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Comment by fotbr | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with a web browser being just a web browser?

Nothing, but we long crossed that threshold. The browser has largely usurped the operating system itself for end users (with the nasty side effect that you're no longer relying on self-contained desktop applications, but on entire networks of machines even for the most trivial of tasks), and according to Ohloh/Openhub Chromium is almost as big as the Linux kernel, just a million lines short.

I think this is the problem with the "hacker" community.

They assume because they are happy relying on a browser and who knows how many webapps to get the job that the whole world is too.

Ironically, Phoenix, as Firefox was originally named, was initially created as a slim alternative to the then bloated Mozilla browser. I'm sure we'll see history repeat itself in a few years.

In fairness, it was created as an alternative to the Mozilla Suite, so-named because it was a browser plus a full email+newsgroup client (now Thunderbird) plus a full calendar client (now the Thunderbird extension Lightning, previously the now-defunct standalone calendar Sunbird) plus an IRC client all in one suite.

You forgot the HTML editor, complete with code to publish via FTP. ;)

I did indeed forget about the HTML editor, thanks! It was later split off into the now-defunct Nvu as part of Linspire and then forked to the now-defunct KompoZer.

And Opera, pre-Chromium, included a competent email client, newsgroup reader, FTP client, IRC client, and web browser, all inside a ~4 MB download.

And damn, it was good.

Back in the day when you didn't have support for FTP in Windows (XP), you needed IRC just once to visit some obscure chat room or you downloaded torrents only every once in a while, Opera could be all this for you. No need to download stuff for one-time use.

Gone now though, along with magnificent Dev tools, mouse gestures and tab groups and previews. Had to switch to Firefox (not to say its bad, its quite good, but I liked Opera's experience better).

Oh man, i forgot about the torrent client.

Right, cycles. Firefox was really a slimmer Mozilla, but the web world has changed and Firefox is a vessel for new usages. I wonder what it's descendant will look like though.

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