Web Browser Engineering

#1

Post by djoldman » Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

Web Browser Engineering
browser.engineering

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#2

Post by amelius » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

Is this written by actual web browser engineers? If so, what fields did they specialize in?

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#3

Post by bla3 » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #2

Is this written by actual web browser engineers? If so, what fields did they specialize in?

https://mobile.twitter.com/chrishtr says "Rendering lead for Chrome", so at least one of the authors seems to do this professionally.

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#4

Post by eatonphil » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

I can't wait for Browser Engineering to show up as a university course a la compilers, operating systems, networks, etc.

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#5

Post by amelius » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

eatonphil wrote: post #4

I can't wait for Browser Engineering to show up as a university course a la compilers, operating systems, networks, etc.

A browser is basically an operating system inside an operating system.

The funny thing is we can have the MINIX microkernel discussions all over again :)

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#6

Post by gnull » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #5

eatonphil wrote: post #4

I can't wait for Browser Engineering to show up as a university course a la compilers, operating systems, networks, etc.

A browser is basically an operating system inside an operating system. The funny thing is we can have the MINIX microkernel discussions all over again :)

Looking at the book's table of contents, I disagree. Browsers may resemble OSes by the size of the code base or by the amount of optimization involved, or by their importance for the modern world, but not by the types of technologies involved. I doubt the Browsers course will intersect a lot with OSes course.

EDIT: Reading you comment again I suspect you might have been joking :)

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#7

Post by harry-wood » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

Building a browser as a desktop application would be quite hard, but I reckon I do it as a web application.

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#8

Post by imajoredinecon » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

bla3 wrote: post #3

amelius wrote: post #2

Is this written by actual web browser engineers? If so, what fields did they specialize in?

https://mobile.twitter.com/chrishtr says "Rendering lead for Chrome", so at least one of the authors seems to do this professionally.

More about his team’s work: https://www.chromium.org/teams/rendering

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#9

Post by game_the0ry » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

As a front end developer, I am really happy to see resources like this.

Developing for the browser is a real challenge. I think working with html / css /js has been a neglected skill for a long time - most software engineers look down on that type of work and its rarely covered in comp sci course work.

Still, its good to see a lot of progress has been made, this book included.

My only critique - why use python instead of node.js?

Re: Web Browser Engineering

#10

Post by pavpanchekha » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #9

As a front end developer, I am really happy to see resources like this. Developing for the browser is a real challenge. I think working with html / css /js has been a neglected skill for a long time - most software engineers look down on that type of work and its rarely covered in comp sci course work. Still, its good to see a lot of progress has been made, this book included. My only critique - why use python instea…

Author here. I wrote up my answer here: http://browser.engineering/blog/why-python.html

Basically: server-side JavaScript is just not as widely known as Python, and it'd be additionally confusing when our browser starts running JavaScript. And in-browser JavaScript is a bit too restricted (by things like the same-origin policy) to do the whole thing inside a browser.