May 2026 Work Log (Patreon)

Hello again! Here's everything I worked on during the month of May, including Just the Browser, ImageShare, and a new camera preview tool.

Just the Browser

I rolled out several significant updates to Just the Browser project throughout the month of May. There were three releases in total: v.1.4, v1.5, and v1.6.

First, the new settings for browsers. Microsoft Edge is now configured to turn off Copilot suggestions in the address bar, Browsing with Copilot, post-install prompts to import browser data, personalization data reporting for Microsoft services, and the floating Edge Search Bar. That last one can be a useful feature, but it blocks Edge from fully closing while it's enabled.

For Mozilla Firefox, the configuration now disables almost everything in the AI Controls page of the browser settings, including new features as they roll out in the future. The only exceptions are page translations, because that's a popular feature and was already excluded by Just the Browser, and alt text generation for images in PDFs, because it's an accessibility feature and unlikely to be frequently activated. You can still turn those off in Firefox's settings, if you want.

Mozilla also started rolling out a built-in VPN in Firefox, but it's automatically blocked if any enterprise policies are active, which includes Just the Browser's configuration. To fix this, the Firefox configuration now explicitly allows the VPN feature.

There were also some improvements to the setup script and documentation. The biggest change is that Flatpak browsers are now supported on Linux, which also means atomic/immutable distributions (like Fedora Silverblue, SteamOS, and Bazzite) are supported for the first time. If you have Chromium or Firefox installed as a Flatpak, they should appear as options in the script's main menu, or you can follow the updated instructions on the Chrome and Firefox pages.

On Windows, the setup script is now supported on older versions of Windows 10, as well as Windows 8.1. The script was already made to run in PowerShell v5.1, since that's included in modern versions of Windows, and I only needed to make a few adjustments to support PowerShell v4.0 and higher. The manual registry files have always worked on older Windows releases.

The Windows configurations also now appear in the Installed apps list in the Windows settings (or the old 'Add or remove programs' Control Panel). If you select the "Uninstall" option from one of the items, the configuration is immediately deleted. The "Modify" option opens the Just the Browser website in your default browser.

The best part is that this doesn't require additional files, or storing an uninstall program somewhere on the file system—it's just more registry keys. If you look at the current Chrome configuration for Windows, for example, it now creates key sections for Chrome and its own installed apps entry. The uninstall command opens a PowerShell window and runs a single command to delete both sections.

As a reminder, you can subscribe to the RSS feed (or watch the repository on GitHub) to be notified when a new Just the Browser release is available to install.

Camera Preview

I wanted to try making a minimalist camera/capture card preview application, without capture controls taking up the view and an optional full-screen mode. Since that's pretty easy to accomplish with web APIs, I made it as a web app, currently called "Camera Preview" and hosted at camera.corbin.io.

The current version is just a preview of your camera (or other video input device) that scales to the window, with a dropdown menu to change the source, and buttons to activate full-screen mode and create a new window. That's it. If your mouse cursor leaves the window, the entire interface goes away.

I'm not sure if I'll turn this into a full-fledged project, but if you want to use it, you can! The code is also on GitHub.

ImageShare

I'm still working on the next major ImageShare update, which will probably be completed in June. In May, I switched the server code to run on Node 26, and changed the QR codes to use the shortlinks instead of the full upload paths. That way, the image is less visually complex and easier to scan on low-resolution screens (or with worse cameras).

For context, the shortlinks appear on the page and look like this:

https://theimageshare.com/i/c9699

The full path URLs, which the shortlinks will redirect you towards for the download, look like this:

https://theimageshare.com/uploads/2089bfad-1b2e-4b57-81cb-819d82367768.png

I might just merge the shortlinks and full upload paths, so ImageShare doesn't have to keep track of both locations for as long as the file is stored, but I'm still evaluating that.