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Comment by xacky | Hacker News Reader

What's more is that it also has a full web browser that is not based on webkit/blink/gecko but its own independent engine.

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Unless anyone can name a counter example it's probably the most advanced open source browser engine except for the WebKit family, the Gecko family, and NetSurf. Never mind the whole OS - that alone is worthy of Andreas being able to work full time on the project!

Don't know about SerenityOS' but Dillo (predating even NetSurf) is pretty nice minimal browser with independent layout engine and there's Abaco (for Plan 9) which supports most of HTML4. That said from your list you miss KHTML (WebKit's parent; have diverged significantly since), Trident, EdgeHTML, Presto, and of course, Servo. All without doubt advanced engines. It's disappointing that both Microsoft and Opera didn't open sourced their own after retiring them.

Edit: Oops, didn't see the "open source" clause. So Trident, EdgeHTML, and Presto don't count.

I daresay Serenity might have the edge on Abaco and perhaps even Dillo. Servo I totally forgot. I didn't realise KHTML was still a thing.

Webkit family actually should be called KHTML family.

KHTML is dead since 2016 though

Not to make it sound any less impressive (because it truly is an amazing effort) but it's basically first place there simply because the criteria excludes every other like engine better and there is no remaining option that's worse. Well technically (the now deprecated) KHTML is missing many of the things now supported but that spawned the "WebKit Family" so I don't think that counts (and it supports other things Serenity's doesn't). Well Lynx might actually be behind in compliance... but it's not exactly aiming for the same goalpost.

I see your point. I guess I was trying to make the point (that perhaps everyone on HN is already aware of) that there really is an incredibly limited number of active browser projects even marginally capable of being used for the modern web so any new one deserves huge support.

Arachne

Fantastic :)

Servo is miles ahead.

I just backed his Patreon just because of this!

But I've been told by Hacker News multiple times that developing an independent browser is impossible without the means of a multi-million dollar corporation.

I mean, it kind of is. You can make a basic browser, sure, but you'll have a hard time implementing video playback, canvas, JavaScript and everything else, while also delivering good performance and rendering everything accurately. Yes, I know his browser has JS support, but the performance is likely at least an order of magnitude slower than V8 or Firefox... And then there's CSS, and the fact that HTML, JS and CSS keep growing and having more functionality added every month. That's not to minimize his accomplishments, browsers are just immensely complex pieces of software. Complex enough that Opera killed their own browser engine because they didn't have the manpower to maintain it anymore, and are now using WebKit.

All of that being said, it all depends on your expectations. You can totally make a browser that is capable of going to web forums and posting on Hacker News, browsing the SerenityOS website and maybe even Wikipedia for instance. If you want to build something that supports pre-2005 HTML/JS, that's probably quite feasible.

In the span of about 2 years, the Serenity browser has gone from nothing to where it is now. It already supports JavaScript and the canvas API.

Do you think you could build this in 2 years? The answer is yes, you could.

Sure, but like I said, having some JS support is one thing, building a fast JS engine is another. The same goes for canvas, I mean, you have to realize, there is WebGL support on the web now, but also the Web Audio API, WASM, etc. It never stops growing. There's even talk about adding machine learning features to WASM.

Again, this isn't to minimize the accomplishment, this is great, it's just to say, while building a hobbyist browser must be fun for sure, and I'm sure this browser can be useful to browse many websites out there, particularly if said websites intentionally restrict which HTML features they use. However, it's probably not realistic to think you could compete with the commercial browsers. They have dozens of people who have been working full-time on those projects for two decades and they are constantly adding new features.

I think if Andreas Kling was here, he would probably agree. I'm sure his goal was never to replace Chrome/Firefox or compete with them, but rather to learn, educate, and have fun. I congratulate him on his success and for reaching the milestone of being able to sustain himself from his passion project.

I think this is where the ninety-ninety rule is typically invoked.

Just a nitpick, but I'm pretty sure Opera was gutted of engineers as well after their acquisition fiasco with that Chinese outfit. I don't think they had as much manpower as the good ol days AND not enough manpower to compete with the old engine.

