This is so cool! I'm someone for whom emacs has steadily expanded its role in my computing life, but who will never adopt a text-based browser as a daily driver.
Looking forward to the stable 4.0 release when I'll be prepared to use Nyxt and hope it can replace Firefox / Chromium as much as possible for me.
I also tried Nyxt, but I never stuck with it. I believe there are different UI contexts depending on the goal. For example, browsing the web is a different task and experience than editing text. That's why it comes naturally to me to use a mouse- and keyboard-driven application, Firefox in my case, for browsing and Emacs for anything text-related.
In other words, using the purely text-driven Emacs interface to browse multimedia web pages does not feel natural to me.
I'm in the same boat. Gave Nyxt a good try (as an ardent Emacs user), but I came to the same conclusion that it felt unnatural. Maybe I'll give it another go. Another big downside was the lack of extensions like uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, SponsorBlock, etc.
How does it stack up in terms of security? To me the idea of hackability is a bit conflicting with all the security features of modern browsers. The web is basically the main attack surface today, so I wouldn't use a niche browser engine.
In terms of the browser itself, it’s not niche browser engine. The engine is Chromium (via Electron) by default, though WebKit is also supported as a compile time option.
So that should bring the same safeguards in terms of sandboxing from drive-by attacks.
Then risk here is code that has execution permissions outside of that sandbox. But here, that’s no different to running any kind of untrusted code (eg shell script, ELF, etc) on your local machine.
Exactly my thought when I read the post. While I love the hackability of Emacs, it’s one thing if it’s just your editor with a security hole and another thing entirely if you’re downloading and interpreting pages (and JavaScript?) from the Internet cesspool with a browser with a security hole.
Does it finally work on Macs without weird rituals? I love the idea of using only Linux, but I'm too stupid to deserve an employer who'd let me live my dreams. I'm just happy I'm not forced to use Windows.
To those that have tried the browser or investigated the project more, what is the utility of this browser over, say, Firefox with a vim plugin[1] that lets me also navigate with a keyboard? I am all for new browsers and believe that hobby projects don't need a reason, but I am curious what distinguishes this over something that can be achieved with plugins in a more stable platform.
Love nyxt - I am just waiting for when I will be able to use sites like youtube with it (or other common site just not compatible yet with the web engine.) They have a road map to move to Blink/Chromium which would make the site compatible with today's modern web.
We were taught in grade school that the vowels were "A, E, I, O, U....and sometimes Y" without any real explanation. I count that as our first lesson about the convoluted complexities of the English language.
Y is used as a vowel when it's between two consonants, and a consonant when it's not. A word like "Synchronize" uses y as a vowel, but a word like "Yellow" uses it as a consonant. Honestly, it's more vowel-like then consonant-like in every case I can think of, so maybe that rule is kind of weak, and it should be counted as a vowel all of the time...
I'm not sure that's the (sole) rule for "Y as vowel". It acts as a vowel in "fly", "spy", and a few other words. And it seems pretty darn dipthong-like when clustered among vowels, eg "voyeur", "vying".
The word "eye" is an interesting one. It seems to be only vowels, based on pronunciation.
> a vowel when it's between two consonants, and a consonant when it's not.
Not a hard rule, honestly.
Some Indian languages exhibit a blurring of sorts with Ye- sounds. E.g., in Telugu, the word for 'How' is 'yela', which is often also pronounced as 'ela'. TBF, Telugu also blurs Ve-/We- sounds similarly.
The first rule of English is that the rules aren't really rules because they are broken all the time. Makes sense when you consider English is just an amalgamation of Scandinavian, Germanic, French, Latin, etc words and rules. Hard to have rules when you mix a half dozen completely different rulesets into one.
I normally dislike electron use for desktop applications but in this case it's a web browser so I don't see the problem. If you want an Emacslike text-based browser, maybe run emacs -nw and use eww?
