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Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

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Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#11

Post by qweqwe14 »

alcover wrote: post #5

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A family of very simple browsers that do just that - A new Web that adheres to the above That would make my year.

This would never happen because there's zero incentive to do this.

Browsers are complex because they solve a complex problem: running arbitrary applications in a secure manner across a wide range of platforms. So any "simple" browser you can come up with just won't work in the real world (yes, that means being compatible with websites that normal people use).

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#12

Post by mewse-hn »

alcover wrote: post #5

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A family of very simple browsers that do just that - A new Web that adheres to the above That would make my year.

I can't think of an instance of the web contracting like that. Maybe when Apple decided not to support Adobe Flash.

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#13

Post by bogdan »

bArray wrote: post #8
alcover wrote: post #5

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A family of very simple browsers that do just that - A new Web that adheres to the above That would make my year.

And if you find you need more features than that - just build an app, don't make the web browser into some overly bloated app!

Then you have to deal with os compatibility. That's the main selling point of the Web, it works everywhere.

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#14

Post by zamadatix »

On a phone at the moment so I can't try it out, but in regards to this "stricter mode" it says global variables must be declared with var. I can't tell if that means that's just the only way to declare a global or if not declaring var makes it scoped in this mode. Based on not finding anything skimming through the examples, I assume the former?

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#15

Post by thwarted »

bogdan wrote: post #13
bArray wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you find you need more features than that - just build an app, don't make the web browser into some overly bloated app!

Then you have to deal with os compatibility. That's the main selling point of the Web, it works everywhere.

Except when it doesn't because of browser or platform differences/incompatibilities.

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#16

Post by christophilus »

bogdan wrote: post #13
bArray wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you find you need more features than that - just build an app, don't make the web browser into some overly bloated app!

Then you have to deal with os compatibility. That's the main selling point of the Web, it works everywhere.

And, I don't have to run a binary to try your product. The web has a lot of flaws, but it's a good way to deliver properly sandboxed applications with low hassle on the part of the user. I've built my fair share of native vs web apps, and I vastly prefer working on web apps. As a user, I vastly prefer web apps for most things. Not all things, but most. No, I don't want to install your crappy app on my computer and risk you doing something irresponsible. I'll keep you sandboxed in a browser tab that I can easily "uninstall" by closing.

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#17

Post by simonw »

Clarification added later: One of my key interests at the moment is finding ways to run untrusted code from users (or generated by LLMs) in a robust sandbox from a Python application. MicroQuickJS looked like a very strong contender on that front, so I fired up Claude Code to try that out and build some prototypes.

I had Claude Code for web figure out how to run this in a bunch of different ways this morning - I have working prototypes of calling it as a Python FFI library (via ctypes), as a Python compiled module and compiled to WebAssembly and called from Deno and Node.js and Pyodide and Wasmtime https://github.com/simonw/research/blob/main/mquickjs-sandbo...

PR and prompt I used here: https://github.com/simonw/research/pull/50 - using this pattern: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/6/async-code-research/

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#18

Post by duped »

alcover wrote: post #5

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A family of very simple browsers that do just that - A new Web that adheres to the above That would make my year.

I think there needs to be a split between the web browser as a document renderer and link follower, and the web browser as a portable target for GUI applications. But frankly my biggest gripe is that you need HTML, JS, and CSS. Three distinct languages that are extremely dissimilar in syntax and semantics that you need all three of (or some bastard cross compiler for your JSX to convert from one format to them). Just make a decent scripting language and interface for the browser and you don't need that nonsense.

I understand this has been tried before (flash, silverlight, etc). They weren't bad ideas, they were killed because of companies that were threatened by the browser as a standard target for applications.

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#19

Post by wyldfire »

booi wrote: post #4

If there were a software engineering hall of fame, I nominate Fabrice.

There is! ACM grants several awards for scientists and more.

One such award is the Turing Award [1], given "for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

Re: Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS

#20

Post by afavour »

alcover wrote: post #5

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS - A family of very simple browsers that do just that - A new Web that adheres to the above That would make my year.

So you want 2026 to be the year of Google AMP?
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