uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

Procyon · 2009-04-23 10:20:42

How about putting it in a sidebar?

HashBox · 2009-04-23 10:51:33

Wra!th wrote:

HashBox wrote:
I would disagree about adding this to the interface, for me even the statusbar might be too much bloat for a browser that is supposed to minimalist. But if an address entry is required it can probably sit in the same place as the statusbar. Or it could be implemented in a popup window.
It could be packed next to the status bar so it doesn't waste extra space. I'ma get at it

Yup that's exactly what I meant

I'm still not sure about those tabs though, in my opinion that makes this browser more like vimperator.
Although I guess I'm the minority here

ludovico · 2009-04-23 11:24:02

HashBox wrote:

I'm still not sure about those tabs though, in my opinion that makes this browser more like vimperator.
Although I guess I'm the minority here

Well, the follow-links-with-keyboard feature in Vimperator is really brilliant,
so I wouldn't mind seeing that feature in this project:)

ludovico · 2009-04-23 11:30:00

Idea: How about using dmenu or something similiar for the tabbing?
I don't know if it's possible, but it sounds simple enough for the purpose...

Sakurina · 2009-04-23 12:11:14

Absolutely in love with this project. I've been looking for a lightweight graphical browser with keyboard navigation to use alongside ratpoison, and since I refuse to use the bloatware that is Firefox + Vimperator, I've been using links -g (which works surprisingly well).

As soon as keyboard navigation makes its way in here, I am ditching links -g for this.

Dieter@be · 2009-04-23 12:22:29

Woa, amazing how many replies I got.

Let me clear up some stuff:
1) I want to keep the interface as minimalist as possible. When browsing there's not much else you should be able to *see* when browsing other then the page itself. (bookmarks and stuff can popup through scripts that use dmenu)
In essence I want the window to render just the page as rendered by webkit and nothing else. If I can't get around it, there will be 1 simple and small statusbar. This also implies I don't need any toolkit like gtk/qt, and hence, I want to strip the gtk stuff out of it.
2) uzblctrl will probably never exist because someone suggested using a FIFO for control and I think that's a great method. (basic keyboard shortcuts for basic actions like refresh/back/.. and a script with dmenu or something to echo specific commands into the fifo for things like loading a bookmark)
3) I picked the name because for me usable means unix philosophy. I find fancy browsers like firefox crippled because they want to do re-implement all the stuff I already like to use, and make it hard to let me use my data the way I want it. I also like lolcats a lot, and I think this is how a lolcat would write usable In fact everytime I read/write uzbl I have to think about lolcats and that makes me smile
4) I welcome any contributions and it would be great to make this a collaborative effort. Just remember that it's not because browser x has this or that feature, uzbl should have it too.
5) experimental branch on git = bleeding edge. may be broken. developers should look at this. master branch = sort of stable.

6)

Barrucadu wrote:

At the moment, what it really needs is a way to open a link in a new window (middle-click?)
This weekend I'll definitely do some reading up on C / WebKit and see if I can contribute to this.

I want to avoid the mouse as much possible. In fact I will try to avoid it entirely, even for picking a url you should be able to use the keyboard (similar to how konqueror does it.) i believe have some notes in the readme/todo about that. Like some people have suggested we need to figure out if this can happen with webkit.
And thanks.

7)

PJ wrote:

The tabbing part could actually be put into a separate application, this would make it more general and usable for other applications too (terminals comes to my mind). Anyway, I think this is an interesting approach for a web browser.

I agree, guess what you would be writing.. a window manager
There's a lot of debate about tabs going on and it's a great thing. Some mentioned "tabs are an important part of an HCI interface" and "it's not because some apps implement tabs poorly, they should always be avoided". Well, I just look at the bigger picture, sure enough tabs are important, but what constitutes a tab?
1) a visual overview (list) of all open pages, with the current one being hilighted, and the corresponding webpage having focus. Some people need to see this only "on-demand", others may want to keep the list visible always.
2) an easy way to go to another tab. (preferably keyboard shorcuts).
3) someone also mentioned that an application with tabs has the advantage of keeping your pages/tabs together when the complete window is moved to somewhere else.
I personally think all of the above is not application specific at all and _could_ be handled by window managers, to I'll gladly admit it's not always convenient or some window managers just aren't as advanced to do window grouping (point 3) and tabbing (1/2).
So letting an application handle the tabbing is more a workaround for a malfunctioning/misusage of a window manager.
Personally I want to explore the road of letting the WM handle this further, but at the same time I could also make built in tabbing an (optional) feature. This makes everyone happy and wouldn't cause much bloat. In any case, I still want to avoid depending on gtk so the tabbing support should use something more basic. someone mentioned dmenu and that's also a good idea. I'll also look into the xembed stuff to see what it is and whether it can be useful in this case. (anyone experience with that?)

