so what are the use cases for this tool? i read and still cant understand what problems does it solve and how one would use it.
Found a short blurb of theirs:
"BrowserBox powers multiple use-cases, including: in-app browsing, co-browsing, remote isolated browsing, easy 3rd-party embedding, and human-in-the-loop robotic RPA monitoring and interaction."
Essentially, it is remote desktop for the browser, converting rendered pages into images that are transmitted to the client instead of html. The demo shows interacting with Youtube and watching a video.
Thanks! Definitely the README could be more clear. It's a product that sits at the nexus of a few different things. Just briefly some companies that are doing somewhat similar things (I may have missed some, there are a lot!):
- Cloudflare (from S2): https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/browser-isola...
- RemoteHQ: https://www.remotehq.com/
- HyperBeam: https://hyperbeam.com/
- Ericom: https://www.ericom.com/ericom-isolation/
- Symantec/Broadcom (from FireGlass): https://www.broadcom.com/products/cybersecurity/network/netw...
Cybersecurity uses:
- defensive cybersecurity: remote browser isolation is another layer to protect against browser zero-days from compromising your devices and network. So called "zero trust" approach of assuming compromise.
- email attachment and link opening: people can open email attachments in the secure document viewer and open dodgy looking links without risking their local workstation
- pentesting and malware analysis: researchers can investigate potential malware from a distance
Process integration and automation:
- you can embed browsers in your website in a way that circumvents iframe restrictions. This can make it easier to build dashboards and integration portals.
- you can use BrowserBox Pro to attach to your running Puppeteer / Playwright or other Chrome instances and interact with them in real time. People find it useful for debugging automation issues and getting them unstuck from bot-tests and errors. It's like driving manual for a challenging stretch on your FSD!
Remote work:
- co-browsing as a way to collaborate: you can have multiple people interacting with a web site in real time. Userful for remote teams who need to debug an issue or discuss content and design
- co-browsing as a way to socialize: some people enjoy doing watch parties and syncing up their viewing with friends
- co-browsing as a way to educate: trainers use it to deliver interactive lessons and as a way to monitor and aid development skills in apps
VPN and remote desktop:
- people use it as a way to circumvent country specific blocking by spinning up a VM in another zone and accessing the content they want from there
- people use it to access web-based apps, which in some areas have largely replaced desktop apps. It's like a lighter weight remote desktop in that case.
Random and miscellaneous use cases:
- honestly we're quite surprised at the way people use it sometimes. One of the first customers wanted it as a way to manage multiple online personas for their own privacy. Somehow they preferred that to having multiple local browser profiles.
Currently I wouldn't say it's particularly optimized for any of these subsets. But it's a great starting point for people building any of these applications. While we have a rough idea, as shown above, now we're in the process of asking people exactly how they use it and deciding if we should narrow our focus to a particular customer set, or keep it broad, and build out multiple feature domains in parallel.
They just posted (send some love!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36467219