Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

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I've been experimenting with creating single-site browsers[1] for all websites I routinely visit, effectively removing navigational queries from search engines; between that and Claude being able to answer technical questions, it's remarkable how rarely I even use browsers for day-to-day tasks anymore (as in web views with tabs and url bars).

We've been using the web (as in documents interconnected with links between servers) for a great number of tasks it was never quite designed to solve, and the result has always been awkward. It's been very refreshing to move away from the web browser-search engine duo for these things.

For one, and it took me a while to notice what was off, but there are like no ads anymore, anywhere. Not because I use adblockers, but because I simply don't end up directed to places where there are ads. And let me tell you, if you've been away from that stuff for a while, and then come back, holy crap what a dumpster fire.

The web browser has been center stage for a long while, coasting on momentum and old habits, but it turns out it doesn't need to be, and if you work to get rid of it, you get a better and more enjoyable computing experience. Given how much better this feels, I can't help but feel we're in for a big shift in how computers are used.

[1] You can just launch 'chrome --app=url' to make one. Or use Electron if you want to customize the UI yourself.

As a serious computer user getting on for 25 years using text based search tools I've long made various "single-site" tools. A big inspiration way back was Surfraw [1], originally created by Julian Assange. Reality is, most of us use a small number of websites regularly. nearly all the info I want to touch is three keystrokes away on the command-line or from within emacs.

When search died, a few years ago practically now, I was still teaching a level-7 Research Methods course. The universities literally did not notice that all of the advice we gave students was totally obsolete and that it was not really possible to conduct academic research that way.

Research today is very much more like it was in the pre-interent era. You need to curate and keep in mind a set of reliable sources and personal, private collections.

Had the misfortune of needing to spend a week using a standard browser and sites like Google. It was beyond shocking. What I found I can only describe as a wastescape, a war zone, a bombed-out favela with burned out cars, overflowing sewers, piles of rubble and dead dogs lying in gutters.

My first thought was kinda, "Oh sweet Jesus Christ, what happened to my Internet?", and the very next one was "How does anyone get anything done now?" How does the economy still function? And of the course the answers are "They don't" and "It doesn't".

I think this is a really serious situation. There's simply no way that as "knowledge workers", scientists, or whatever people call us now, we can be as competitive as we were 10 or 20 years ago given the colossal degradation of our tools. We have to stop this foolish self-deception that things are "getting better". Google were a company that created free search. Well done. But that was then. We remain stuck in this strange mythology that advertising companies like Google and other enshitified BigTech are a net asset to the economy. Surely they're a vast parasitical drain and need digging into the ground so the rest of us can get on with something resembling progress?

[1] http://surfraw.org/

While I am glad that you seem to have found a new workflow that you like, your description strikes me as a personal experience.

I am aware that a lot of people use searches as a form of navigation, but it’s also very common that people use bookmarks, speed dial, history, pinned tabs, and other browser features instead of searching. My Firefox is configured to not do online searches when I type into the address bar, instead I get only history suggestions. This setup allows for quick navigation, and does not require any steps to set up new pages that I need to visit.

What I want to say that while you seem to imply that you found a different pattern of use that many people will soon migrate to, I think these patterns have always been popular. People discover and make use of them as needed.

It’s also strange that you put such a negative sentiment on interconnected documents. Do you not realize how important these connections were for you to be able to reach the point you are at now? How else would you have found the things that are useful to you? By watching ads?

Search engines are also … really not really a good example of the strengths of the interconnected web, as they are mostly a one way thing. Consider instead a Hacker News discussion about a blog, and some other blog linking to that discussion, creating these interconnected but still separate communities and documents.

> It’s also strange that you put such a negative sentiment on interconnected documents. Do you not realize how important these connections were for you to be able to reach the point you are at now? How else would you have found the things that are useful to you? By watching ads?

This is specifically in the context of getting things done, not e.g. reading an interesting article for the enjoyment, but as an indirect means accomplish a task.

> I've been experimenting with creating single-site browsers[1] for all websites I routinely visit, effectively removing navigational queries from search engines

Surely it would make more sense to use bookmarks?

The bookmark interface on modern browsers is pretty awkward to access. It's a bigger upfront effort to set up an SSB, but they significantly streamline the user experience once they're set up in a way that aligns with what you want to do.

Web Browsers have a sort of inner platform tendency where they roll their own window management, and it just gets very messy and integrates incredibly poorly with the window management of the operating system.

You can open CI in your browser to see how your build is progressing, and in the same window, with a few keypresses, check your private email and then go buy new tires for your car, file your taxes, and after that go watch some porn.

Web browsers are streamlining an undesirable type of context switching: These are all tasks from separate domains, and I don't understand why it would be desirable that all of these things are easily accessible from the same window at the same time.

Having dedicated launchers opening specialized windows allows for a sort of workspace mise-en-place that makes interacting with the computer much more focused and deliberate. Each tool has its place and function.

While I understand the utility of separating contexts and making “distractions” from the current context harder to access. Doesn’t better integration into your system window management kinda defeat this separation again? Is there a significant difference in having a porn tab open or a porn windows open?

It’s great if this separation works for you and your current setup, but what does prevent future you from building muscle memory to quickly switch back to porn when you want to procrastinate your taxes?

You can add friction when switching contexts using the desktop environment. This is largely impossible with browsers since they largely aren't meaningfully customizable. Opening a tab and navigating to a website is generally speaking something like 4-6 keypresses. On a desktop you can for example add more clicks by put all your launchers in a folder structure grouped by task.

Though I actually set up different user accounts for different tasks, then only add shortcuts for the tools that are in any way relevant for the given context. This creates deliberate friction when context switching, and requires upfront intent when selecting what I do. It's not that anything is off limits per se, but all undesirable state changes are made awkward. I simply can't check my email from my programming account, or check the build status on my social media account.

If I want to go from monitoring a build on CI to e.g. paying the bills, I'd have to log out from the work account and shut everything down, then log into the business account, and open the bank SSB. This makes doing these particular tasks as easy as ever, but directionless task switching a serious pain in the ass.

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