This is still open for discussion, of course.

8)

Inxsible wrote:

This is a gui based browser right? or is thisa CLI based one?
As for GUI browsers, some things that I always use :
1) Tabs
2) ability to retain session, so that you don't have to enter the password at a site everytime you visit it. This is one of the reasons, I use links etc sparingly.
3) speed dial -- although I guess this is better of being a separate add on.

interaction happens with keyboard shortcuts and additional scripts (also bound to keyboard shortcuts with xbindkeys or whatever tool you use for it)
2) yes. i want that too

9)

fukawi2 wrote:

Dieter@be wrote:
- no ad blocking built in. use the power of /etc/hosts. though uzblctrl should support an option to list all images on
a page, so you can easily pick the links to ads to add them to your /etc/hosts. (dmenu can again be great here to
automate this)
How's that going to work when using a proxy, since the proxy will do all the DNS resolution?

good point. in fact I've realised /etc/hosts is probably not a good place for this anyway. (because you need root, and it affects system behavior).
Many items on the "master list" of uzbl are still open for discussion/thought and this is one of them. maybe we can just keep a plaintxt list of blocked things, or use something like privoxy. I have not used the latter yet but it looks nice.

10)

ludovico wrote:

Well, the follow-links-with-keyboard feature in Vimperator is really brilliant,
so I wouldn't mind seeing that feature in this project:)

Please explain how this works

Last edited by Dieter@be (2009-04-23 12:28:12)

ludovico · 2009-04-23 12:40:34

Dieter@be wrote:

10)
ludovico wrote:
Well, the follow-links-with-keyboard feature in Vimperator is really brilliant,
so I wouldn't mind seeing that feature in this project:)
Please explain how this works

In Vimperator, you can press either f (follow link) or F (follow in new tab), and all links will be highlighted
with numbering, so you can type the corresponding number, or even type in the link text.

I find it extremely useful, no need for the mouse

EDIT: I'm already using uzbl and loving it, by the way

Last edited by ludovico (2009-04-23 12:41:53)

Dieter@be · 2009-04-23 12:45:11

ludovico wrote:

Dieter@be wrote:
10)
ludovico wrote:
Well, the follow-links-with-keyboard feature in Vimperator is really brilliant,
so I wouldn't mind seeing that feature in this project:)
Please explain how this works
In Vimperator, you can press either f (follow link) or F (follow in new tab), and all links will be highlighted
with numbering, so you can type the corresponding number, or even type in the link text.
I find it extremely useful, no need for the mouse

That's pretty much what I had in mind too. Just need to figure out if we can do that with webkit.
I definitely hope so, because I think it's a great rendering engine. reasonable small and fast, and correct.

ludovico · 2009-04-23 12:49:37

I guess history easily could be implemented with dmenu as well,
by piping a text file into it and saving each valid input?

dusanx · 2009-04-23 12:50:23

I am using conkeror right now but I will definitely use uzbl. Keyboard link following is the must. Please check how conkeror does this, has best kb following so far.

Vintendo · 2009-04-23 12:50:41

Dieter@be wrote:

ludovico wrote:
Dieter@be wrote:
10)
Please explain how this works
In Vimperator, you can press either f (follow link) or F (follow in new tab), and all links will be highlighted
with numbering, so you can type the corresponding number, or even type in the link text.
I find it extremely useful, no need for the mouse
That's pretty much what I had in mind too. Just need to figure out if we can do that with webkit.
I definitely hope so, because I think it's a great rendering engine. reasonable small and fast, and correct.

