Moving over
What it takes
Keep the browser you enjoy. Vandle takes over the moment an address needs a key, a port and a route.
Spaces organised your tabs. They did not organise your machines.
Arc was right that the browser chrome was overdue for a rethink. Vandle makes the same argument about connection clients, and the answer is a sidebar of machines rather than a tab bar of addresses.
Credit where it is due
Arc questioned assumptions everyone else had stopped noticing, and its spaces and sidebar showed how much room there still was for design in a category that felt finished.
What changes
Four things you get that you did not have.
- A sidebar where a machine is the unit, and its protocols are rows underneath it.
- Pinned versus ephemeral as a first-class distinction, with a drag to promote one into the other.
- A route per connection, visible on the session while it runs.
- One window for the shell, the transfer, the desktop and the device's web interface.
Side by side
Arc and Vandle
| Aspect | Arc | Vandle |
|---|---|---|
| Organising unit | Spaces of tabs | Folders of machines, rows per protocol |
| Ephemeral items | Today's tabs | Ad-hoc sessions, promotable by drag |
| Routing | System proxy | Per connection |
| Reach | The web | Six protocol modules |
And the rest of it
Four more protocols came along
Replacing one tool gets you five. Whatever else that machine speaks is already a row on the same record - and every one of them takes the route you assigned.
Web
Real browsing, properly routed
SSH
A terminal that keeps up
SFTP
Two remote panes, no detour
WebDAV
The other half of file transfer
RDP
Desktops on a native surface
Local
Your own machine, in the same list
Also compared