I think you've heard this a thousand times by now; "We spend most of our time on the web browser, yet nothing has changed." And then a "revolutionary" product comes out that puts our links & tabs collapsed on the side, with some extra features. Magical, right :)?
Well, we tried a lot of these products, and we also tried building one ourselves about 8years ago. But we felt like no UI can handle the same kind of organization our desktop can, and that's when the idea first came to our mind ~5years ago. For the past year, we worked on the side to build the MVP you see today. But along these years, a lot of thoughts kept popping up, and that's why this product has an OS in it's name (it's still cooking :).
Unlike other desktop-like products that are accessible on the browser, Sava OS is not only built and made to run natively on the web browser, but it actually has some useful features to help with your browsing management - and that's only the beginning.
There's still a lot to consider when it comes to shaping a modern, desktop-like UI that meets today's needs.. We’ve got some exciting ideas and aim to go beyond the traditional approach.
We would really love to hear your take on this.
> a modern, desktop-like UI that meets today's needs
What are "today's needs"? Why does the standard desktop interaction paradigm not work with them? Why does "move it into the browser" solve the problem?
> it actually has some useful features to help with your browsing management
I can see some potentially-interesting features in the demo GIFs, but they don't make it clear why I'd want them through a desktop-style interface. Why not as just a browser extension or similar? What does the desktop paradigm provide that's a meaningful enhancement for the end user and not just a tech showcase?
> And then a "revolutionary" product comes out that puts our links & tabs collapsed on the side, with some extra features. Magical, right :)?
It's a bit overdone, sure. I won't disagree with that. But why does it keep happening?
imho it happens because the standard tab setup of "put all the tabs at the top of the window" had obvious shortcomings for a meaningful-enough group of users, and moving it to the side -- be that as a list, a tree, ... -- had benefits that those users appreciated, and that the more-average user may also find benefit in. Tabbed browsing had a significant benefit over the traditional windowed browsing, and imho it seems that moving them to the side has enough of a benefit over the "standard" one-row top-only tabs that people are moving to it.
But what does the desktop paradigm then offer over that? From my quick experimentation, I couldn't even figure out how to get value out of the base UI; this discourages me from then wanting to then try to ex. install your browser extension.
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Who's the intended user? Is it specifically for desktop-heavy power users? Is it for less-technical users to gain a better interface for browser interaction?
Why floating window management? With a surprising amount of people's interactions with the web moving to mobile (smartphones, tablets), I could see the floating window interactions actually being a drawback. Tiling windows might be better, but again that's potentially very user-dependent.
Jumping off of the floating window question, where is the intended use-case? Is this for desktop users? Are tablets a supported use-case? Smartphones? Where's the line drawn? If you intend to support more than the desktop user, how will you handle the lack of precise touch? The current UI has annoyingly-small icons on desktop; if mobile is an intended use-case I could see this very quickly becoming infuriating.
How is accessibility handled? Is keyboard-only interaction possible? What about screen readers? As a disabled person, I'm pretty tired of seeing user interfaces that are incredibly unfriendly to me because they rely on precise click/tap targets that I struggle immensely to properly use at times.
The product might benefit from having an actual tour / demo / etc. It's very unclear what the true use-case for it is. Every major (desktop) OS already has drag-and-drop, multiple workspaces, floating windows, ... Having some kind of walk-through would probably go a long way towards helping people understand.
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I don't say these things to discourage you, but this just doesn't feel ready for release yet. The sheer number of comments here on HN expressing negativity about this, at least to me, signal that the product's use-case isn't clear and that it's not obvious why this would be wanted. As a tech person, I very well understand the desire to make cool tech and show it off, but cool tech does not a product make. This reads as a tech demo being dressed up as a product, which explains a lot of the negativity here.
Your comment below[0] makes it a lot more clear that this is less "real serious product" and more "toy/tech demo/similar," and if it had been expressed as such from the start, I think the reception would have been better.
Hopefully these thoughts are of use! I do love seeing experimentation outside of the standard ways of interacting with things, and I think that with more refinement and experimentation you might find something interesting with this idea.
In the abstract, I can feel out there being some kind of use case I'm not thinking of. Maybe something along the lines of having a familiar mental model for organizing the data in the browser, (not the data in the web apps running in the browser). Things like bookmarks, tab groups maybe, browsing history.
But what is shown is more of an honest attempt to create a full OS in the browser which will always be inherently inferior to the operating system the browser is running in, even with advances to browser engines.
First, I would like to point you to this page: https://savaos.com/about - I don't know if you've seen it already, but it explains in brief what we want to achieve/envision. Should explain some of your "what the hell is this" questions :) And as you can see, it's a very ambitious goal.
I agree with a lot of your arguments. To be honest, the most challenging part so far has been to try to explain what we're doing. "What would be the right MVP?", "How can we evaluate such a project?", "Is something like this even feasible?".. these kinds of questions constantly popped up in our heads. My point is, we had to start somewhere.
We don't know if this is the right direction yet, but so far we've seen some interest and already received valuable feedback. The best use-case right now is practically link & tab management. Definitely overkill for just that, but for "non-tech" people, it does feels familiar.
I'm not a UX designer, I tried my best with the design and I've personally worked on a lot of accessibility features before (in terms of code). It's not there yet I get that, but it will.
Regarding the comments, on the contrary, I don't see much of negativity here. Just people expressing their gut feeling, but I like it a lot. Much better then hearing the typical non-sense "congrats" & "all the best" kind of feedback. This is what opens my mind the most to make crucial decisions for the next steps.
By the way, I did mention that it's an MVP. In my opinion all MVPs are toys and demos of "what can become". Perhaps I'm too good of a designer for not being an actual designer, and it looks too good? I'll take that as a compliment.
I use a lot of devices. There are 13 of them within arm's reach at the moment. I want a working environment where my "personal computer" is virtual, and it runs on whatever device I happen to be messing with, and it gives me my own personal workspace with access to my own personal stuff, without concern for which specific device I happen to be touching at the moment. Every property of computing that falls short of that is just a gratuitous obstacle to getting my work done.
The first time I thought I was approaching that kind of computing was 32 years ago. I was working on an experimental device with an experimental operating system at Apple. It didn't work out.
The second time I got closer. I was working at NeXT. I could go into any office on the NeXT campus (or into my home) and sit down to a NeXT machine and log into my personal workspace with access to all of my stuff configured the way I preferred it.
But then NeXT merged with Apple and the OS turned into the current macOS, which doesn't offer the same kind of ubiquitous computing experience at all. If anything, simple things like its ability to share files with a mixed network seems to be going backward.
So I reiterate: maybe something like this toy could eventually turn into the computing workspace I actually want, and if it has to use the web stack to do it, so be it.
Okay, I can see it with this! This actually sounds a good bit like something I've been wanting to figure out setting up for myself, the struggle is that the data sync for ex. offline periods would be rough.