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We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

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Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#251

Post by nicoburns »

doodlesdev wrote: post #240
nicoburns wrote: post #89

The specs really are drastically better than they used to be. Compare the modern specification for CSS Table Layout ( https://www.w3.org/TR/css-tables-3/ ) with the older CSS2 one ( https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/tables.html ). The older one doesn't even attempt to define the "automatic layout algorithm" at all!

What is this supposed to mean in the website? > Not Ready For Implementation > This spec is not yet ready for implementation. It exists in this repository to record the ideas and promote discussion. > Before attempting to implement this spec, please contact the CSSWG at www-style@w3.org.

It means that the spec is a draft and that it hasn't been finished yet (there may still be bits missing or wrong). But it is clearly already so much better than the old version.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#252

Post by nicoburns »

riffraff wrote: post #232
yodsanklai wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all the complexity of a browser in the rendering engine? can a browser be split into several components so that they can be rewritten concurrently?

Mozilla's servo seemed to be done in this fashion, so that some components were later brought to gecko/Firefox, so presumably you can do it.

Yeah, I think servo had the right idea. The main problem with servo's components is that they're severely underdocumented, which has made it harder than it should be for some components (like webrender) to become widely adopted (some of the other ones like html5ever and cssparser are widely used).

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#253

Post by cubefox »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #233
yodsanklai wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is all the complexity of a browser in the rendering engine? can a browser be split into several components so that they can be rewritten concurrently?

The vast majority of the complexity is in the engine. One can whip up reasonable chrome (browser UI) in whatever UI framework one prefers in a few days tops. While there are slightly more involved parts like writing the bookmarks and history systems, those are pretty run of the mill tasks that can be completed in a relatively short period of time.

Exactly.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#254

Post by marginalia_nu »

gizmo wrote: post #248
illiarian wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> features introduced today are much more carefully defined than the ad-hoc features of yesteryear. Many of them are just as ad-hoc, even if they are better defined, and meant to cover some holes in previous ad-hoc specifications. For example, the entire `subgrid` spec is patching one specific hole which actually has a proper general definition: "These however are independent of the parent and of each other, meaning…

What is harder, starting with nothing and building the equivalent of 2020 Chromium from scratch, or taking Chromium from 2020 and extending it with the new features to get it up to date with today's Chromium? The former is 100x harder than the latter, and the prior statement that new CSS/JS features are a burden to keep up with is patently absurd. Because it's a tiny amount of work relative to the total work required…

Posing the problem as making just one change hides the problem. The problem is long term. A constant deluge of externally driven changes inevitably creates a quagmire of technical debt since you have no choice but to implement them regardless whether your chosen architecture is suitable for the change.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#255

Post by it_citizen »

Narishma wrote: post #250
it_citizen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But their product survived and they ended up being wildly successful. In a lot of projects, early optimization hurt the development speed and maintainability, sometimes killing the product. It is easier to see performance bottlenecks once a product is wildly used than adding optimizations everywhere we suspect it might become a problem later.

Firefox is not wildly successful. I think you misunderstood the comment.

I did

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#256

Post by HelloNurse »

asimpletune wrote: post #204
cudgy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does developing a half-baked browser that targets some websites for fun refute that building a browser is impossible? Doesn’t it provide another example that it is impossible, at least for this team?

Well, it takes time to make something big. And, one way to do it is to choose end-to-end functionality. Idk, it doesn’t seem so controversial to me. I’d wait and see before calling it half-baked.

A vertical slice of the properly integrated features needed by some practical use case is certainly more efficient and effective than implementing the whole of a large API (e.g. some fancy recent, unproven and unstable CSS module) "in a vacuum", getting numerous rare cases wrong, and struggling to test the new features.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#257

Post by nashashmi »

smolder wrote: post #236
nashashmi wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a missed opportunity to build in rust. Servo was the previous engine that got abandoned midway. They should have continued that.

This browser isn't that ambitious. They're not trying to revolutionize anything, just to make a working one.

And they will optimize it later.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#258

Post by philistine »

illiarian wrote: post #194
chrismorgan wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it’s still wildly wrong. Had arp242 not spoken up at that time, I’d have been saying something similar, because the numbers were to me blindingly obviously extremely unrealistic. The entire HTML Standard (which is somewhat of a misnomer now, it covers much more than just HTML, quite a bit of CSS interactions, other web platform functionality, JavaScript APIs, and the likes) is now about half a million words…

> and I suspect it’s bigger than everything else put together, apart from ECMAScript The thing is, it's not just the HTML standard. It's also all the standards it references. And all the standards they reference, and all the standards those standards reference, ad infinitum. For example, HTML 5 references SVG 2 which references CSS 2 which references Unicode and XML 11 . Or, to go the same route, HTML 5 references SV…

To make a web browser from scratch is like making a hamburger from scratch. The problem is not about the first part but what you truly mean by from scratch.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#259

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

If your team's just 5 people, having a strong leader can make the difference. But with a whole business, it's no longer about one strong leader. The more people you have, the more you have to invest in levelling up individual performance. Almost universally that doesn't scale, so instead you work on process, and use that process, not individual leadership, to ensure better results.

Re: We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

#260

Post by missblit »

doodlesdev wrote: post #240
nicoburns wrote: post #89

The specs really are drastically better than they used to be. Compare the modern specification for CSS Table Layout ( https://www.w3.org/TR/css-tables-3/ ) with the older CSS2 one ( https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/tables.html ). The older one doesn't even attempt to define the "automatic layout algorithm" at all!

What is this supposed to mean in the website? > Not Ready For Implementation > This spec is not yet ready for implementation. It exists in this repository to record the ideas and promote discussion. > Before attempting to implement this spec, please contact the CSSWG at www-style@w3.org.

It means that the web is built on top of a bunch of working draft specifications.

If you work in the web space you quickly learn to shrug, double check that browsers do actually implement this version, and proceed.

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