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TorrentFreak reports on the April 10th public release of BitTorrent Inc's torrent-powered browser Maelstrom:
In short, Maelstrom takes Google's Chromium framework and stuffs a powerful BitTorrent engine under the hood, meaning that torrents can be played directly from the browser. More excitingly, however, Maelstrom also supports torrent-powered websites that no longer have to rely on central servers.
By simply publishing a website in a torrent format the website will be accessible if others are sharing it. This can be assisted by web-seeds but also completely peer-to-peer.
Project Maelstrom's stated primary goal is to keep the Internet open and neutral:
If we are successful, we believe this project has the potential to help address some of the most vexing problems facing the Internet today. How can we keep the Internet open? How can we keep access to the Internet neutral? How can we better ensure our private data is not misused by large companies? How can we help the Internet scale efficiently for content?
TorrentFreak notes that it's not an all-in-one solution, though:
While Maelstrom can bypass Internet censors, it's good to keep in mind that all shared files are visible to the public. Maelstrom is caching accessed content to keep it seeded, so using a VPN might not be a bad idea. After all, users leave a trail of their browsing history behind.
Unfortunately, it seems that the project is closed-source, and the beta is currently Windows-only, with a Mac version announced. The devs have stated that a Linux version is planned, but is a low priority.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @04:45PM
We all hate BitTorrent Inc. and acknowledge uTorrent is dead. But this Maelstrom thing doesn't necessarily require Maelstrom itself. It looks like Web browsers could easily adopt this approach to handling torrent files.
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7102&cid=173169 [soylentnews.org]
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7102&cid=173171 [soylentnews.org]
From this [wikipedia.org], it looks like no Web browser really has an integrated torrent client anymore. I don't think Konqueror has one, I think it just diverts them to KTorrent. Opera dropped theirs, but Vivaldi might bring the feature back (it is closed source freeware though). It looks like plans to put a torrent client in Firefox were abandoned a decade ago.
It was done before (Opera) and it can be done again.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday April 20 2015, @06:41PM
Good!
"I don't think Konqueror has one, I think it just diverts them to KTorrent."
As it should.
"It looks like plans to put a torrent client in Firefox were abandoned a decade ago."
Yes, even Firefox has made good decisions on occasion.
"It was done before (Opera) and it can be done again."
You say that like it's a good thing. It's not. 'Integration' is a pointless obsession. Good programs do one thing and do it well.
A web browser should parse and display HTML. It should NOT try to be a torrent client too, or an email client, a word processor, a pdf reader, or an ecmascript interpreter.
I have a torrent client, and it's much better at its job than the browser will ever be. If I hit a torrent link, dont be an idiot, just do your damn job and pass it to the torrent program!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @06:44PM
Well if you don't integrate a torrent client and a Web browser, you aren't going to get what Maelstrom offers. Luckily, what Maelstrom can do is very limited and everyone here seems to hate the idea already.
I actually liked the Opera torrent client the few times I used it. It was dead simple and got the job done.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @10:23AM
Actually, one could argue that getting the data (i.e. http) and parsing the data (i.e. html) should be separated. Why should the web browser have to know all the possible protocols? Why should you not be able to switch the renderer without switching the fetching code or vice versa?
The browser could have a "getter" registered for each protocol; and if it reads "http:" then it requests the getter registered for http to fetch that page, and then displays it.
Currently, if e.g. browser 1 starts including HTTP/2, but doesn't support the newest CSS, and browser 2 supports the newest CSS, but doesn't support HTTP/2, then you cannot have both until one of the browsers supports both.
In the separated model, you'd update the getter to one that supports HTTP/2, and the browser to one that siupports the newest CSS, and have both.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:43PM
Simple solution. Implement it all in proxy client? and as a bonus whack these Microsoft fanboyz with closed shit.
I like the idea. Oh and add that E-two-pe. ;)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @07:11PM
A web browser should parse and display HTML. It should NOT try to be a torrent client too, or an email client, a word processor, a pdf reader, or an ecmascript interpreter.
One of these is not like the others.
All of your examples are document formats.
Bittorrent is just another protocol, like http, https, ftp, gopher, etc. New protocols absolutely should be considered for inclusion into a web browser. The original concept of the web was not protocol specific.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:55PM
Please no. I don't want web browsers to become even more bloated than they already are. There are plenty of torrent clients out there; this would just be redundant, and it would simply add more useless bloat.