Yeah. That's pretty much what I do. I bounce between EWW, Lynx and Firefox. But EWW's not without it's quirks. And sometimes I like seeing pictures. I guess I should just add sixel support to EWW.
The guys behind have decent lisp and hacking skills and zero to none product thinking. The project is around for a while but the complete lack of ability to think about users or from the users perpective makes it a dead end
I think there's a lack of understanding. If Nyxt is trying to be the emacs of web browsers, it's very much removed from the "product mindset", it's more about somehow coherent capabilities than a product with market and users. Kinda like linux.
This kind of articles / project is exactly why I love HN. I am not much a marketing person but have enough basics to understand that if something does not appeal to me, that's because I'm not the target and as a emacs fanboy this kind of tools 100% appeal to me.
By not having any form of content blocking for a long time (I lost track of the project, don't know what the current status is). The current web is too user-hostile to launch a browser without even basic stalking protection.
This is so cool! I'm someone for whom emacs has steadily expanded its role in my computing life, but who will never adopt a text-based browser as a daily driver. Looking forward to the stable 4.0 release when I'll be prepared to use Nyxt and hope it can replace Firefox / Chromium as much as possible for me.
I also tried Nyxt, but I never stuck with it. I believe there are different UI contexts depending on the goal. For example, browsing the web is a different task and experience than editing text. That's why it comes naturally to me to use a mouse- and keyboard-driven application, Firefox in my case, for browsing and Emacs for anything text-related.
In other words, using the purely text-driven Emacs interface to browse multimedia web pages does not feel natural to me.
I'm in the same boat. Gave Nyxt a good try (as an ardent Emacs user), but I came to the same conclusion that it felt unnatural. Maybe I'll give it another go. Another big downside was the lack of extensions like uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, SponsorBlock, etc.
Plug for vimium. I find it hits the keyboard sweet spot for me while browsing.
I use vimium now, but I think with an emacs-based browser I would be better at using the advanced features.
How does it stack up in terms of security? To me the idea of hackability is a bit conflicting with all the security features of modern browsers. The web is basically the main attack surface today, so I wouldn't use a niche browser engine.
That’s a good question to ask.
In terms of the browser itself, it’s not niche browser engine. The engine is Chromium (via Electron) by default, though WebKit is also supported as a compile time option.
So that should bring the same safeguards in terms of sandboxing from drive-by attacks.
Then risk here is code that has execution permissions outside of that sandbox. But here, that’s no different to running any kind of untrusted code (eg shell script, ELF, etc) on your local machine.
Exactly my thought when I read the post. While I love the hackability of Emacs, it’s one thing if it’s just your editor with a security hole and another thing entirely if you’re downloading and interpreting pages (and JavaScript?) from the Internet cesspool with a browser with a security hole.
Does it finally work on Macs without weird rituals? I love the idea of using only Linux, but I'm too stupid to deserve an employer who'd let me live my dreams. I'm just happy I'm not forced to use Windows.
I would use it if it supported ublock origin
And umatrix
To those that have tried the browser or investigated the project more, what is the utility of this browser over, say, Firefox with a vim plugin[1] that lets me also navigate with a keyboard? I am all for new browsers and believe that hobby projects don't need a reason, but I am curious what distinguishes this over something that can be achieved with plugins in a more stable platform.
[1] https://vimium.github.io/
Love nyxt - I am just waiting for when I will be able to use sites like youtube with it (or other common site just not compatible yet with the web engine.) They have a road map to move to Blink/Chromium which would make the site compatible with today's modern web.
So now we have Next, Nuxt, and Nyxt. What’s noxt?
> So now we have Next, Nuxt, and Nyxt. What’s noxt?
Well there's still two more vowels[1], so at a guess ... Naxt and Nixt?
--------------------------------
[1] I've never understood why 'Y' is not a vowel.
We were taught in grade school that the vowels were "A, E, I, O, U....and sometimes Y" without any real explanation. I count that as our first lesson about the convoluted complexities of the English language.
