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I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

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Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#101

Post by matwood »

jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

You shouldn't have to write this response on 'hacker' news, but good for you. Work on what you want. Some people do wood working, fix cars, or play video games. Others like coding. I have tons of partial projects I've started for various reasons, and enjoyed them all. Good luck and have fun. And, maybe your project does turn into something bigger.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#102

Post by nicoburns »

davedx wrote: post #78
speps wrote: post #20

If Rust is a must, surely contributing to Servo[1] and learning by sending small PRs to start with would be more beneficial. However, I do understand as I've done this kind of "from scratch" project before just because I thought I could do it better or because I couldn't get into reading the existing codebase easily. To each their own... [1] https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is an amazing project and I love everything Mozilla has done, but it's also financially coupled to Google, right?

Nope! Servo is no longer a Mozilla project. Development has been taken over by Igalia.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#103

Post by shiomiru »

As another person who had no clue about how "real" browsers work but still decided to write a browser[1] (with a custom layout engine and whatnot): go for it. It is a very rewarding experience to see websites rendered by your code, no matter how awful that code (or output) may be.

I'm about two and a half years in, now my project can render HN and simple blogs reasonably well. Is it objectively better than w3m (that I was going to replace)? Not exactly, so I still return to w3m for some tasks. But I've found use of it for tasks that I didn't even think it would be useful for, learned a lot about programming in the process, and find it cool that it works at all.

[1]: https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#104

Post by dharmit »

davedx wrote: post #78
speps wrote: post #20

If Rust is a must, surely contributing to Servo[1] and learning by sending small PRs to start with would be more beneficial. However, I do understand as I've done this kind of "from scratch" project before just because I thought I could do it better or because I couldn't get into reading the existing codebase easily. To each their own... [1] https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is an amazing project and I love everything Mozilla has done, but it's also financially coupled to Google, right?

I learned only a few hours back that entire Servo team was let go by Mozilla [1] and the project is now a part of Linux Foundation. So, I think, Servo has no direct/indirect ties to Mozilla/Google any more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servo_(software)#cite_note-202...

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#105

Post by dizhn »

clouddrover wrote: post #2

You'd be better off using and contributing to Firefox. Less work, more result.

To get what any particular person wants from their own imagining of a browser,you'd first have to remove a lot of things from any established browser, be it chromium or firefox. Try to push such a PR and see what happens.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#106

Post by Sakos »

ilaksh wrote: post #24

"Writing a browser" (from scratch) at this point basically means you are implementing a type of portable operating-system-in-a-box (the web platform) and that it will be compatible with whatever Google decides to add to theirs. The browser is so comprehensive in functionality and APIs, and such a challenge to keep up with Google's constant churn of new features and total dominance, that not even Microsoft could do it…

Am I wrong in thinking the only thing we're missing for a rich ecosystem of browsers is a modular, independent Javascript runtime/interpreter similar to Java? Java has a bunch of JVMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines

Maybe we need Mozilla (and others) to make an independent Javascript "VM" that everybody can use.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#107

Post by ilaksh »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #85
ilaksh wrote: post #24

"Writing a browser" (from scratch) at this point basically means you are implementing a type of portable operating-system-in-a-box (the web platform) and that it will be compatible with whatever Google decides to add to theirs. The browser is so comprehensive in functionality and APIs, and such a challenge to keep up with Google's constant churn of new features and total dominance, that not even Microsoft could do it…

You're wrong about a few things. (1) A browser isn't an OS at all, it's a Javascript runtime and a constraint solver (to put all of the boxes in the right places per the CSS inputs). (2) Google doesn't constantly churn the web world anymore, they still do try, but it hasn't been effective for quite some time. (3) Microsoft was keeping up with web standards just fine, but they were falling behind in performance, and t…

[flagged]

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#109

Post by philbo »

jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

I think a browser makes a GREAT personal project, because there are high-quality, public specifications for the stuff you need to implement. And these things are maintained in the open, you can even go and find meeting minutes if there are particular decisions you want to investigate further.

And it's not just specifications, there's test suites and reference implementations out there too. Of course it's still a huge task, but there should be no blind alleys to wander up.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#110

Post by [deleted] »

ilaksh wrote: post #24

"Writing a browser" (from scratch) at this point basically means you are implementing a type of portable operating-system-in-a-box (the web platform) and that it will be compatible with whatever Google decides to add to theirs. The browser is so comprehensive in functionality and APIs, and such a challenge to keep up with Google's constant churn of new features and total dominance, that not even Microsoft could do it…

[deleted]
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