Re:Show HN: Cloud browser – headless Chrome and image maps
by epitactic on Wednesday March 13, 2019 @03:39PM
(#19382788)
Sanitizing the DOM is another option, but the main problem I was trying to avoid by taking screenshots is the arms race between the cloud browser and websites, as also seen with ad blockers. A static screenshot in contrast is "up" a level, agnostic to the complex details of rendering an HTML5 website.
Another inspiration is image boards such as 4chan, where screenshots are a very common means of sharing information, including articles on websites, or even tweets. Even though it may not be technically ideal, and annotated text seems like it would be more efficient, in practice images as the lowest-common-denominator seem to be a reasonably effective format for sharing information.
On the other hand, if someone does come up with a true "browser in browser" implementation like you propose, I would be very interested in trying it out. Could be a promising idea, but a lot of work to get right.
Re:Show HN: Cloud browser – headless Chrome and image maps
by Mister_Snuggles on Sunday March 10, 2019 @12:15PM
(#19352565)
On the surface this reminds me of Opera Turbo[0], but a lot of the details are different. Opera Turbo still seems to rely on the browser to do a lot of what you're suggesting the server should do.
So why not just sanitise the DOM? Embed images. Remove script before sending. Add an event listener to send all events back to your server. User clicks, your server emulates and sends back a DOM diff. You'd need to do more work for things like :hover (et al) but it all seems more sustainable than sending full on rasters.