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God, I just want this to come out (for desktop platforms, linux at least). Even though their niche is embedded it looks like this browser will be competitive wi

by kizer 5y ago

God, I just want this to come out (for desktop platforms, linux at least). Even though their niche is embedded it looks like this browser will be competitive with the other modern ones. A new engine would be great for the web. They also have an advantage in architecting their browser for today's web. I hope they release an end-user browser.

hinkley 5y ago
A fast, light engine might be good for test automation as well. Last year I fixed a dependency graph issue with our application that was pulling in Electron on accident and holy hell is that a big boy. I have a potentially untestable theory that the reason why browser testing is so complex is because there is no browser that was built for testing. I almost always find that if my code is becoming difficult to test it's because I've made choices that are antagonistic to automation. The better my code is for unit testing, the easier the integration tests tend to be. Selenium and friends are clearly hamstrung by browsers being antagonistic to E2E testing.
- kizer 5y ago
  Yes, a big boy indeed. Way too big, though to be fair it is that way simply because what it hopes to give developers takes an executable that big (Chromium + Node). I'm not sure how node-webkit compares in size. The webview library, which uses the system's available browser, is obviously minuscule. Though I guess you have to hope that the user hasn't deleted the default HTML5 browser of the OS (not sure if this is an issue; Win32 has chromium-edge-based webview included, right?). However it's safe to assume that this browser would have a significantly lighter footprint given that it's built "embedded first". The only problem is that the engine is proprietary. I'm not sure about licensing when it is released. Regardless, I assume there would be nothing stopping people from bringing it onboard for tests/whatever else they dream up.

by kizer 5y ago

hinkley 5y ago

A fast, light engine might be good for test automation as well. Last year I fixed a dependency graph issue with our application that was pulling in Electron on accident and holy hell is that a big boy. I have a potentially untestable theory that the reason why browser testing is so complex is because there is no browser that was built for testing. I almost always find that if my code is becoming difficult to test it's because I've made choices that are antagonistic to automation. The better my code is for unit testing, the easier the integration tests tend to be. Selenium and friends are clearly hamstrung by browsers being antagonistic to E2E testing.

kizer 5y ago
Yes, a big boy indeed. Way too big, though to be fair it is that way simply because what it hopes to give developers takes an executable that big (Chromium + Node). I'm not sure how node-webkit compares in size. The webview library, which uses the system's available browser, is obviously minuscule. Though I guess you have to hope that the user hasn't deleted the default HTML5 browser of the OS (not sure if this is an issue; Win32 has chromium-edge-based webview included, right?). However it's safe to assume that this browser would have a significantly lighter footprint given that it's built "embedded first". The only problem is that the engine is proprietary. I'm not sure about licensing when it is released. Regardless, I assume there would be nothing stopping people from bringing it onboard for tests/whatever else they dream up.