Y is used as a vowel when it's between two consonants, and a consonant when it's not. A word like "Synchronize" uses y as a vowel, but a word like "Yellow" uses it as a consonant. Honestly, it's more vowel-like then consonant-like in every case I can think of, so maybe that rule is kind of weak, and it should be counted as a vowel all of the time...
I'm not sure that's the (sole) rule for "Y as vowel". It acts as a vowel in "fly", "spy", and a few other words. And it seems pretty darn dipthong-like when clustered among vowels, eg "voyeur", "vying".
The word "eye" is an interesting one. It seems to be only vowels, based on pronunciation.
> a vowel when it's between two consonants, and a consonant when it's not.
Not a hard rule, honestly.
Some Indian languages exhibit a blurring of sorts with Ye- sounds. E.g., in Telugu, the word for 'How' is 'yela', which is often also pronounced as 'ela'. TBF, Telugu also blurs Ve-/We- sounds similarly.
We learned "A, E, I, O, U....and sometimes Y and W” but I can’t recall any examples of W as a vowel.
Perhaps "ewe", but then isn't the "y" in "you" a consonant?
>I count that as our first lesson about the convoluted complexities of the English language.
I dare say its made up as it goes along
The first rule of English is that the rules aren't really rules because they are broken all the time. Makes sense when you consider English is just an amalgamation of Scandinavian, Germanic, French, Latin, etc words and rules. Hard to have rules when you mix a half dozen completely different rulesets into one.
Vowels are sounds, not letters. [1]
Some letters always represent vowel sounds.
Some letters never represent vowel sounds.
Some letters are the letter Y
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel
Nzxt.
i played with nyxt for about a month
what makes me go back to normal browser is the search feature
nyxt search results are in modal which takes half bottom part of screen
the upper part of screen is the site text
so it's hard to get whole screen view of what o'm searching because half of real estate is taken by search modal
i prefer the / to search, n to next search with full screen
even firefox default ctrl f / g is also okay, because ot shows the whole page
Ironically the Guix build it's broken.
sigh. electron. sigh.
it would be cool to do something like this, but for the terminal.
and... yes... this is still pretty cool. When I get a machine that doesn't seize up when electron apps launch, I want to give it a try.
I normally dislike electron use for desktop applications but in this case it's a web browser so I don't see the problem. If you want an Emacslike text-based browser, maybe run emacs -nw and use eww?
Yeah. That's pretty much what I do. I bounce between EWW, Lynx and Firefox. But EWW's not without it's quirks. And sometimes I like seeing pictures. I guess I should just add sixel support to EWW.
neat blogpost but the otherwise uninvasive ad breaks the page width on iOS at least
The guys behind have decent lisp and hacking skills and zero to none product thinking. The project is around for a while but the complete lack of ability to think about users or from the users perpective makes it a dead end
Note that while it suffered from featuritis at some point, the main guy reverted some of it after the last other contributor left: https://old.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/1m3kzv8/nyxt_400_prer...
Personally, I'll use and donate to it once it can run uBlock, not before.
I think there's a lack of understanding. If Nyxt is trying to be the emacs of web browsers, it's very much removed from the "product mindset", it's more about somehow coherent capabilities than a product with market and users. Kinda like linux.
This kind of articles / project is exactly why I love HN. I am not much a marketing person but have enough basics to understand that if something does not appeal to me, that's because I'm not the target and as a emacs fanboy this kind of tools 100% appeal to me.
These are not the target for Nyxt. Think about Emacs. Or, for vi/nvi/vim people, Luakit/Vimb.
Can you elaborate? In what ways have they failed their users?
By not having any form of content blocking for a long time (I lost track of the project, don't know what the current status is). The current web is too user-hostile to launch a browser without even basic stalking protection.
i agree but it hasnt stopped emacs or linux for that matter
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