from Hacker News

Kristall – a browser without support for CSS/JS/WASM or graphical websites

by tsujp on 1/12/23, 7:50 AM with 180 comments

  • by danShumway on 1/12/23, 10:00 AM

    I have nitpicks and criticisms about Gemini, and it's not a protocol that I use very often (if at all), but I also don't see the harm in it. It seems to have a pretty strong grasp of what its goals are and (minor criticisms aside) it does a decent job of accomplishing those goals. Nowadays I tend to compare Gemini more to things like Pico-8 or Markdown rather than think of it as a web competitor -- and as a result I've started to develop a lot more respect for the project. It's not designed to replace the web or revolutionize how people share content, it's designed to be a useful medium for the community that uses it.

    All that to say, I'm not sure I understand the criticism I'm seeing here. A Lynx-like browser with proper graphical mouse support and a couple of extras built in is a fine project. And support for Gemini/Markdown gives the browser a clear use-case beyond HTML that means it'll be practically useful for some people; it's not just an experiment in failing to render most websites because it doesn't support CSS, there's a category of content that you know will work, and a community of people making that content.

    That's assuming it works well, but if it does -- I don't know, seems like a cool project? It's good to have more Gemini clients.

  • by BizarreByte on 1/12/23, 2:11 PM

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen HN react so negatively to a project, but I think that has to do with the image people have of what a “browser” is.

    Kristall isn’t very useful for HTTP even though it supports the protocol. That said its goal is the “small internet” and very basic sites on HTTP will work, which is is inline with that goal. Some have complained even Google search doesn’t work, but Google search doesn’t fall under the umbrella of “small internet”.

    When it comes to Gopher and Gemini it’s far more useful, but only a small community of people use either in 2023 so that’s not going to appeal to most people here, even though that’s the primary use case of the project.

  • by hooby on 1/12/23, 10:21 AM

    As someone who has come to prefer viewing web-pages in reader-mode rather than their default-layouts, I really love the idea of having a leaner, more minimalist web. Just pure content without all the bloat...

    How have I never heard about this before?

  • by __void on 1/12/23, 9:02 AM

    kristall is along with geminaut and lagrange, the perfect triptych for wandering the small web! until recently they were the only ones to pass (almost) torture tests [1]! highly recommended

    [1] gemini://gemini.conman.org/test/torture/

  • by kgbcia on 1/12/23, 1:04 PM

    I'm a fan of Lynx. React and angular have destroyed the semantic web.

  • by jug on 1/12/23, 7:20 PM

    I think it would be more flexible to instead of Geminispace and developing a browser without JS support to enforce “smolnet” would simply be to define a HTMLite standard with a subset where e.g. the entire script tag or img tag is not part of it.

    Then you have HTMLite verifiers (probably the simplest thing to verify!) to ensure a site is compliant and voila you need no Gemini protocol, only simple HTTP/1 and you can also render it in anything from Firefox 1.0 to Kristall to Lynx to Chrome 100+. As a bonus now you would also have very mature accessibility support thanks to modern browsers.

    We already have the tools for smolnet. We don’t need to enforce it by removing features. We just need to define what little it should be.

    Having said that, all the power to people who love tinkering this way instead. I just think it will be a hindrance to broader adoption and wasting a bit of flexibility and reach (in terms of both software and people).

  • by pepa65 on 1/12/23, 12:41 PM

    Instant fail: does not zoom. Unusable except if the font scaling is just right for you.

    Lagrange (cross-platform) looks much better, and does zoom. In the terminal is nice too, I like Amfora (Golang single binary).

  • by bambax on 1/12/23, 9:53 AM

    Hacker News on Kristall: https://imgur.com/a/lhq8iCw

    http, https are disabled by default, they need to be enabled in File/Settings/Generic.

    I was hoping it would be a single executable but (on Windows) it's 56 files: 1 exe, 33 dedicated dlls, 22 translation files.

    Google Search does not work, it's impossible to get past the cookie consent page: https://imgur.com/a/daGMASS (Same thing happens if one tries to put the search words in the url.)

    DuckDuckGo doesn't display a search box either, just links about itself: https://imgur.com/a/UMLKiOv

    No search box on Bing either; it's possible to access a page like https://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker+news for example, but the SERP is wrong and says "no results" whatever the words searched : https://imgur.com/a/J2Y4CU6

    The modern web is hard to use with simple tools.

  • by est on 1/12/23, 3:09 PM

    I am ok with no CSS/JS/WASM, but no graphics? This is wrong on metaphysics level. Like Socrates believed, writing was not an effective means of communicating knowledge

  • by dig1 on 1/12/23, 11:09 AM

    lynx, links, eww (from Emacs) and edbrowse [1] entered the chat ;) Especially edbrowse, which I find weirdly powerful.

