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So you want to build a browser engine

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#21

Post by ramesh31 »

amelius wrote: post #6

This makes writing a compiler or writing an OS kernel look like child's play.

>This makes writing a compiler or writing an OS kernel look like child's play.

Indeed. The modern web browser is the single most advanced, complex, and highly developed piece of software that 99% of people will ever interact with, and we treat it as a given. Having a highly performant fully sandboxed VM that runs on every system imaginable in billions of devices used by nearly every human on earth is the single greatest triumph of software engineering ever, perhaps only second to the Linux kernel.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#24

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

ramesh31 wrote: post #21
amelius wrote: post #6

This makes writing a compiler or writing an OS kernel look like child's play.

>This makes writing a compiler or writing an OS kernel look like child's play. Indeed. The modern web browser is the single most advanced, complex, and highly developed piece of software that 99% of people will ever interact with, and we treat it as a given. Having a highly performant fully sandboxed VM that runs on every system imaginable in billions of devices used by nearly every human on earth is the single great…

> used by nearly every human on earth

Roughly 60% of earth's population used the internet in 2023. So not quite nearly every human.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#25

Post by doublerabbit »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

> Nobody builds their own browser engines

Anymore.

https://eylenburg.github.io/browser_engines.htm

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#26

Post by asadotzler »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

As someone who worked with roc for many years at Mozilla, and with 25 years of Mozilla and Gecko experience myself, I think it serves as a solid warning.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#27

Post by IshKebab »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #22

This post starts with a false dichotomy: You're either making a toy browser for fun, or you're trying to make the next Chrome. There are many points in-between on that spectrum. (Look how long Microsoft IE existed, despite being highly inferior.)

That's only because it was the "Chrome" (i.e. the dominant browser). Look at what happened when Microsoft eventually tried to catch up with Chrome - they gave up.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#29

Post by wizzwizz4 »

IshKebab wrote: post #27
phendrenad2 wrote: post #22

This post starts with a false dichotomy: You're either making a toy browser for fun, or you're trying to make the next Chrome. There are many points in-between on that spectrum. (Look how long Microsoft IE existed, despite being highly inferior.)

That's only because it was the "Chrome" (i.e. the dominant browser). Look at what happened when Microsoft eventually tried to catch up with Chrome - they gave up.

> Look at what happened when Microsoft eventually tried to catch up with Chrome - they gave up.

That wasn't because they weren't up to the job. It's because Google was using Microsoft's playbook against them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824

> I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower.

(While this may seem like poetic justice, Google's also been doing this against everyone else, so we shouldn't cheer. Also, unlike when Microsoft pulled these stunts, this might not even be deliberate on the part of the Google webdevs.)

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#30

Post by dmazzoni »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #22

This post starts with a false dichotomy: You're either making a toy browser for fun, or you're trying to make the next Chrome. There are many points in-between on that spectrum. (Look how long Microsoft IE existed, despite being highly inferior.)

Not at all: at the very end it suggests some in-betweens, like building an alternative to Electron or embedded WebViews.

There are lots of browser engines like that still around. It'd be really interesting to see one that supports the vast majority of web standards but without trying to do everything else a full browser does.

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