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▲Nyxt: The Emacs-like web browserlwn.net
117 points by signa11 4 days ago | 28 comments
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groceryheist 18 hours ago [-]
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.
smartmic 16 hours ago [-]
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.

groceryheist 2 minutes ago [-]
I use vimium now, but I think with an emacs-based browser I would be better at using the advanced features.
ijidak 36 minutes ago [-]
Plug for vimium. I find it hits the keyboard sweet spot for me while browsing.
deadlypointer 17 hours ago [-]
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.
hnlmorg 15 hours ago [-]
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.

drob518 2 hours ago [-]
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.
iLemming 18 hours ago [-]
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.
tetris11 16 hours ago [-]
I would use it if it supported ublock origin
camdroidw 15 hours ago [-]
And umatrix
yapyap 26 minutes ago [-]
neat blogpost but the otherwise uninvasive ad breaks the page width on iOS at least
ironmagma 17 hours ago [-]
So now we have Next, Nuxt, and Nyxt. What’s noxt?
lelanthran 14 hours ago [-]
> 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.

drdec 2 hours ago [-]
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

benchly 13 hours ago [-]
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.
bigfishrunning 9 hours ago [-]
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...
pritambaral 4 hours ago [-]
> 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.

skeezyboy 12 hours ago [-]
>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

smartmic 14 hours ago [-]
Nzxt.
anthk 16 hours ago [-]
Ironically the Guix build it's broken.
izhak 17 hours ago [-]
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
a-french-anon 15 hours ago [-]
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.

jnpnj 17 hours ago [-]
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.
mickael-kerjean 16 hours ago [-]
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.
anthk 16 hours ago [-]
These are not the target for Nyxt. Think about Emacs. Or, for vi/nvi/vim people, Luakit/Vimb.
bowsamic 17 hours ago [-]
Can you elaborate? In what ways have they failed their users?
tremon 9 hours ago [-]
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.
skeezyboy 12 hours ago [-]
i agree but it hasnt stopped emacs or linux for that matter