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The web (html/css/javascript) standards have become so wide and complex that it's very hard to build a browser from scratch. It gets worse by the day, as more f

The web (html/css/javascript) standards have become so wide and complex that it's very hard to build a browser from scratch. It gets worse by the day, as more features get added to those standards. This makes me wonder if you could define a subset of those standards that would support 90%+ of the use cases, would be simple and efficient to implement and would be supported by existing browsers. You could then push this light version of the web as a new base for a future standard. The problem would of course be that you would have to keep around a different browser to render old sites. Could still be worth thinking about. Doesn't seem feasible as a long term strategy to have browsers support thousands of apis and increasing.

moron4hire 6y ago
The problem is that every site needs a different 90% of the spec.
- kekeblom 6y ago
  Right, but there's still a lot of overlap between features. Take layout for example. If you wanted to arrange boxes using html and css, you have quite a few choices. You could use at least: tables, floats, flexbox or css grid. Imagine if there was only one of those that would cover all possible layouts.
  - c-smile 6y ago
    > Only one of those that would cover all possible layouts. In fact 10 years ago it was such an idea at w3c-styles: https://terrainformatica.com/2018/12/11/10-years-of-flexboxing/ https://terrainformatica.com/2018/12/11/10-years-of-flexboxi... Single CSS property `flow` that defines layout manager in classic Java AWT terms: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visua...
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Here's hoping though that the sites you actually want to visit, such as HN, don't need all that crap. As such, web bloat can serve as a negative marker of sorts ;)
- gsnedders 6y ago
  > Here's hoping though that the sites you actually want to visit, such as HN, don't need all that crap. Though HN is all tables, and table layout is still largely undefined behaviour in the specs.
lazyjones 6y ago
> The problem would of course be that you would have to keep around a different browser to render old sites. Not really, you could polyfill the missing features like it's commonly done with many unimplemented new ones. I'd prefer starting from scratch, with a completely new, simple language that can be translated quickly to HTML/CSS/JS. You'd have to remove those interested in being gatekeepers of the web and sabotaging any efforts to make browsers simpler from the W3C though.
- c-smile 6y ago
  > simple language What is conceptually wrong (or complex) with current HTML/CSS ? What would you change?
ilaksh 6y ago
Please see my comment above. https://github.com/runvnc/noscriptweb https://github.com/runvnc/noscriptweb That GitHub project is just an idea and I am probably never going to actually code it because I have another side project. But I think the spec might be interesting to people.
- ktpsns 6y ago
  Some feedback: From the README and the repo, I don't the idea of your attempts. You should try to be more concise, write some abstract, or move some of the texts in the README.md file into some DETAILS.md.
ilaksh 6y ago
I think what we need is basically markdown (with good syntax highlighting) and web assembly (with a simple Canvas-like API). Where the two are totally separate so the wasm stuff can't interfere with the markdown loading.
VoxPelli 6y ago
This would be good to promote and “test” ones progressive enhancement and/or graceful degradation. Usually that is tested by using some older version of one of the major browsers, often IE11, but would be great to have a more well defined subset to target.

moron4hire 6y ago

The problem is that every site needs a different 90% of the spec.

kekeblom 6y ago
Right, but there's still a lot of overlap between features. Take layout for example. If you wanted to arrange boxes using html and css, you have quite a few choices. You could use at least: tables, floats, flexbox or css grid. Imagine if there was only one of those that would cover all possible layouts.
- c-smile 6y ago
  > Only one of those that would cover all possible layouts. In fact 10 years ago it was such an idea at w3c-styles: https://terrainformatica.com/2018/12/11/10-years-of-flexboxing/ https://terrainformatica.com/2018/12/11/10-years-of-flexboxi... Single CSS property `flow` that defines layout manager in classic Java AWT terms: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visua...

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Here's hoping though that the sites you actually want to visit, such as HN, don't need all that crap. As such, web bloat can serve as a negative marker of sorts ;)

gsnedders 6y ago
> Here's hoping though that the sites you actually want to visit, such as HN, don't need all that crap. Though HN is all tables, and table layout is still largely undefined behaviour in the specs.

lazyjones 6y ago

> The problem would of course be that you would have to keep around a different browser to render old sites. Not really, you could polyfill the missing features like it's commonly done with many unimplemented new ones. I'd prefer starting from scratch, with a completely new, simple language that can be translated quickly to HTML/CSS/JS. You'd have to remove those interested in being gatekeepers of the web and sabotaging any efforts to make browsers simpler from the W3C though.

c-smile 6y ago
> simple language What is conceptually wrong (or complex) with current HTML/CSS ? What would you change?

ilaksh 6y ago

Please see my comment above. https://github.com/runvnc/noscriptweb https://github.com/runvnc/noscriptweb That GitHub project is just an idea and I am probably never going to actually code it because I have another side project. But I think the spec might be interesting to people.

ktpsns 6y ago
Some feedback: From the README and the repo, I don't the idea of your attempts. You should try to be more concise, write some abstract, or move some of the texts in the README.md file into some DETAILS.md.

ilaksh 6y ago

I think what we need is basically markdown (with good syntax highlighting) and web assembly (with a simple Canvas-like API). Where the two are totally separate so the wasm stuff can't interfere with the markdown loading.

VoxPelli 6y ago

This would be good to promote and “test” ones progressive enhancement and/or graceful degradation. Usually that is tested by using some older version of one of the major browsers, often IE11, but would be great to have a more well defined subset to target.