If it has that(and tabs) I will defenitely use it.

rson451 · 2009-04-23 13:02:52

For an alternate take on tabs, how about this. Since you are probably going to have a statusbar anyway, and I'm assuming you can put any text in the statusbar you'd like, why not just have tabs show up like they do in the vimperator statusbar. Each tab is numbered and the only display is [#/#], ( [the tab you are on / total number of tabs] see the top right here: http://rsontech.net/images/screenshots/ … scrot.png). This would still allow for tabbed browsing but remove the need for a toolkit and wasted space. A keyboard shortcut or set of shortcuts could then be defined in the config file that switch tabs or go to specific tabs.

dusanx · 2009-04-23 13:10:54

Vintendo wrote:

Dieter@be wrote:
ludovico wrote:
In Vimperator, you can press either f (follow link) or F (follow in new tab), and all links will be highlighted
with numbering, so you can type the corresponding number, or even type in the link text.
I find it extremely useful, no need for the mouse
That's pretty much what I had in mind too. Just need to figure out if we can do that with webkit.
I definitely hope so, because I think it's a great rendering engine. reasonable small and fast, and correct.
If it has that(and tabs) I will defenitely use it.

On second thought both tabs and kbd following would be wrong - external app should be able to spawn another embedded window (tabs) and modify html (kbd following), not main app.

HashBox · 2009-04-23 14:05:42

rson451 wrote:

For an alternate take on tabs, how about this. Since you are probably going to have a statusbar anyway, and I'm assuming you can put any text in the statusbar you'd like, why not just have tabs show up like they do in the vimperator statusbar. Each tab is numbered and the only display is [#/#], ( [the tab you are on / total number of tabs] see the top right here: http://rsontech.net/images/screenshots/ … scrot.png). This would still allow for tabbed browsing but remove the need for a toolkit and wasted space. A keyboard shortcut or set of shortcuts could then be defined in the config file that switch tabs or go to specific tabs.

I like that idea, tabs, without sacrificing screen estate, although I still think it needs the possibility of being compiled without any tab support just for those wanting to avoid any bloat whatsoever.

Also, as for the name, after seeing that explanation I think it's just fine as it is (and I will definitely remember it now haha)

I have a couple more ideas to throw out there, firstly, it would be neat to have full control over the browser through a fifo (I see this has been mentioned), including the ability to change the html content (think client side applications?), but I've also been thinking of ways to receive events from the browser in the opposite direction (url change is the only thing coming to mind right now but I know there are tons more).

XFire · 2009-04-23 14:17:44

This sounds a lot better since the topic has progressed.

Is there proxy support - to use the net at college a proxy is required and the large screen estate would be great for my One.

I also agree with rson451 on the #/# tab idea.

Wra!th · 2009-04-23 14:23:15

Cleaned the code a bit, and added an address entry + "GO" button packed horizontally on the same line as the status.
Entry can be activated with the "GO" button or by simply typing the url and hitting Return.
Put the tabbing aside for now...
PS: also changed the way it handles the url input...simply checks for argv[1] and makes that the url, or defaults to www.google.com if no args passed

Last edited by Wra!th (2009-04-23 14:24:50)

Dieter@be · 2009-04-23 14:27:41

dusanx wrote:

On second thought both tabs and kbd following would be wrong - external app should be able to spawn another embedded window (tabs) and modify html (kbd following), not main app.

what exactly do you mean? I don't understand at all.

XFire wrote:

Is there proxy support - to use the net at college a proxy is required and the large screen estate would be great for my One.

right now there is support for almost nothing but yes I consider proxy (socks) support a must.

rson451 wrote:

For an alternate take on tabs, how about this. Since you are probably going to have a statusbar anyway, and I'm assuming you can put any text in the statusbar you'd like, why not just have tabs show up like they do in the vimperator statusbar. Each tab is numbered and the only display is [#/#], ( [the tab you are on / total number of tabs] see the top right here: http://rsontech.net/images/screenshots/ … scrot.png). This would still allow for tabbed browsing but remove the need for a toolkit and wasted space. A keyboard shortcut or set of shortcuts could then be defined in the config file that switch tabs or go to specific tabs.

Well I don't know.. If I use some form of tabs (inside an app or in the WM) I usually want to have tabs with a title (eg the current page or something). Most people who really want tabs seem to have a lot of them, I don't know if using numbers is better then real names.

ludovico wrote:

I guess history easily could be implemented with dmenu as well,
by piping a text file into it and saving each valid input?

valid input? woezzel wazzel? My current idea for history is to have a directive in the config file. something like 'history_file = <some file>', if this is specified, each url gets logged (together with a Y-m-d string). If not, history is not logged. If you want to visit a page again you've visited before (and you've configured uzbl to do history logging) you pipe the stuff to dmenu, pick the entry, and write it to uzbl's fifo file.

