Show HN: Composable (as in iGoogle, but modern) privacy-friendly new tab

Show HN: Composable (as in iGoogle, but modern) privacy-friendly new tab(anori.app)

95 points by OlegWock 2 years ago | 37 comments

I spent quite a lot of time working on this one over the last 1.5 years. It started as a small project for my personal use because I wanted to keep all my self-hosted services visible so I wouldn't forget they existed lol. Using a web page wasn't ideal because of the white flicker every time I opened a new tab, so I decided to make this into a browser extension. From that time on, it became a lot bigger and got some traction (which I'm very happy about).

It's made with React, but I tried to squeeze maximum performance (limited by my skills and desire to keep it somewhat readable, though) out of it. UI/UX was a big priority for me in this project, so I also tried to streamline it as much as possible and make Anori a joy to use. If you decide to try it, let me know how good I did!

Oh, and it's open source [1] and the process of adding new widgets is documented [2], so you can make your own!

[1]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori

[2]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT_AN...

LordDragonfang 2 years ago |

This is really cool, I'm definitely going to be using this. I love theming support. Some feedback:

1. The slider for the blur on the custom theme bg image should have some sort of label - I had no idea what it did until I tried it while trying to figure out why all the images I uploaded looked like blurry shit (my fault for picking images with a lot of detail, but hey)

2. For the time widget, there should be a 12-hr time option that omits the AM/PM. I know what half of the day I'm in, and I want the time as big as possible.

3. For that matter, let us resize the clock widget, and the rest of the widgets where feasible (top sites especially)

4. Bug: the iframe widget worked at first and then... just stopped displaying anything for me. Not even an iframe tag in the div. It's a github pages site of my own, so it shouldn't be blocked. (I'm using Edge on Windows 10)

5. If feasible, let us resize the page INSIDE that iframe to make it smaller, or at least hide the scrollbars.

6. A bunch of the substack feeds in the RSS just have "..." for the second (preview?) line. It'd be nice if I could hide those (Or have a mode in between default and "compact", since I want to see authors for each post in the feed)

7. Having humidity on the weather widget would be nice (also maybe default to F/mph if the locale is USA? :P)

8. For tab groups I'd like a (2x2?) grid of the favicons it contains, but I suppose I can use a custom icon for that.

Feature requests aside, this is actually really well put-together in general.

sneak 2 years ago | |

If you want time without AM/PM, use 24 hour time. If it is 23:00 then no time display should ever display 11:00 without a PM because it’s then lying because 11:00 with no AM/PM unambiguously denotes 11:00AM.

kergonath 2 years ago | | |

> If it is 23:00 then no time display should ever display 11:00 without a PM because it’s then lying because 11:00 with no AM/PM unambiguously denotes 11:00AM.

In one specific linguistic context. In others, 11:00 for 23:00 is perfectly fine and expected. Yes, it is ambiguous; no, it is not “lying”.

LordDragonfang 2 years ago | | |

This is such a baffling and hostile response to a request for a widget where the only purpose is to quickly tell time. I just want to be able to quickly tell whether it's past 5pm for my coworker without having to squint or do math in my head.

(Also, for what it's worth, you're objectively incorrect about it being lying; time is measured in 12 hour cycles in most locales, with further bits of information for time zone, before/after noon, day, month, and year. 23:00 is still "ambiguous", missing almost as much of that context, but it's not "lying" if you have the required context)

OlegWock 2 years ago | |

Thanks!

1. This issue is fixed (but not released yet)

4. Iframe unfortunately works quite unreliably, especially on Chrome. It uses declarativeNetRequest API and that seem to be hella unreliable for some reason. Usually disabling and then enabling Anori back fixes this issue.

5. If you mean iframe widget which open on click, you can 'detach' this window (button to the left of close button) and then you will be able to resize it or move around the screen. Ordinary iframe widget should be resizable as is (though scrollbar is shown inside the iframe itself, Anori doesn't have access there and can't do anything about it).

Thanks for the suggestions, some of them look really interesting!

S_Pineapple 2 years ago |

Absolutely fantastic. I was a big fan of iGoogle and this looks amazing. Going to give it a whirl definitely.

yesbut 2 years ago |

Funny seeing iGoogle mentioned. I have a friend that used to work on iGoogle, but he wasn't very good at JS. He asked me to assist with some code he was working on and I added a little signature comment to indicate that I worked on the code. They put the code into production wholesale and never removed my signature comment. It remained there until they shut it down.

