After a short time with it, I find it kinda funny. Back then, power users were up in arms about things like the omnibar, and chrome removing more and more parts of the actual URL. And here is a browser marketed at power users that goes beyond that, showing only a small fraction. There doesn’t even seem to be a Zen mod that restores a real usable URL bar.
For me, I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private usage. Zen disqualified itself for my type of power usage very quickly, giving me a feeling of being on a small mobile device instead of a desktop PC.
> I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private usage
Zen/Arc are actually much better for this use case, albeit after an adjustment period for people who’ve become accustomed to the way Firefox/Chrome do it.
The idea is that URLs are out of your way when you don’t need them and front-and-center when you do. Instead of simply focusing on the URL bar when you CMD+L or CMD+T, it brings up a modal dialog in the center of the screen where you’re free to do everything you can do in a normal location bar and more. It’s modeled after the command palette design in code editors or application launchers. So, for example, not only can you edit URLs, but you can search for commands instead of hunting for them in the browser’s menus. As an example, I’d never memorize the keyboard shortcut to take a whole-page screenshot because I don’t use it enough. But the other day I needed it, so I typed “CMD+L, screen” and it was the second result. Task completed in under 2 sec.
It took a few days to get used to, but now I never want to go back to the sort of location bar that Chrome and Firefox use. It just takes up space that I’d rather devote to the sites I’m visiting. Even the tab pane is easily toggled to get out of my way when I don’t care about it, which is especially useful when I’m tiling websites. I’ve developed a fondness for keeping documentation open in one panel alongside the website I’m developing, which means recapturing the width I lose from the tab pane is valuable.
I highly recommend pushing through the awkward phase where you’re sure you’re going to hate this browser design. Because once you get past it, you’ll wonder how you ever thought the old way could be better.
> it brings up a modal dialog in the center of the screen
Incredibly tiny modal dialog. I just tried checked one, and it fit 65 characters. Compared to firefox right now, after 112 characters the URL bar is slightly over halfway filled.
Yup, as I was told in another comment, it requires changing to "Multiple Toolbars or Collapsed Toolbar" instead of changing the URL bar setting, which is not exactly obvious. Posted from Zen for now ;)
Manual URL editing is unbelievably painful on mobile and all the kids only use their phones these days - I guess this includes all the cool kid engineers making browsers.
This is extremely true, especially when holding backspace and when you hold it a bit too long, the speed increases! Trying to remove query parameters, such as used for Google Analytics tracking, can be extremely frustrating.
they have a ko-fi and a patreon, with about a 1000 "subscribers" across both at <unknown> amounts at the moment. it's not exactly enough to promise indefinite support, but tbh i don't really much reason to have that faith from products i've paid for but are closed-source either.
https://zen-browser.app/