Next browser 1.3.1: improved minibuffer and platform support

We are happy to announce the release of Next version 1.3.1!

This version includes important bug fixes, an improved minibuffer experience, better support for various platforms (dbus should be handled properly), not forgetting that Next is back to the official Guix repository! (This should make it easier to install Next on any OS running a Linux kernel.)

On the community level, we've overhauled our article/blog page: https://next.atlas.engineer/articles , with the aim of publishing articles regularly on our progress and various Next hacks / configuration tips.

We've also added a news feed where you can follow us: https://next.atlas.engineer/feed .

Finally, we've started a crowdfunding campaign, so if you like what we are doing feel free to support us by chipping in!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/next-browser-v1-4-0#/

Thanks!

Rest of the change log

• Print page title in buffer list

  And the title is matched when fuzzy-searching a buffer!

• Improved minibuffer performance: it now shows up instantly

• Open external links in new buffer by default

  This can be configured by setting (open-external-link-in-new-window-p *interface*) to the desired boolean.

• Return to last created buffer when deleting buffer

  When killing the last created buffer, we were brought back to the first one, so usually the help buffer. This is now fixed, we stay at the previous last created buffer, as expected.

• Minibuffer M-backspace improvements
  • In the minibuffer, using M-backspace to delete a word didn't respect whitespaces. It is fixed.
  • Its behaviour was also too different than other common tools, like Firefox. Now:
    • it deletes the trailing word delimiter;
    • it removes all trailing delimiters plus one word.
• Add keypad bindings

• Next is back to the Guix official channel

  The Next Guix channel can be safely removed from your ~/.config/guix/channels.scm before running a guix pull .

• Mouse button2 (middle click) opens a URL in a new buffer/window.
• Automatically fall back to a local dbus session if none can be used

• Fix platform port log file path on Guix

  It is now properly set to ~/.local/share/next/next-gtk-webkit.log by default.

• Fix ignored search engine prefix in minibuffer input

• Fix browsed URLs not being added to history

  Yes, this is better for a daily usage :)

• Fix crash when proxy-mode was added to the list of default modes

  You can now write this to open pages in proxy-mode by default:

  (setf (get-default 'proxy-mode 'server-address) "socks5://localhost:1080")
  (add-to-default-list 'proxy-mode 'buffer 'default-modes)

  Thanks to @MasterCsquare .

• More bug fixes (special thanks to Solomon Bloch, @goose121 , Sean Farley, @glacambre )

• Developer changes

  • The Makefile automatically updates the Quicklisp distribution

    Next uses its own installation path for the Quicklisp dependencies, it doesn't mesh with your existing ~/quicklisp/local-projects . Now you can follow git master without the suprise of a library missing a function.

  • Remove cl-string-match and cl-strings dependencies Now we mostly rely on str and cl-ppcre .

What's next?

We have many new and exciting features in the pipeline that we should release shortly:

• a password manager ,
• a kill ring ,
• the possibility to quickly open any file with fuzzy search ,
• new minibuffer improvements, such as multiselection ,
• session persistence ,
• hooks (for modes, commands, startup, network events, etc.) allowing per-domain customization.

Thanks for reading!