> Browser Not Supported
  > 
  > PCB Tracer requires a browser that supports access to a local directory.
  > This is needed to save and load your PCB Tracer project files.
  > 
  > Please use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge for the best experience.

On Firefox, after bypassing the ominous warnings, when I tried to create a new project and choose a directory to save the project files, I get

  > Directory picker is not supported in this browser. Please use a modern browser like Chrome or Edge.

While I appreciate the early warning, so that the user doesn't spend too much effort only to later realize that they can't save their files to disk, I don't appreciate the implicit labeling of Firefox as not being a "modern" browser.

If you're developing a web app with APIs only available in certain browsers, just say/admit so.

If all the app need is to upload a photo of PCB, <input type="file"> is more than sufficient. It's been baseline years ago.

For download, it can download from a blob URI. This is not an uncommon practice.

If (not verified since I'm using Firefox) it claims that "Gerber files are composed of many individual files so that those two don't suffice" and the app does involve Gerber processing, it could have been solved by introducing a zip library.

"Gerbers" are indeed several individual files -- there's one for each layer of the PCB, such as front copper, front solder mask, front silkscreen, back copper, back solder mask, etc, etc.

A zip library is precisely how other webapps that load or output Gerbers handle it.

I just said it a couple days ago that soon AI will generate pcb and schematics, definitely we are heading that way. In fact, even beyond that, I think it will be as follows: you prompt AI “design a DC-DC voltage step down buck converter circuit” and the AI will download EE skill, design the schematic, test it in MCP connected to circuit simulator, then build the pcb for you, you download the files and send it to the factory.

EEs better start looking at burger king jobs tbh. Funny how AI is notorious at attacking STEM jobs but I see lawyers and doctors are still a protected class due to lobbying and making laws that prevent AI to be used in these fields.

I wanted to test this but if I decline file access I can't do anything. What gives? Do you want people to understand your product? Demo your product.

Why do you need file access to sell me?

Closed immediately.

btw. I am your target market.

Honestly that's exactly what it would look like if someone posted malware to a show HN. I'm not claiming that's what this is, just that it's _exactly_ what it would look like so you'd have to be braindead to go that route.

Support Firefox and do not require filesystem access. Or don't. I'm not your mom. And also not your user.

In a few years when you're not 12 any more, you'll be embarassed by this. When that happens, don't sweat it, we were all 12 at some point. I'm just lucky that for me that was before the internet.

I needed exactly this sort of tool for a reverse-engineering project! I was so invested I returned here to write this comment... then spotted the other comments about "no Firefox support". Indeed, visually broken "Browser Not Supported" popup appears.

Darn. Disappointing. Guess I will have to keep looking.

Also... it doesn't look open-source and the comments about file access are valid. The functionality listed is completely possible as a browser-based local app with no server functionality.

Other webapps (https://falstad.com/circuit/) seem to be able to open a file picker in Firefox just fine. Saving is just via downloading to the Downloads folder, but the functionality is not impossible.

Didn't work in my browser. I degoogled long ago. :shrug:

Firefox not supported?

There was another Show HN recently (today?) that explained this. The JS feature to access local file system is currently not available in FF.

https://caniuse.com/native-filesystem-api

I understand, but why does it need filesystem access in the first place?

so you can upload (er, provide access to) an image of a PCB you are looking to trace

Edit: I should have used a different word than upload. It's just old habit. According to TFA, there is no uploading. All processing is done in the browser, so the app needs local file system access to get at your image

There are other ways for webpages to get file uploads than this particular JS API. I upload files via firefox every single business day as part of my job.

This JS feature doesn't upload the file to a server. This particular app says right there on the page that it does the magic in the browser.

You appear to be misunderstanding on how browsers handle file uploads. You cannot get the local file path for a file. There is no C:\ or /Volumes or whatever your OS uses. Browsers deliberately mask that from the upload.

But I can drag and drop (or use the file picker) just fine on other websites.

To do what with? Upload? That's totally not the same thing as providing access for directly manipulating the file. That's basically HTML1.0 type stuff. JS file system access to provide a file to, I'm assuming, a WASM app is not even the same sport to be in the same ballpark.

Does it support non 2-layer boards? (e.g., 4 layer +)

I skimmed through a couple of youtube videos, would I be right in thinking the tracing is done always manually here.

Would be really neat if it could trace automagically too, possibly with sanded PCBs?

I don't think I've seen much of what I'd call overt hostility. But there do seem to be a lot of firefox users commenting about not being able to use this. I don't think there'd be as many if the site wasn't saying that Firefox isn't supported because it doesn't support access to the local file system for uploads and downloads. But Firefox does indeed support that, just not via whatever API they're using.

Firefox not supported and you want to see my local files right away? Nope, not trying this shit.

I wonder (outside HN) what percentage of people who need to reverse engineer a PCB are also people who insist on Firefox. Probably smaller than the percentage of those people who want to save results to their local filesystem.

Firefox allows saving and loading files from the local file system. This site just uses some method to do it that's only supported by Chrome/Edge. So it's a unnecessarily user-hostile design choice they made.