling this "another chromium fork", I think you're completely missing the point of who this product is for. First of all, it's not for you.
Secondly, the design changes that arc is working on perfecting are pretty groundbreaking. The ability to customize the css and functionality of any web page without code and it saves your profiles for future use with a marketplace is super interesting to me. So much UI on modern websites is entirely unnecessary. As a designer, this is a dream.
Also, nobody is mentioning that their working on a Windows version THAT NATIVELY RUNS SWIFT ON WINDOWS. This is a big deal for future cross compatibility in general, why are so many people not looking at this?
Anyway that's my rant. Trying to voice my opinions even if they're the odd ones out to prevent a Lemmy based echo chamber. Feel free to disagree.
The whole problem is that the free internet is dying because google is starting to get a monopoly over it.
So, yes, "just another Chromium browser" is a very valid criticism, because it quite literally aids in jeopardizing the future of the internet.
I know a little about browsers, but not tons. Do all Chromium-based browsers use the same rendering engines? If so, isn't it an issue as these Chromium browsers proliferate? If the engine deviates from the standards and they have the market share, feel like we just end up in the IE situation back then.
Well why didn’t you say we get cool trinkets and shiny doodads?! That’s totally worth handing control over the entire internet to a single corporation.
The ability to customize the css and functionality of any web page without code
Isn't that something other browsers have been able to do for ages with add-ons like stylus, greasemonkey and others. it doesn't seem all that groundbreaking.
People might be hesitant to download a different browser what they can accomplish with a simple addon.
what's the big deal about swift?? the language has been cross-platform for quite some time now, it's just there wasn't much point for it on neither windows nor linux outside of "oh look i can write a hello world in swift"
good on them for utilizing it but I don't think it's revolutionary or anything
Using Swift on Windows is pretty damn cool! I wonder if they'll contribute to the ecosystem because it would certainly help.
If this browser is as slow as their website, I can't say it's looking too good. It also appears to be just another Chromium browser, because I guess we needed more of those. And it appears to be closed source. Hard pass. ~Strawberry
Edit: No plans for a Linux port and they're planning on shoehorning A"I" into it. I hate it already.
It uses whatever rending engine works best on the platform you're using - Chromium's main advantage is the extensive plugin library so that's the one they use on most platforms, though they have said they have internal builds that run on other rending engines and those work fine (except for plugins). If there's every any reason to drop Chromium they will.
As for being "just another" anything - it really isn't. The way tabs work is fundamentally different to any other browser. At a glance, it just looks like a basic browser with tabs in the sidebar instead of across the top but it's so much more than that.
For example most browser have three types of tab - Regular, Pinned, and Incognito. Arc has "Today" tabs, Pinned Tabs, Favourite Tabs (these are closer to "Pinned" tabs in other browsers), "Little" tabs, Split tabs, Popup Tabs, and Incognito tabs.
Notice there is no "regular" on that list - none of the tabs in Arc behave like a regular browser tab. Arc also doesn't have bookmarks - tabs replace bookmarks. Here's the breakdown:
- Today tabs go away at the end of the day (you can change this to be longer, I don't recommend doing that). They go into an Archive and can easily be recovered.
- Pinned tabs aren't like pinned tabs are synced between all your devices/browser windows and they stick around until you get rid of them. The process to create and remove a pinned tab is really simple and they are organised in groups and folders. Pinned tabs won't necessarily bne running in RAM, so in a way they're almost like a bookmark.
- Favorite tabs appear as just an icon instead of a full tab, and they appear in all of your groups (within a profile). They are also pre-loaded — handy for web apps that take a while to load.
- A Little tab tab doesn't have tabs - it harkens back to the old days when the web was a lot simpler. It's useful for quickly looking something up and then closing it a few seconds later. Links from other apps open in this mode by default.
- Split tabs are a single tab that contains multiple webpages - e.g. you might have your zoom meeting and your notes as a single tab.
- Popup tabs are similar to "little" tabs, except instead of being in a separate window they are embedded in a tab. If you have, for example, your issue tracker as a pinned tab, and you load up a link to a different domain name, it will open in one of these. You can go back to your issue tracker by closing the popup tab instead of hitting the back button six times... but it will still be a single tab for both your issue tracker and the link that the issue tracker took you to.
- Incognito works the same as any other browser.
Yes - it is closed source... but it uses an unmodified open source rendering engine and for me that's good enough.
Nice explanation. I haven't used it enough to judge yet myself. So far I find myself frustrated with the merging of tabs and bookmarks. Perhaps I'll get used to it but it makes no sense to me yet. I see no viable substitute for traditional browser bookmarks (at least not the way I use them). 95% of my bookmarks are pages I do not visit every week or even every month. Where are they supposed to go where they're both accessible and out of the way? Folders don't seem like a solution to me.
Edit: another day in and I get it now. I realize now that opening folders in the pinned tabs section is madness, but there is a viable alternative: hover over the folder, then scroll/search for the bookmark you want and click it. That "tab" will now appear under the folder under pins, but the folder otherwise remains closed. So my tabs list does not get cluttered with inactive bookmarked pages, only the ones I have specifically opened, and only until I close them.
This isn't a huge departure from "traditional" bookmarks systems.
So far I find that Lemmy specifically is much better in Arc, because link to external sites open in popup tabs. All this time I've been spawning whole new tabs using keyboard/mouse combos like an animal. The future is now!
they have said they have internal builds that run on other rendering engines
so, are there chances that in future there can be builds based on gecko?
