Board Browser, a new browser concept
Posted by supermestr@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 45 comments

Hello friends, how are you?
Have you ever used Figma or Trello and thought:
โWhat if I could browse the web with the same freedom as a creative board?โ
Thatโs exactly what inspired the creation of Board Browser โ a browser that combines the visual flexibility of a board with the power of a modern web browser.
๐น Drag tabs freely across the screen
๐น Create multiple boards to organize your projects, topics, or interests
๐น Customize your experience with favorites, shortcuts, and more
The project is still in early alpha, but it already offers a clear glimpse of whatโs coming.
๐ป Linux alpha version is already available and up to date
๐ช Windows alpha version is available, with an update coming this Friday or Monday
Want to follow the development or join the community?
๐ย r/BoardBrowser
Happy browsing, everyone! ๐
__Myrin__@reddit
you can do this with any normal browser by dragging the tab of screen
supermestr@reddit (OP)
In fact this would be more or less the concept of Trello and Figma, you can use both screens created in the board at the same time
sapirus-whorfia@reddit
What does it mean to use both screens at the same time? I can only click one point in the screen at a time, and I usually only want to write text onto one place at a time. Do you mean like play two videos?
supermestr@reddit (OP)
The screens inside the board, when you open the browser you have a board and then you add items and can reposition them within that board
sapirus-whorfia@reddit
I see. Is there an advantage for doing this over just opening multiple windows?
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Yes, my friend, especially with the painting mode you can doodle on web pages, under notes or checklists and even under the board itself. Then you can make mind maps, presentation diagrams, or simple doodles for you to take a print out of, all in an integrated way, without having to take a printout and then scribble in an image editing program.
sapirus-whorfia@reddit
Good! If I may give adive: you should write that part in the post's description, and make it clear up front when you post about the project again. I think "this is just opening many windows" will be a common thought for a lot of people, but knowing that there are advantages makes the project more attractive.
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Great advice my friend, I'm going to do that ๐
lonelyroom-eklaghor@reddit
think of this as an analogy between bars in taskbars vs 'whatever gnome-shell shows'.
you pull the window tabs in a normal browser, and it goes to a new window.
You pull this thing, it's a whole different experience.
branbushes@reddit
Bro essentially made a window manager
supermestr@reddit (OP)
The Windows and Mac people love it considering that this doesn't exist for these operating systems, niri style and others hahaha ๐๐
mailboy11@reddit
Rectangle is a free app on Mac. And there are many more
Shoxx98_alt@reddit
GlazeWM and komorebi exist
imbev@reddit
This is an interesting idea. Do you have a git repository?
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Yes I do my friend ๐
https://gitlab.com/ricardoca/board-browser
imbev@reddit
Thanks
You should remove the zip files from the repo and add an open source license - https://choosealicense.com/
supermestr@reddit (OP)
The zips are not "physically" in the repository, they are in gitlab's lfs, so gitlab shows it as if it were from the repository but with the lfs tag ๐
Any-Ad-5662@reddit
We know... The issue is software distribution should not live in VCS
tamachine-dg@reddit
I'm going to go against the grain here and say this isn't inherently a bad idea. Could be an interesting productivity tool down the line.
precooled05@reddit
As long as it isn't chromium
AaronDewes@reddit
It's literally an Electron app implemented in a single HTML file. Electron uses Chromium.
precooled05@reddit
Do yourself (and everyone else) a quick favour and do some research into the topic of "humour", thx.
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Hahahaha
Altruistic_Ad3374@reddit
just use new windows man
SEI_JAKU@reddit
This looks great. You could technically do this "manually" but uh, that sucks. This smooths that out a lot.
Apparently this was a really ancient Opera feature? Shame it's been neglected for so long then. Clearly it needs to be brought back.
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Thanks my friend,
Yeah, I didn't even know Opera had this layout hahaha :D
VoidDuck@reddit
Is this Windows 3.1?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Manager
whosdr@reddit
Neat. I did something like this with iframes in JavaScript back when I was 15.
It's terrible in practice.
ThomasLeonHighbaugh@reddit
Lol you are right about that, kiddo!
whosdr@reddit
As a data hoarder, I still have a screenshot of it somewhere.
Also thanks for making me feel old. :p
ThomasLeonHighbaugh@reddit
Um... sometimes ideas we have we should probably research and consider a little more since this idea isn't exactly new... or really all that great....
his is what I could with a desktop window manager of the stacking variety (or floating mode in AwesomeWM, or equivalents whatever they are for whatever you use), which doesn't require I use any specific set of widgets that I may or may not be able to export the data from and use elsewhere while I may or may not also have that data synced to a server that then spolls that information together and sells it to advertisers or to the government upon subpeona.
The biggest advantage possible here isn't even utilized because each window still has the bulk of the URL bar and controls on the limited viewport of the screen that here is being further divided into portions small enough to trigger mobile screen size CSS rules, which for real estate purposes should probably be universal at the top of the browser changing to the controls of the focused window like macOS' menubar at the top of the screen. This is why I have ever explored creating a browser window splitting userchrome.js script but found that for my needs, unsetting the screen width limit of "Open in Sidebar" works even better.
RAMChYLD@reddit
Opera 3.2? Is that you?
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Wow, I've never seen this old browser before
RAMChYLD@reddit
That was opera before tabbed browsing became a thing. One of the things opera had going for it back in the day was that it was the first browser to have this โboard browsingโ interface (we used to call it MDI- multiple document interface). They threw it out circa Opera 5 to adopt the tabbed interface that everyone else was adopting.
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Hahahaha
clotifoth@reddit
Somebody finally invented AOL!
supermestr@reddit (OP)
I've already used hyprland, qtile and sway hahaha
clotifoth@reddit
What do you make of Python programmable GUI components for Qtile?
Do you think you could execute your vision making such widgets? I'm sure there's common use cases worth working on that fit with what you're doing.
0mnipresentz@reddit
What would make this super cool is the ability to run different browsers types in each board. This concept would be dope as stand alone OS. So you boot up your PC and this is all you see. Just run the most basic OS systems, file manager, network manager, and sound manager.
pizza_ranger@reddit
It's an interesting concept.
I would use if it had a tiling window mode (or tiling tab).
Glittering-Spite234@reddit
What if you could have a desktop within a desktop? People will surely love it!
79215185-1feb-44c6@reddit
This is terrible and looks like someone did something up in figma. Zero usability or consideration for real estate.
supermestr@reddit (OP)
Legal ๐
precooled05@reddit
Figma nuts
Sowgro@reddit
MDI guis will always be a bad idea