Today we’re shipping
@arcinternet
’s newest (& highly requested) feature: vertical split views!
Starting from its origins, this came from a personal need of viewing multiple canvas-based apps without sacrificing horizontal space 🌞
The
@browsercompany
performance pod is focused on getting Arc to feel f a s t 🏎
And early results are in! Our latest release makes opening the command bar 45% faster (and switching tabs 30%!)
Here are the p95 & p50 for the metrics we measured from initial to latest versions.
if there's one thing i've learned in building a browser, it's that there are tons of tiny details you have to get right for a delightful experience.
While we're improving so much at
@browsercompany
, I stumbled upon this little gem in Chrome with status text and have to admire
it's been 1 year since joining
@browsercompany
. leaving
@Facebook
wasn't easy for me at the time, but this has been the most transformative year of my career, and I can't imagine doing anything differently
This feature represents one more step in our journey to innovate on how you can view & experience the web.
✨ Our dream is for Arc to be an intuitive canvas where you can place content however it best fits your workflow ✨
(+ we're hiring!)
With time to spare one week, I prototyped it over a few days --
and low and behold when we gave
@arcinternet
a sneak peek, *a lot* of you also wanted this feature!
Today we’re launching the first version of Arc for iOS.
This is the next chapter of Arc being your home on the internet, wherever you are.
More below on some of my favorite details… 🧵
Meet the
@browsercompany
!
We're building a new web browser – equipped for the way we use the internet in 2020:
If you think about it, our web browsers still do what they did twenty-five years ago. Feels like it's time for a change!
Here's our story...
at facebook/instagram, i never felt that my day-to-day work was existentially important to the company (understandably). i feel that every day at
@browsercompany
. its nice
So we set about getting it shipped - no easy feat in a browser, even one in Swift.
Challenge
#1
was breaking all the assumptions that splits are horizontal in Arc.
We represent split view visually in *many* places — which now all needed to render splits in multiple orientations
it’s rare that a single piece of software can transform how you think about the internet but the folks
@browsercompany
really have created something special
Challenge
#2
was adapting Arc’s custom split view container to account for multiple orientations.
To do this, we re-rewrote the layout logic and despite its complexity, it all boiled down to...
one simple enum
My 18 yr old self would never have predicted that the “how we work” part of a company requires just as much thought and attention as the actual product you build
Challenge
#3
was finding an intuitive interaction for creating a vertical split.
Our split view drag & drop interactions require finely tuned “drop targeting” logic to make it feel like Arc can accept a drop wherever you had in mind. So we added more!
This next milestone, we'll keep chipping away but also shift focus to memory, battery & CPU. Shoutout to the pod working hard on this
@adamstern_
,
@j_l_kelly
,
@thisIsSebM
, Callan, and Andrew. Seb said it best, we just won't stop!
And there’s more to do. Last milestone we focused on improving the speed of interactions by:
- Shipping metrics to understand our baselines + impact (e.g. user interaction to expected visual update)
- Improving our architecture and refactoring features to be more efficient
We took this concept further, offering six custom app icons that come bundled with a default theme.
@jedimody
built a beautiful dock to switch between them (👀 those icon reflections!)
@pixelDahn
Hi there. I'm an engineer at Browser Co. Sorry to hear you had perf issues on Arc. Would love to know if there were specific scenarios that are slow? We're trying to improve! And was it on Mac or Windows?
hello i just moved to new york (!) and don’t really know anyone so if anybody wants to be friends* lmk
*will also settle for periodically texting each other “let’s get coffee soon!” and we never get coffee
@technologypoet
Hi! I'm an engineer at Browser Co. Would love to know where perf has been painful in Arc. We're continuing to work on improving and any feedback would be helpful
looked up the original unicode consortium proposal and "person with folded hands" had alternative suggestions of "sorry" and "please" 🤔
i have too much time on my hands 🙏
@Anandumbb
thanks for the info. We'd love to setup a call with one of our performance engineers if you're available. Someone from
@ArcMembership
should reach out in your DMs! We'd love to resolve this issue for you
@Anandumbb
Hello, I'm an engineer on Arc. Sorry you're experiencing this. Does this issue reproduce in Incognito windows as well? Also, have you by any chance updated any flags in arc://flags ?
@benadam11
@brianmichel
@browsercompany
Hey Ben! To add on to Brian's suggestion, you can also click on the URL bar to modify the existing page too! Effectively the same as ⌘L in case you want a mouse entry point
@jacobolenick
Hey Jacob, I'm an engineer at Browser Company. Sorry to hear about your issues. DMing you to get more info and hopefully resolve this issue for you
@ElianCodes
@rickbutterfield
Hi I’m an engineer at browser company. Sorry about this. It’s is on our radar. Unfortunately you will need to disable ad block on YouTube for it to run smoothly for now