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

adayinthelifeof.nl

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

#151

Post by hobs »

lijok wrote: post #138
Ensorceled wrote: post #136

The first part of this blog really resonated with me. Stuff is bad, fascism is on the rise, mega corporations control more and more wealth, those two things feed on each other, book banning in the US, war in Ukraine, my country is burning due to global warming, ... and all of this bad news damages the psyche. I've been thinking of how I can help, that I should stop reading so much negative news, for my own mental hea…

> Stuff is bad, fascism is on the rise, mega corporations control more and more wealth, those two things feed on each other, book banning in the US, war in Ukraine, my country is burning due to global warming, ... and all of this bad news damages the psyche. Turn off the news. We are living in unprecedentedly peaceful and prosperous times, and it's only getting better day by day. That is a fact. If you feel otherwise…

Ah yes, America is famously calm, Eastern Europe is doing fine, and there's no incoming global climate issue.

Just because we're doing good in absolute terms compared to wars and plagues of the past doesn't mean we're doing great.

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

#152

Post by forgotpwd16 »

jraph wrote: post #31
thewrinklyninja wrote: post #22

just use Falkon. browser by the KDE team. free, open etc. https://www.falkon.org/

Falkon uses QtWebEngine, which uses Blink, Google Chrome's engine. Which is a shame, because as a KDE user, I would consider using Falkon otherwise. It's extra painful knowing that KDE built KHTML, used by Apple to build WebKit, used by Google to build Blink…

Writing and maintaining a state-of-art browser engine is hard. Using an existent one is best choice unless you don't care about people actually using your browser or they're fine with accessing a part of the web.

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

#153

Post by dtx1 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #137
dtx1 wrote: post #114

I think the way forward is to let the HTML, CSS, JS Stack finally die and be replaced with something more appropriate. It's an ever growing mess of hacks and compatibility layers to make a technology do something it was never intended to do. Heck, your browser now supports USB. We need something that's designed from the ground up to be a remotely loaded application layer for operating systems. But to get to that poin…

Let the browser become a user agent in the full meaning of the word. Few web sites need their own styling or navigational structure. Finding information would be much easier for the user if all websites are presented in the same format, completely decided by the user. I've changed my browsers to load all websites in reader view by default, and it is shockingly better than the old way. You get your text, hyperlinks, i…

> Let the browser become a user agent in the full meaning of the word. Few web sites need their own styling or navigational structure. Finding information would be much easier for the user if all websites are presented in the same format, completely decided by the user.

You are correct that this would be the better^tm solution. But it's so far from reality that it might as well be impossible. Branding, UX Design and Marketing are far too entrenched to give up their turf. What you end up with is another Gemini Protocoll that a few nerds use and the rest of the world doesn't care about.

We need a solution that can deal with the same level of complexity as browsers but in a cleaner, easier to implement and far less legacy loaded manner. Something like a combined new HTML CSS frontend layer, with a decent sandboxed webasm-like virtual machine (preferably hardware virtualized) with clear boundaries and a decent, forward looking standard.

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

#154

Post by dexterlagan »

ilaksh wrote: post #26
dexterlagan wrote: post #9

I wrote a couple custom browsers for both pro and personal reasons. I found out that there is a tiny niche market for a privacy-focused, minimalist browser that a) does not understand cookies, b) executes JS only when allowed to and c) is capable of displaying most decent Web sites without garbling them. I had good success with using Chromium as backend, and slowly adding the stuff we do need (download manager, passw…

If you used Chromium to "write a browser" then in no way did you write a browser. You wrapped Chromium.

Yes agreed, I meant writing a wrapper. Writing a browser engine isn't my cup of tea :)

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

#156

Post by phkahler »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #72
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 get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This attitude is gold, and it's what changes the whole world. What you said about the misery of "news" resonates with me. In psyops we call it "sapping". Propaganda designed to demoralise, dispirit and corrode resistance used to come from our enemies . The classic example wa…

>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness.

Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.

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

#157

Post by zerojames »

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 are going to learn so much from this project!

I have had a lot of fun implementing (much smaller) web standards. I started with ones that had step-by-step implementation guides. It was one step in realizing that the web _is ours_! We can build it at every stage, from the web pages to the standards to the browsers.

Happy building!

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

#158

Post by mo_42 »

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…

> This IS a pet project.

Contrary to many comments here about not creating another browser, I'd like to encourage you continue!

Once, for example Linux was also pet project. In retrospective, it's obvious but we don't know how the world will look like in a couple of years. And who could predict the success of Linux in the early nineties?

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

#159

Post by webmobdev »

adwn wrote: post #60
deaddodo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, LadyBird is extremely young and coming along at a pretty decent pace. Though, to be fair, the main author does have some extensive experience in the realm. I, personally, would love to see some alternative engines to the monoculture of Blink and it's WebKit cousin, other than just Gecko/Quantum. Something to take the place of what KHTML used to have before being gobbled up into WebKit; or just another (ideall…

Well, there's Servo [1], which I have high hopes for. [1] https://servo.org/

I was interested in Servo, but its website is exasperating - any idea where I can find info on what HTML, CSS and JS standards it supports?

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

#160

Post by neoromantique »

opless wrote: post #144
jongjong wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Bitcoin's market cap is $500 Billion and has a trading volume is over $10 billion per day and has been outperforming the markets for over a decade. If the financial system is fine, then how is it possible that a 'scam' is worth $500 billion? What kind of financial system allows such scam to exist for over a decade and keeps attracting investors year after year? If the financial system is not fine, then how could…

I said Blockchain, not Bitcoin. Bitcoins "value" it that it's a pyramid scheme along time, early "investors" profit when they get out. Market cap means nothing when you run out of difficulty ;) Anyhow I'll leave you to your delusions and get on with my life. Toodle-oo!

>I'll leave you to your delusions and get on with my life

That's easy to say when you are living in a country with access to a healthy financial system, this is a luxury, not norm.

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