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Gosub – An open-source browser engine

github.com

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Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#11

Post by 999900000999 »

johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

Honestly, I view projects like this as more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful .

The Firefox engine is great if you don't want something controlled by Google. And it's going to be much easier to develop plugins or extensions for that versus trying to write your own browser from scratch, which to be honest will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If not more.

I do imagine tools like this being useful for something like web scraping, but it's never going to be an end user product.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#12

Post by bee_rider »

hypeatei wrote: post #9
johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

The various web specifications are insanely complex (e.g. navigables) so I can see how people burn out from it. To add onto that, a browser operates in an extremely hostile space security wise; to be a serious competitor, you'll need to be on top of your game in that regard which maybe Rust will help with.

Something very silly has happened, where the thing that most non-technical people have which is most exposed to hackers is also incredibly complex and requires high performance for some reason.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#13

Post by sharktheone »

nwah1 wrote: post #7

Needs an FAQ Why isn't contributing to existing projects like Servo feasible? Do they reject the benefits of modularity? What existing code is being leveraged, or is this entirely from scratch? Why was lifting code from Servo or elsewhere not sufficient? Is this project intending to remain fully non-profit or is there some kind of vision for monetization to support the gargantuan amount of effort it would take? It sa…

We actually kind of have a javascript engine. It is a more personal project of mine, but it is also intended to be used and intigrated into gosub. In case someone is interested, here is the repo: https://github.com/Sharktheone/yavashark

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#16

Post by mjrpes »

johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

All I have to do is stumble upon a heated 100+ post discussion on the implementation details of an arcane feature of CSS to understand how mammoth an undertaking it must be to develop a fully compatible browser engine.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#17

Post by zamadatix »

johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

Servo and Ladybird are more active than ever, each having fresh funding and ramping up focused development. Flow is a commercial project for embedded media devices (not just available on rpi, it actually came there later) and seems to be doing well? Sciter I don't know one way or the other about, it seems to have a few popular apps using it but I don't know if it died off since then or is just going strong. Netsurf has always been a bit by the wayside but it doesn't seem like founders getting exhausted has much to do with that.

There are plenty of browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, often for reasons unrelated to the founders, but that particular list actually paints a surprising amount of the opposite to me. For once since Chrome came out (it at least introduced v8 even if it started with webkit) I have the feeling there are browsers engines in development that can actually attempt to load the modern web and will actually have products for general use cases (instead of specialized ones) in the coming years.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#18

Post by hypeatei »

bee_rider wrote: post #12
hypeatei wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The various web specifications are insanely complex (e.g. navigables) so I can see how people burn out from it. To add onto that, a browser operates in an extremely hostile space security wise; to be a serious competitor, you'll need to be on top of your game in that regard which maybe Rust will help with.

Something very silly has happened, where the thing that most non-technical people have which is most exposed to hackers is also incredibly complex and requires high performance for some reason.

Yeah it's a real shame. The complex (and ever expanding) nature of the web is the real thing entrenching incumbents like Google. They have the existing codebase and resources to handle the complexity.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#20

Post by codetrotter »

999900000999 wrote: post #11
johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

Honestly, I view projects like this as more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful . The Firefox engine is great if you don't want something controlled by Google. And it's going to be much easier to develop plugins or extensions for that versus trying to write your own browser from scratch, which to be honest will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If not more. I do imagin…

> more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful

I am reminded of this:

“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”

– Linus Torvalds, announcing the software that became what we now know as Linux

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