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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Should, but doesn't. This is all there is:

"Sway allows you to arrange your application windows logically, rather than spatially. Windows are arranged into a grid by default which maximizes the efficiency of your screen and can be quickly manipulated using only the keyboard."

Sounds interesting. No screenshots, though. Just a big black box reading "No compatible source was found for this media." I guess it's trying to play a video? Why not have a video, and also images which are compatible with every single browser since Netscape?

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There is a video. Are you sure you aren't using Netscape? The video is webm, which is supported by all major browsers.

They may be using a browser that does not support vp9 such as safari or mobile browsers. Even if they support the container format webm, it does not mean that it supports all formats.

Sway doesn't run on macOS or mobile platforms.

We do live in a world where people browse the internet on other machines than their primary workstation, I would even say many people browse hackernews when they are commuting or something like it.

Indeed. I run Linux and FreeBSD on all of my computers but the vast majority of the time I spend on HN I am browsing using my iPhone. On the couch, when I am walking between places, during breaks etc.

MDN says desktop Safari supports vp8/vorbis in webm, which should be compatible with the sway project's values, but mobile Safari doesn't support any free video codecs from what I understand.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_...

What should be done in that case? posting a video in some ancient codec (VP9 is from 2012) to be 100% sure that everyone --sans Lynx users-- can play it?

The video is pretty good.

If you want to make it even easier for people, you could try a set of "tumblr-style" extremely short animations/videos, 2 seconds each, without sound, and with a written description of each. For example, you can have one for opening qutebrowser, one for opening a terminal, one for switching between tiling/tabbed, one for resizing tiles, etc. This way, people would get a good overview of features at a glance without having to sit through a two-and-a-half minute video. It is also better for hearing impaired people or people not good at listening to English.

btw I run Sway on my laptop and it's really smooth and a joy to use. Thanks so much for this project!

Firefox Mobile? I’m seeing a black box too.

There's a short explanation and a very nice 2 minute video demonstrating how it works. I think expecting people to be able to view a webm video is pretty reasonable.

Reasonable? Maybe. But the web is not restricting anyone to one file format. Why not just add some fallbacks to be even more compatible?

Because that would be more work. Why not switch to a browser which supports webm/VP9?

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