When you put it that way, it does actually sound interesting, though I'm still a bit skeptical of its lack of open sourcing. In addition, unmodified Chromium phones home to Google a lot IIRC. There's a reason Ungoogled Chromium exists. If there's a way to use Ungoogled Chromium with it or even Gecko, it'd be a bit more compelling for me. I'm not quite sure if I see Chromium's extension library as a positive. I get that it's larger than Firefox's library, and I'm sure there are plenty of interesting ones that aren't on Firefox but are on Chromium. However, a lot of those extensions are either pretty low quality or are straight-up malware (I'm more concerned with the latter, the former can just be disregarded). It seems like every couple of months or so, a new article comes out about a bunch of malware being found on the Chrome Web Store. Even accounting for Firefox's smaller userbase, there are very few articles about such incidents happening on Mozilla's extension repository. And I've noticed that Mozilla tends to respond more quickly to reports of malware than Google does. CWS has also had a problem with survey scam extensions that blatantly impersonated various companies in the past, though I'm not sure if that's still a problem. I've recently found that FVD Speed Dial intercepts search queries that are supposed to go to Bing or Yahoo when you use the search bar added by their new tab page before redirecting you to Bing or Yahoo when it's not supposed to do that. Essentially an MITM attack. This behavior has gotten them banned from Mozilla's extension repository in the past, but despite the fact that they're still doing it, Google has featured the extension on CWS. ~Strawberry
The company is also thinking about how to integrate AI into the browser.
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
wow, YET ANOTHER CHROMIUM BROWSER.
Fucking lame.
Came here wondering this. What's the point?
Why are we excited about closed source Chromium garbage?
ACAB
All Chromes Are Bastards
Chromium with a new UI - what an innovation.
Edit: no way - you need to sign up to use it.
Edit 2: I thought I might as well check it out but not only do you need to sign up, you need to download it for MacOS to finish the signup process.
Permanently Deleted
That's why they target Apple users. They don't understand what closed source means, nor care. They just want flashy new thing.
Safari is open source. Also: opensource.apple.com
I have zero interest in a chrom* fork.
It's still built on Blink so it is not a true Chrome alternative.
what about privacy?
From what I gather, while they track feature usage, they claim they won't track your sites. They still won't help protect your privacy from other apps, companies, and pages.
Chromium and excellent do not belong in the same sentence.
It’s just chrome with different pitched bells and whistles.
Give me some WebKit based alternatives or something interesting…
Here’s a new WebKit based project that may interest you: https://browser.kagi.com/
Yeeaaah I have been using Orion for a little bit and it seems pretty good on desktop at least.
Except for the millions of Windows users...
Or Linux users
and Linux users
Lol tf is this absolute trash. It has every red flag in the book. First off, a wait-list, wtf? It's closed source obviously, which immediately means it's privacy invasive and anti freedom. It's Apple only, which how did they absolutely fuck that up when it's just a reskinned chromium which already did all the cross platform work for them? Who is this browser for? What can it do that Firefox + extensions cannot do? And lastly, why would you support internet monopolies and support the 1 millionth generic chromium reskin? What complete garbage of software.
I've attempted to understand what makes this browser good, time after time, and I still just don't get it. They claim that they've ripped out the UI and created it from scratch, to improve workflow and how we approach browsers, but it's done nothing but infuriate me, because they just built a gesture based interface with layers upon layers of hidden stuff, none of which is intuitive, and it's for the desktop. Not to mention the other blunders with their extensions
Available for anyone to download... only available for Mac/iOS... Windows waitlist... No linux mention...
Okidoki.
Is it just me, or is all they’ve done to move everything to the left sidebar and use macOS’s UI widgets?
Closed source, which automatically makes a web browser dogshit and completely useless.
Oh my god this comment section is annoying…
Yes, we get it! It’s a Chromium fork!
Chrome bad, Firefox good, we know.
And there are plenty of reasons as to why it’s a bad thing but come on, probably more than half of the comments is just this. There’s a lot more to it.
I don’t use Arc, because the whole company gives me “bullshit vibes”. The whole startup thing with big ideas and bright colors… and no concrete monetisation plan… I don’t know. I’ve seen too much of that and I can’t trust it. That and the whole “wanting to integrate AI@ just raises the “startup bullshit” meter even more for me.
However. I’m keeping an eye on it, and I did got to try it during its invite phase and, it sure is something else. This is not just another Chromium fork. It does indeed have big ideas about UI and UX design and challenges the way we do things when browsing the web. It’s trying to be something new and innovative. I respect that.
Web browsers have been feeling the same for years and years. To the average user, there’s no fundamental difference between Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, or Safari, other than: “They look slightly different ” and “This one looks like a crypto bullshit scam”. They will instantly notice the difference with Arc. It looks actually different and it feels different, because it is.
If you’re going to use a chromium browser, use degoogled chromium. Much better.
The organization features that I've seen look really nice. I've also wanted something as easy as Safari tab groups.. None of these ideas seem to trickle down to other browsers though, it's a shame
Chromium - and thus Google - dominates the Internet way too much. This causes trouble and has the potential to cause a lot more trouble in the future.
This has been discussed many times before, of course.
It's nice that they are trying to add new features and make it original in some way. But I will have to wait for Linux support, sadly.
And… there is a waiting list.