Why I can't use Dia over Arc
It’s wild to me that The Browser Company took a browser with an almost cult following to just drop it completely to follow what was apparently their initial vision. It leaves me wondering though, if Arc was not the original vision did they perhaps stumble into something that was too good to be true?
When I was first introduced to Arc I did not think the hype was real. Surely a browser is a browser is a browser… right? Nope! Arc just felt right. It had lots of little hidden gems that just worked well and that first install; sublime! I still remember selling it so hard at work, getting everyone to try it and many of them loved it too.
I have to say that I was a bit disappointed when I first tried Dia. It felt like I was just using Chrome again but had some AI secret sauce. What I loved in Arc is just not there in Dia and it’s just too much that I can’t switch over to Dia.
Even one of the people I got onto Arc initially also tried Dia and soon as he saw he needed a whole new account to use it he just didn’t even bother. The friction was too high.
So understand what I write below is not to smear Dia but to highlight the little things in Arc that I just cannot live without and ultimately leaves Dia packed away in my Applications folder, never getting its time to shine.
Spaces
The thing that I probably hate the most is how spaces work in Dia as apposed to Arc. Arc’s spaces are super simple to navigate between with the mouse. I generally have four spaces that I keep everything separate in. I have work, clients, personal etc. I can easily switch between them in Arc and it has a single window when I switch.
Dia on the other hand shows a new window per space (profile)?! I find it clunky to navigate with the mouse because I have to go to the little colour space button, click it and select the space I want to go to; even the keyboard shortcut shows the profiles menu then over to the arrow keys. Nope, nope, nope! With Arc I can be anywhere in the sidebar and hit the left and right buttons on my mouse to navigate between spaces. I think this is my No. 1 worst change between Dia and Arc.
Sidebar
Until two weeks ago Dia had no sidebar, it was back to tabs only at the top. That is neither here nor there really but initially I missed the option to have it how I got used to using a browser in Arc. Even though it’s not a massive deal it’s an interesting choice when you are hoping to attract your existing user base, was it to clearly indicate that they’re not Arc anymore?
I’m glad however that the sidebar is now there but it’s really limited. I mean really really REALLY limited.
So, what are these limitations, you ask? Folders and an extension on that; live folders. There is no way to organise your tabs which I used a lot in my dev work. So none of the bells and whistles that were once there, basically just the tabs at the top can now be on the side.
Folders
Depending on the client I’m working with, they often have multiple environments and folders makes it super simple to organise all of that. Do I need to test something in QA, it’s all there in the QA folder. UAT? Oh yes, right there in the UAT folder. Dia just does not have the ability to do that.
The “same thing” in Dia is just the normal bookmarks bar from 1993.
Live folders
As a developer, I found the GitHub live folders almost too useful. The live folder would automagically update with any new pull requests that were open and assigned to me. No need to check mails for new requests coming in, or going to GitHub to check. Nope, all just there in all its glory. Guess what; again; Dia does not have this feature.
Tab Splits
Being able to put tabs side by side or below each other was something I use in Arc. I found it useful when I was working on some UI changes to have the Figma design next to the working tab to compare the two. Again Dia does not have this feature.
Copy URL
This is such a tiny thing but I think it just shows that they were not exaggerating when saying they were starting Dia from the ground up. They left out all the cool things about Arc right down to the little copy URL button in the URL bar. Just everything is gone and it’s just a Chrome browser with AI chat built in that can look at all my tabs and I guess help me with all that?
Love Letter
So again I am not writing this to bash Dia but rather as a love letter from an Arc user to just say Arc was incredible for all the little things it had and how it made working in a browser that much easier. Dia is just not that. Maybe when testing with college students it makes sense because as they study they may have many tabs open on subjects that they need summarised and organised etc. Maybe Dia is good at that but I have tried and I can’t see how Dia is better than Arc in how it has gotten me to use my browser. It’s just too much friction for me to move to Dia.
I think the other concern I have is that with Dia the primary love I see Arc getting is mostly around security fixes and brining in the latest Chromium, which I am grateful for, but it also means with Dia that Arc will stagnate quickly. There is hope though on the horizon in the shape of the Zen browser.
Zen Browser
They have started implementing a lot of the features from Arc using Firefox as the base. They don’t have folders or live folders yet but it is being worked on here and here. It’s available to download on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Be keen to see how it turns out and a pro if it does replace Arc for me is that I can use it on my Linux machine as well.