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Comment by Vermeulen | Hacker News Reader

You have definitely missed the entire point. Of course there are some advantages of just putting it all in the browser for rendering current standard web sites. The point is to rethink the browser so it isn't just a single tech company setting what the web is with Chromium. A WebGPU+WebAssembly engine would be simple enough for there to be many.

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Right but this misses the point that you’re not removing complexity by shuffling it down a layer. Is it really an advantage to have multiple “thin browsers” if there are only two or three “browser engines” anyway due to their complexity? Further by pushing the complexity down a layer you inevitably make it slower.

Aside from which from a market perspective most small browser projects already are a thin layer on top of Chromium. So really what’s gained here?

Particularly if you want to write a novel app using WASM and WebGPU/WebGL only you can already with the tiniest amount of glue to spin the handle. And this can be a useful approach but should it be the default?

It would definitely remove complexity from the browser. By that logic should browsers just contain all the common Javascript frameworks? No because that would slow down their rate of change, and sites couldn't control their exact version / configuration. Should be the same for the entire DOM

This doesn't really make sense the browser is complex because it needs to do a lot in order to meet web standards. Removing most of it's functionality and making it a VM with a cross-platform renderer is definitely a great idea for building cross-platform applications but it's no longer functionally a browser. You could build a browser engine on top but then that's just circuitous and most likely slower. The standards and complexity don't vanish in either case. Neither does the VM and renderer obviate the need to follow the version and configuration of that piece of software. And importantly you don't need to use the DOM right now if you don't want to in the browser as Figma and other applications clearly demonstrate.

If what you're trying to say is an application platform based on WASM and WebGPU that safely sandboxed userland applications ultimately delivered over the internet is a good idea then yes I'd agree it is. But it's not a browser.

Having a browser be just WebGPU+WebAssembly is basically just Flash and all the dog shit UX and terrible performance it forced on people. Responsiveness entirely up to the developer, giant binary blobs of content mixed with code, and 100% CPU usage all the time.

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