Gwyndolin 2 years ago |

found this a neat concept so I'm giving it a try, first thing i did was add an embedded page to my email, which was not a good idea since it makes the new tab immediately open the web page lol.

ishandotpage 2 years ago |

Hey, this is pretty cool! I used to love iGoogle back in the day. Great job!

pimlottc 2 years ago |

Mind explaining a bit further for those who aren’t familiar with iGoogle?

OlegWock 2 years ago | |

Sorry! There is a screenshot on anori.app which will tell it better that my words I believe. But in short, Anori allows you to add different widgets to your new tab (bookmarks, world time, notes, etc) and organize them in layout you like.

There was similar product from Google 15 years ago which allowed to create personalized start page with different widgets, but it was closed long ago. I wasn't familiar with it first-hand, but I found it funny how similar concept Anori had to iGoogle when I finally learned about it

hn_throwaway_99 2 years ago | |

Sorry to "LMGTFY", but Wikipedia does have good info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle

Also a good list of alternatives when iGoogle was shut down in 2013, https://www.computerworld.com/article/1521275/there-s-no-pla...

squigz 2 years ago |

I've been looking to make my new tab page more useful, so this seems a good excuse :)

I've immediately noted a white flicker when opening a new tab though. This is unfortunately a big issue for me.

squigz 2 years ago | |

Also, is there a particular place you'd like feedback/suggestions? For now I'll add any thoughts I have to this comment:

- Display the widget type somewhere, maybe in the Edit Widget modal title

- The ability to adjust/disable the grid snapping would be cool

- Some simple color themes alongside the pictures

OlegWock 2 years ago | | |

Please open issue in the repo [1]! Currently I work mostly on bug fixes and simple features (don't have much time for pet projects now), but I use issues to keep track of everything.

> Some simple color themes alongside the pictures

You can create a custom theme and upload solid color picture as background.

[1]: https://github.com/OlegWock/anori/issues

whereismyacc 2 years ago | |

I've set HN as my new tab page for a while, and the white flicker is the only thing about it that annoys me. It's just the load time, I think. I wonder if there's a way to make it always keep an updated cache of it to load it instantly?

rolandog 2 years ago |

I loved the "Stupid walk for stupid mental health" task.

mrngm 2 years ago |

Thanks for the short trip down memory lane by mentioning iGoogle!

I wonder if I've still got some screenshots around from that time.

darekkay 2 years ago |

I've created another open-source project which serves a similar purpose [1]. Unfortunately, I haven't been actively working on it for some time (although still using it daily).

[1] https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard/

mrweasel 2 years ago |

It looks really nice, but I never understood the use case for start pages. Personally I just have "new tab/window" set to a about:blank. Then again I barely use bookmarks. Is start pages something that's an integral part of other people workflow?

eloisant 2 years ago | |

It was pretty popular before smartphones. Now that we already have all relevant information at our fingertips on phones, it's much less appealing.

toastercat 2 years ago |

This looks great. Does the calendar support CalDav?

OlegWock 2 years ago | |

Nope, currently it's very dummy calendar which just shows dates. I have vague plans to integrate it with Google calendar at least, but there is not ETA for that

cdchn 2 years ago |

I've been using Markdown New Tab for this for years and I'm completely in love with it https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/markdown-new-tab/de...

mog_dev 2 years ago | |

Neat ! Firefox version here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/markdown-new-...

JohnDeHope 2 years ago |

My current favorite here is start.me but I’ll give this a whirl.

redder23 2 years ago |

"Privacy Friendly" advertising with a screenshot with a bunch of Google services on it. The irony is hilarious.

OlegWock 2 years ago | |

On the screenshot there are couple of bookmarks and search widget. It's something user adds on their own, so you're free to not use those services (and even if you do Anori doesn't send any data to them anyway)

mog_dev 2 years ago |

Looks cool, but I wish it would let me use the search engine I configured (Kagi) instead of shoving Google down my throat.

OlegWock 2 years ago | |

Who shoves Google down your throat, though?

mog_dev 2 years ago | | |

This extension's default choice is Google, did you at least try it before commenting?