    [1] https://edbrowse.org/

  • by Shared404 on 1/12/23, 4:53 PM

    If the dev is reading these, just know that a lot of us here _do_ quite like this. I'm in the "market" for a small internet browser these days, and this is one I very well may get good use out of.

  • by ivanhoe on 1/12/23, 9:05 AM

    Does it know any new tricks that lynx can't do?

  • by dusted on 1/12/23, 9:37 AM

    What's this for only gemini? It seems to not support http, https or gopher even though it kinda mention them ? Also seems to just segfault when loading a gemini site..

  • by noduerme on 1/12/23, 10:08 AM

    You know when sometimes it's just the humility vs hubris with the way something is presented, that inclines you toward liking or hating it?

  • by tete on 1/12/23, 6:00 PM

    Not a fan of Gemini for various reason, but this browser seems like a really cool project. And browsing the other projects, like LoLa. They seem really cool too. And I really love the style of the whole website. Nicely done!

  • by rossdavidh on 1/12/23, 2:32 PM

    This is interesting, but what is really missing from the non-graphical (and non CSS/JS/WASM) web is a good search engine. Or, if there is one that returns only these kinds of results, I don't know it.

  • by robinsonb5 on 1/12/23, 11:26 PM

    I've thought for a while that the world needs a new simplified web, based on something like markdown but properly standardised. I'm stoked to discover that something similar actually exists!

  • by moron4hire on 1/12/23, 3:24 PM

    I'm quite pleased with how my personal site renders in it. Other than my navigation menu not showing up in quite the right place (which is definitely on me), everything else flows very nicely.

  • by napolux on 1/12/23, 9:21 AM

    HN is the only place on the Internet where I hear about Gemini. Excluding Gemini itself.

    I'm all in for a simpler Internet, but on HTTP(S), with images and other media if needed

  • by blackhaz on 1/12/23, 1:57 PM

    The scrolling direction for some reason is inverted. If I grab the scrollbar and drag it down with a mouse, it drags up. Is this made for an iPad?

  • by guilhas on 1/12/23, 10:05 PM

    For me this is the future of the productive web, documents sharing. Forget the smart apps

    The only thing missing to make it perfect is XUL addons

  • by edf13 on 1/12/23, 9:02 AM

    Like Lynx then?

  • by opan on 1/12/23, 8:37 PM

    Appears to be packaged in both guix and nix, which is surprisingly not mentioned on the website.

  • by genjii931 on 1/12/23, 10:04 AM

    So, basically Gopher.

  • by nickdothutton on 1/12/23, 9:01 PM

    My kingdom for a non corporate browser.

  • by bawolff on 1/12/23, 9:17 AM

    > TLS with TOFU...

    So also known as TLS with support for evesdropping. I doubt even an expert would be able to browse the web securely in that model.

  • by abhijeetpbodas on 1/12/23, 10:49 AM

    Interesting that their website itself uses CSS: view-source:https://kristall.random-projects.net/style.css

  • by meerita on 1/12/23, 9:03 AM

    Like Lynx then?

  • by 867-5309 on 1/12/23, 10:02 AM

    >Crossplatform all the way

    excluding mobile platforms

  • by ho_schi on 1/12/23, 9:53 AM

    Like Links[1] then?

    Really. I want Epiphany and Firefox to allow me turn off JavaScript like I can allow/disallow {Audio, Video, Webcam, Location, Notifications...}.

    The single wrong decision was following Google into that JS-Show. JS has it rationals, I'm using it as programmer sometimes. But JS was consider harmful for the reasons! Google intention was using JS for it's so called web-application/single-page-application to lure users into the cloud. And they opened the opportunity for a bloated web with user tracking via JS, bitcoin miners via JS, animating all kind of elements with JS and so on. Result? Fan spins up, laptop battery discharged.

    [1] http://links.twibright.com/

    PS: I bet Steve Jobs would have banned entire Electron from MacOS. For same reasons Flash was banned.

  • by ianpurton on 1/12/23, 9:27 AM

    What's the problem that this fixes?

  • by willt1979 on 1/12/23, 9:06 AM

    Did someone forget to fill out the "why" section?

  • by webmobdev on 1/12/23, 8:39 AM

    A browser^, at a minimum, should support HTML + CSS (+1 if it supports the latest specification).

    Edit: ^A modern browser

  • by reneberlin on 1/12/23, 9:13 AM

    It will need an adblocker.

  • by warinukraine on 1/12/23, 2:14 PM

    I remember there was an ascii-only browser called Lynx (I think?). What happened to that?

  • by Julesman on 1/12/23, 3:53 PM

    Because reasons. lol