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by parhamn 1870 days ago
FYI, There is a really cool design project here: https://refresh.study/ that also explored the 'playlist' feature.

I've been building a browser the past year (https://synth.app), and have learned a few things from it (including implementing media players like this). Really makes you realize how little our browsers are currently doing for us.

2 comments

I can see a lot of interesting new ideas in Synth! "Smart Bookmarks & History" sound great on their own but "Auto-Roam" is what nailed my own itch. Are you still working on it?
Thanks -- Yes, full time! It's been the only browser installed on my computer the last few months. We have a bunch of friends using it exclusively but are still polishing a things for a broader release.
Sorry if this was asked already but is Synth chromium based?
No problem. It is. I an curious how you feel about that. The engine is a bit agnostic of the rendering layer (we will have a similarly powerful iOS app at some point too).
I dislike it because chromium is almost a monoculture and Google controls it. I’m not diametrically opposed to chromium based browsers but I might be more hesitant to switch.
I was excited for a moment, when I saw that someone was working on a new browser, then I admit that I felt a bit disappointed to read this. I think we need more rendering engines out there, or at least wider distribution of the current ones to get chromium‘s market share down.
I like this if it gives me access to my chrome extensions- can’t live without some of them. Non-chromium is a non-starter because of this
I generally oppose anything Chromium, because it's ushering in a return to the shitty days of "this site is best viewed in Microsoft Explorer."

But... not sure what an independent developer is to do about that.

Firefox is just as (or more) open source as Chromium. If I wanted to fork a browser that’s where I’d start.