Re: [dev] surf: web browser on archlinux

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 16:27:45 +0900
Alex Matviychuk <alexmat_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

> Good point. Do you think a tabbed interface is inappropriate as well
> or is that something that would be considered a valid component?
>
> Also, does anyone know of a good stand alone adblock? Privoxy doesn't
> pick up most of the ads adblock targets.
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Szabolcs Nagy<nszabolcs_AT_gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On 7/3/09, Samuel Baldwin <shardz4217_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I suppose I could "cut back" a bit, but then I'd need some way of
> >> managing bookmarks. If this could manage bookmarks and passwords,
> >> I'd jump on it as my primary browser.
> >
> > that's an entirely different task, don't confuse it with web page
> > rendering

The impression I get from Surf is that it, like uzbl, adheres to
the Unix philosophy by "doing one thing" - it renders web pages. One of
the problems that arises from having your bookmarks, passwords, etc all
managed by a single monolithic program is that if you want to change
any component of the browser, you have to change the entire program. On
the other hand, if you were to use Surf as your web renderer, and then
another separate program to manage your bookmarks, and then perhaps
another to store your passwords, to decide that you dislike a certain
component would be a simple case of switching out that tool for another.

To me, tabs seem like putting a window manager within the browser;
either a fairly simple one, in Firefox, or one that might as well
manage all my windows, as in Opera (and I'm pretty certain they're
trying to replace all my applications, too). It would in my opinion be
better to instead either have a window manager proper which handles
windows in much the same way, or to perhaps have a separate "window
tabbing" utility which exists for this task (and could then do the same
job for all the windows you wish to be tabbed).

As for suggestions for actual existant bookmark managers and such, I'm
coming up rather short - likely a symptom of the "this should do
everything" mentality of browsers at the moment. If these components
were divorced from one another, you could choose to install Surf with
Firefox's tabs, Chrome's bookmarks, etc. Sadly I'm unable to help with
actual suggestions for these components, though. Maybe some suckless
implementations could be in order.

cls