[ANN] GemiNaut - a user friendly Gemini browser for Windows in C#

• 🗣️ From: Luke Emmet (luke.emmet (a) gmail.com)
• 📅 Sent: 2020-05-28 11:22
• 📧 Message 1 of 14

Hi All

I'm pleased to announce the first release of GemiNaut, a user friendly 
Gemini client for Windows.

Its written with a more "typical" end user in mind who may not be so 
familiar with the command line and would like a graphical browser to 
explore Gemini space. In particular, I'm interested in usability, 
cognitive aspects of navigation through hypertext - how to support the 
user in his or her understanding of where they are and what comes up 
next if they were to click on the links.

Some key features


	
Attractive GUI with familiar browser navigation features/keyboard 

shortcuts etc

	
Smooth content wrap and flow
	
Content theming engine - view the same content in different visual modes
	
Automatic site based themes - help to distinguish one site from another
	
Easily distinguish links outside of Gemini (e.g. to HTTP web servers) 

from the link style (fat arrow vs squiggly one)

	
View source


The theming engine is extensible - not quite drop in yet, but that is my 
direction of travel. It uses HTML for the actual rendering of the 
content, which allows for some innovation and experimentation of the 
possible options.

One element that is innovative as far as I know is the support for 
automatic "site-specific" themes. As you know there is no styling 
information in GMI documents, so it is sometimes difficult to know whose 
site you are on, and when you have traversed the boundary from one 
author voice to another. On the web each site has its own look and feel.

I wanted to explore the idea of automatic site specific themes, and the 
"Fabric" theme puts some of these ideas into practice as an initial 
pass. Each site gets its own simple look and feel as if laid out on a 
different fabric, like a tablecloth.

There are other themes in this initial release, including

Plain - simple, and effective, black text on white background, blue links
Terminal - for fixed width folk who like to live in the dark
Unified - a theme that tries to bring together common navigational and 
search elements

You can switch between these as you go.

For further details, screenshots, downloads and source, please see the 
project home page:

   https://www.marmaladefoo.com/pages/geminaut

Any feedback and further thoughts welcome.

Best Wishes

  - Luke

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