Wra!th · 2009-04-23 14:39:59

Problem with tabs is that no matter if you show them as widgets on top, or just keep track of them, you still have them open somewhere in the back, so why not have them visible? A 20-some pixel waste is not to much. People who need tabs also need a way to see them (believe it of not some of use actually use a mouse...even if in a tilling window manager). I would say let's pack it all on the status line, with horizontal scrolling capabilities (for the tabs). That way you can get to see like 2-3-4 tabs at a time, and no more extra waste of (vertical) space.

dusanx · 2009-04-23 14:53:24

Dieter@be wrote:

dusanx wrote:
On second thought both tabs and kbd following would be wrong - external app should be able to spawn another embedded window (tabs) and modify html (kbd following), not main app.
what exactly do you mean? I don't understand at all.

Tabs: sound like good idea at first but you were right - if somebody wants tabs he can use wm or wrapper application instead. Same goes for any other ui element like address edit and go button.

Keyboard link following: we all probably have slightly different ideas how following should work. Instead trying to implement them all I would prefer that wrapper can get list of visible links (in text-url pairs) so I can do whatever I want with them from my own wrapper. Let me know if I should explain this.

Question: can we get rid of scroll and status bars?

Wra!th · 2009-04-23 15:02:58

dusanx wrote:

Question: can we get rid of scroll and status bars?

change

gtk_scrolled_window_set_policy (GTK_SCROLLED_WINDOW (scrolled_window), GTK_POLICY_AUTOMATIC, GTK_POLICY_AUTOMATIC);

to

gtk_scrolled_window_set_policy (GTK_SCROLLED_WINDOW (scrolled_window), GTK_POLICY_NEVER, GTK_POLICY_NEVER);

That should take care of scrollbars.
For status bar just comment out/remove the lines where it get's packed into the main window...

edit: I added forward/back buttons

I am really REALLY new to webkit...how would one implement a working "save picture as"?! Or add anything to the context menu for that matter?

Last edited by Wra!th (2009-04-23 15:07:21)

dusanx · 2009-04-23 15:04:40

Wra!th wrote:

dusanx wrote:
Question: can we get rid of scroll and status bars?
change

Nice, thanks.

Dieter@be · 2009-04-23 15:10:39

Wra!th, can you fork my code on github? Then we can follow your patches and merge in changes if I like them
That said, I don't like your address bar thing. I prefer some dmenu/dzen popup that writes to the fifo.

Wra!th · 2009-04-23 15:14:28

Dieter@be wrote:

Wra!th, can you fork my code on github? Then we can follow your patches and merge in changes if I like them
That said, I don't like your address bar thing. I prefer some dmenu/dzen popup that writes to the fifo.

I don't use github I'll just post in here if needed.
What I don't understand is why can't it have an address bar?! You're 'wasting' that space with the status anyway...

dusanx · 2009-04-23 15:26:57

Wra!th wrote:

Dieter@be wrote:
Wra!th, can you fork my code on github? Then we can follow your patches and merge in changes if I like them
That said, I don't like your address bar thing. I prefer some dmenu/dzen popup that writes to the fifo.
I don't use github I'll just post in here if needed.
What I don't understand is why can't it have an address bar?! You're 'wasting' that space with the status anyway...

Status and possibly scrollbars are waste of space. I killed them both. We only need status to show url below mouse cursor and that can be shown in title bar too.

Btw uzbl does not crash where midori does, great job!

ludovico · 2009-04-23 15:27:52

Dieter@be wrote:

valid input? woezzel wazzel?

Just thinking loudly without any real knowlegde about
the advanced stuff, sorry

Arch Linux

#26 2009-04-23 10:20:42

Re: uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

#27 2009-04-23 10:51:33

Re: uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

#28 2009-04-23 11:24:02

Re: uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

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Re: uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

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#37 2009-04-23 13:02:52

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#38 2009-04-23 13:10:54

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#39 2009-04-23 14:05:42

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#40 2009-04-23 14:17:44

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#41 2009-04-23 14:23:15

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#42 2009-04-23 14:27:41

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#43 2009-04-23 14:39:59

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#44 2009-04-23 14:53:24

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#45 2009-04-23 15:02:58

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#46 2009-04-23 15:04:40

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#47 2009-04-23 15:10:39

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#48 2009-04-23 15:14:28

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#49 2009-04-23 15:26:57

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#50 2009-04-23 15:27:52

Re: uzbl. A browser that adheres to the unix philosophy.

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