Ben Tossell

Fluid Browser - Transparent floating browser built for multitasking

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Zach Rabie
Much much better than Helium in my opinion.
Ryan J A Murphy
@zackrabie Why? (Not a critical "why?" as in "you're wrong", but a curious "why?" as in "please elaborate! I am interested in this comparison")
Zach Rabie
@ryanjamurphy Fluid Browser includes the URL bar when active along with controls for 'back', 'forward' and 'refresh'. It also has a Favorites & Recents section which is handy. Opacity controls are included the URL Bar as well. I also like that you can click on the browser window to make the app active again when the opacity is 80% or higher. Once you put it down to 70% the window gets locked when you click outside of it and the only way to make the app active again is clicking it in your dock. This is handy if you want to click on things beneath the Fluid Browser window. Another thing I noticed was on YouTube, the videos actually play full screen. On Helium, you get a lot of whitespace around YouTube videos. Fluid has lots of attention to tiny details that add up to make the experience much better. Hope that helps!
Julian Ozen
Can I ask why you called your browser Fluid? Seems a little similar to http://fluidapp.com/
Grant Wilkinson
Hey Product Hunt! Grant here. Fluid Browser is built as a floating browser to be able to multitask and browse / watch media right alongside your work. When active you can enter URLs and once you click away everything else hides being simple and minimalistic. You can have your browser be transparent and work behind it as well as view .mov, image files and PDF's for work. I would love for you all to try it out and let me know what you think! Happy to send codes to the community! I am a college student and having a laptop only gives you so much screen size. Fluid lets me watch youtube videos while working or tutorials while programming (future Fluid Updates!) Right now we support Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and Youku videos for full edge to edge viewing. Excited to hear how you all will use it! Please let me know if you have any questions. Also we have a chrome extension that allows you to send URL's to open in Fluid. You can get it here: https://chrome.google.com/websto...
Joost Schuur
@grantfwilkinson1 I noticed that if I Cmd tab to Fluid, I can't use a hotkey to activate the address bar and paste in a new URL. This would be a reoccurring workflow for me: Grab the browser's current URL (usually a YouTube video via keyboard hotkeys) and then shift over to Fluid to paste it in there. I also didn't like that Fluid opened up a new window whenever I used the Chrome extension. That seems like something that should be a setting somewhere (probably set to off by default). When multiple windows were open, there didn't seem to be a hotkey to cycle through them so that I could close the current one with the usual Cmd-W.
Joost Schuur
@grantfwilkinson1 One more gripe: When I open up a YouTube (via the Chrome extension or the address bar), it doesn't focus on the page, so I can't use YouTube's 'k' keyboard shortcut (or space if the video itself is in focus) to start playing it.
Chema
only for Mac? :O
Grant Wilkinson
@deambulando Working on a PC version, ill add you to the list to be the first to know :)
Chema
@grantfwilkinson1 linux user here, why everyone forgets us? not cool kids ;)
Grant Wilkinson
@andym_dc Yes! You can view pretty much any link that you would in a normal browser. Some links, like youtube videos for example, are modified to view edge to edge. The more responsive the website the better, however you can stretch the browser to any size.
Grant Wilkinson
@joostschuur Those are some really great points for improvement! I will be sure to add the new window option with the chrome extension as a setting as well as improve the overall tabbing settings and shortcut abilities. Thanks for the feedback!
Grant Wilkinson
@ryanmac Yes! I love Helium and @jadengeller's work. Fluid takes the idea of a floating browser and adds the UI top bar for easy navigation as well as have a favorites/history view. We also have a chrome extension to send URL's to Fluid for easy viewing. You can get it here: https://chrome.google.com/websto...
Grant Wilkinson
@the_jozen_one Good question. I was wanting to go for something that brought in the idea of seamless and fluid multitasking while you worked. Like how it easily incorporated itself into my workflow. I make sure to reference it as Fluid Browser as much as possible for the distinction. I am familiar with Fluid app as well, thanks!
Zach Rabie
Any plans to support .mp4 videos in the future?
Andrew Mutavdzija
Can you pull up regular websites as well?
cruzheres
IT´s greatting!!
Benny V
Is there anything like this for Windows?
Elizabeth
Literally just said "oh my god yes" outloud at work when I got about 3 seconds deep into the promo video. SOLD. @tapengine @bentossell
Victor Tatai

This does not exist any longer.

Pros:

This does not exist any longer.

Cons:

This does not exist any longer.