Bitty Browser is fun to play with

Now that kind of thing could bring up issues when you start including content which belongs to other people in your pages with it, couldn't it? I'm not certain I see what use it can be, practically.

>> Unfortunately Wordpress.com is blocking the HTML that would let me put this thing on my blog here. Matt Mullenweg is trying to make sure that Wordpress.com blogs don’t turn into MySpaces. Heheh!

I find "patent pending" rather offputting...

Anyone that's seen 'Little Britain' would know that's not really a bitty browser.

It wasn't until later that I discovered what "bitty" means to Little Britain fans -- but, the choice of name was largely inspired by being a first-time dad to a new baby girl, and so perhaps the Little Britain meaning isn't so far off the mark after all... ;)

Congratulations - you've just invented the iframe - again. Yawn.

Innocent bystander: Exactly.

What exactly is 'patent pending'? Putting an HTML iframe on a site?

Maybe I should patent HTML tables...

>>Congratulations - you’ve just invented the iframe - again. Yawn.

Evolution, not reinvention. Iframes don't have their own controls (back/forward buttons, etc.).

Scoble gives me a good chance here to mention that I have a blog on wordpress but will not be using it until is allows more options like, ftp, choosing my own templates and blah blah blah, way too restrictive.

Bitty what? Isn't a "bitty" a large girl who lives on farm down yonder? ;-)

The Little Britain sketch:

http://www.youtube.com/?v=Cib3X_v5B8g

Yes, unlike iframes Bitty provides back/forward buttons, and more: for example, try browsing down into the the sites listed in Robert's OPML, and take a look in Bitty's pulldown search menu.

And, back on the Bitty site, the "get started" page lists some of the "browser chrome" configuration options, as well as quick starts for a number of services (Flickr, del.icio.us, Digg, Google, IceRocket, etc).

btw, if anybody had trouble adding Bitty to Wordpress (or any other site), please email me at scott@turnstyle.com -- I'd like to get that working too.

-Scott

So what exactly is the point of Bitty? A browser within a browser? What need is that addressing?

"So what exactly is the point of Bitty? A browser within a browser? What need is that addressing?"

As a simple illustration, many (most?) Web sites have blocks of content in their sidebars -- Bitty can make that sort of stuff navigable, and that struck me as inherently useful.

For example in the case of a blogroll, why have a huge long list when you can take up less space *and* browse and read through the sites without necessarily having to leave the page that you're on. And sure, sometimes it's better to open a new window/tab, and so there are "full size" links too.

-Scott

So much discussion about an IFrame with a address bar and back/front button on top!

"Yes, unlike iframes Bitty provides back/forward buttons, and more: for example, try browsing down into the the sites listed in Robert’s OPML, and take a look in Bitty’s pulldown search menu."

That stuff would take an experienced Javascript developer less than half a day to build (about 3 hours I think).

Still not impressed.

Is that means we can convert rss back into html on the blog post?

lol. thats just what i was thinking when i read 'bitty' browser. LITTLE BRITAIN. you can browser breastfeeding??!?! wtf? lol

I think the point is that not everybody is an experienced JavaScript editor, and that this is viral -- anybody can drop a view of a web service or site they find somewhere onto their own site or blog template.

Sure, I could spend 3 or 4 hours instrumenting an IFRAME with JavaScript. I suppose another 2 or three, and I could make it reusable for other use cases. But Scott already did all the work.

Seriously, don't be such a hater. Use it if you like it. The guy is giving the thing away for free, which as dotcommunist points out, might save you time if you need something like this. And really, who cares if you're impressed? I'm sure you have more important things to do than complain about how someone else's creation isn't good enough to rate a gushing post of your blog that no one reads.

Ok, it's an iframe with Javascript control buttons, that's cool. It's very well done, but what's being patented with regard to this? I don't think you can patent the iframe or the idea of a javascript doing foo-iframe.src=http://bar