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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
"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…
> and that it will be compatible with whatever Google decides to add to theirs There are plenty of respectable people who maintain "home pages" with much simpler HTML than what is possible, and news.ycombinator.com gets a lot of love for keeping its classic look. All this to say, I'd like if the people who have a lot of overlapping agreement on this would agree on a subset to use, and I'd be happy with a browser that…
"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…
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 (ideally, open source) choice to experiment on.
On the political note of the article: yes, the world is fucked up and it is exhausting to only read fucked up news. I personally believe that disconnecting from reality and becoming 'apolitical' implies giving up on humanity; that is giving up on your kids, nephews and the children of your best friends. No need to change the world, a small change in your community is more than enough. Specially as coders, what we bui…
Writing a browser means writing a rendering and layout engine. That's a pretty tall order, not that you can't do it. But there's so much you could do that would be more likely to be fruitful. Port Servo to Nyxt Browser. Fork WebKit or servo or gecko and pull out the invasive web standards that have been injected by the ad company over the last decade that hurt users. It's all work you're going to have to do anyway bu…
That all to say, yes it's a tall order. But it's not the most impossible thing for a small team of dedicated people to do.
Anyone doing this for cars? I feel cars are much worse than browsers in terms of screwing their buyers and much easier to topple. Way to go. Godspeed.
Feelings aside, why do you think this?
"And so hackers set sights on the HyperText Line, in pursuit of their dreams. The world has truly entered a Great Browsers Era!"
After years of believing that browsers were an insurmontable mountains, more and more people are believing we can do it. My 2 seconds analysis tells me that we're seeing this not because new browsers makers want to emulate and compete with the existing mammoths, but because they want to change the web. I'm loving it.
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 the tech industry. But 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.
I think this project will not result in an actual browser. That's not why i'm writing this. I want people to see my code, either laugh at it, or get some own idea's to make things better. For instance, I LOVE the whatwg site where the whole html5 tokenizer and parser algorithms are step by step described. This means it should be easy(?) enough for anyone to write their own html5 parser. What would happen if google and/or microsoft decide to create their own custom html5 (html5, ghtml) as a closed format? Who would be able to stop them when they have such a market share?
I want to start for scratch - BECAUSE i want to know more about the underlying technical challenges.
"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…
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…