I'm on mobile or I'd go find a source, but I'm fairly certain some key people left before all that went down.

Not that maintaining a web browser is easy, but they WERE doing it, to varying success.

It's not just Opera though. Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture.

Sure, I wasn't addressing that though. I just meant that it's a little inaccurate to say Opera couldn't do it because of the turmoil and turnover, and that's on top of the fact that browser engines are immensely technical projects.

I'm worried about that as well, but it's not really fair to attribute blame to most people at Opera, especially prior to the China thing. Things were okay there for a long time before that.

> Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit.

No, it's not.

> if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture

Not a risk. Chrome dominates, and it uses Blink, not WebKit. (Yes, the distinction matters, and no, it is not a distinction that is minor/negligible/insubstantial.)

>I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture.

Does that really matter much, if it's open source? A lot of software converges on one or a few standard libraries or applications.

Yes, it matters a lot. One of the reasons people want open source is to be able to "fork away" from a popular project, if the leadership team of that project takes a direction that people disagree with. Obviously this goal is impossible to meet, if the project is closed-source, or has an onerous license.

There is another cost that people don't talk about as much, and that is the cost to understand a large, alien codebase enough to be able to understand and change it. If the effort to contribute is too high, you can't get a second group of programmers to rally around the fork, and the new project will fizzle.

As an example, Google understands the economics of code very well. They know that there is little threat to market dominance for them to release Android or Chromium as open source.

It'd be quite a huge and significant step in the web becoming a single stack or implementation, rather than a set of open standards with various interoperable implementations.

Like telecomm, wifi, and USB standards, web browsing protocol standards are deliberately overcomplicated as a way to legally fend off competition. Anytime a big corporation gets its hooks into a Standard, one can expect its complexity to grow forever unless an individual at said corporation prevents it.

IMO, it's more that the standards are overcomplicated as a result of (unhealthy) competition. This is maybe less true now, but my impression has been that until recently, Firefox and Chrome were both always racing to implement some new proprietary feature before the other browsers could design an equivalent. There were no standards. In fact, even before that, the way JavaScript was created is that Brendan Eich, at NetScape, implemented it in two weeks. The same was true of many other browser features, they were rushed into production in order to outdo other browsers and have this new feature first, and then everyone was kind of stuck having to support every half-baked feature because some websites made use of them.

It’s probably not so much deliberate complexification, as reluctant simplification. The system will become complex all by itself when there is little pressure to streamline it.

Truly, while the web also now being better than at the time of activex and flash etc. I’d wager the only rescue for a new free non-WebKit would be simple ways to use external programs - maybe yet a challenge for language design.

Every time I hear V8 mentioned, people talk about it like it's some sort of sacred tablet given to us mortals by Lord Google. It's good, but its just another interpreter/compiler.

Just because you don't like cult around it, doesn't mean you have downplay V8. No, it's not just another interpreter/compiler. V8 is an incredible feat of engineering.

Depends on what is meant by "browser". Browsing HTML is not too difficult.

There is no rule that says a "browser" must match Google's in-house Chrome or its outsourced Firefox (all salaries of Firefox developers are currently paid with money from a deal with Google).

Look at how many browsers exist already for Gemini. How many were funded by advertising. Probably zero. The multi-million dollar corporations have a vested interest in keeping the notion of "browser" so complex that independent authors cannot even contemplate it.

Even if you somehow manage to fully implement all of JS with decent performance, you will finally hit the wall with video DRM - your users will never be able to watch Netflix, for example.

Widevine is the first DRM to be really open to be ported. They suck the least of all DRM systems. This is the DRM used in the Chrome browser and Firefox. I think it would be possible (not easy, or logical, but possible) that Serenity Browser gets Widevine at some point.

I don't think so. See "I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me" [0] and the related HN discussion [1].

[0] https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849800

Don't the content companies need to trust your project with some secret key at some point for this to work?

Eh, it kinda is. The Serenity browser has seen a huge amount of grassroots development work that most projects couldn't dream of and it's still quite a way off usable for what most people consider every-day browsing tasks.

That's the 80/20, for day to day it probably does not work. So indeed creating an independent browser is pretty much impossible.

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