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I never understood why we don't have more indie browsers. Individual developers love implementing their own take on anything: from the most simple projects to c

I never understood why we don't have more indie browsers. Individual developers love implementing their own take on anything: from the most simple projects to crazy ones like booting Linux from JavaScript or entire operating systems. Why are those talented individuals not implementing their own browsers?

lysergia 4y ago
Because a browser is very complex and does many things simultaneously. Not going to list them here. We all know the many things a browser has to do right. It’s a bundling of many separate components.
tablespoon 4y ago
> I never understood why we don't have more indie browsers. Individual developers love implementing their own take on anything: from the most simple projects to crazy ones like booting Linux from JavaScript or entire operating systems. Why are those talented individuals not implementing their own browsers? My understanding is it's been a long time since a browser was a cool little thing a single person could hack up in a reasonable amount of time. Now web standards are such that it's like some massive line-of-business app with a million requirements that all have to be implemented (and be fast, and be memory efficient) or something will break/someone will complain.
mamcx 4y ago
You see all that devs, even here, clapping when the web browser is more like a OS? That is why. A browser engine today is TOO complex.
badsectoracula 4y ago
Well, there is the web browser engine that the SerenityOS folks are making for their OS and IIRC their goal for it is to be advanced enough to be able to visit their Discord using it.
- skywal_l 4y ago
  I mean I love serenity OS and its community. A perfect mix of passion and talent. But let's get real here, implementing a usable browser implementing all the specs at half the speed of chrome is an undertaking that would requires a huge amount of work. Don't get me wrong I would love for this happen, just don't count on it. And please, when SerenityBrowser have 80% market share in 10 years, don't hesitate to parade that comment all over HN or whatever cool website we'll be on.
  - pipeline_peak 4y ago
    You might already know though, a lot of chrome's Blink is enrooted in the KHTML project. So I at least feel optimistic that open source has a chance to fight back, I just don't know how or when....
r00fus 4y ago
A browser these days is a mini-OS running inside an OS. A browser that tried to be just an HTML/JS rendering engine with a basic UI would fail just like FF is failing, despite getting glowing reviews from HN/reddit.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
I thought Ekioh Flow was promising because it’s multithreaded. Believe it or not, Blinks KHTML’s roots are single threaded, so that’s apparently a big deal. Then I read their blog post where they proudly claimed to finally get Google Docs to work….yikes. They are a small team of I think 20 people, but it goes to show how complex and exhausting writing a modern browser truly is. In terms of talented individuals, I actually emailed Fabrice Bellard on the topic because he wrote QuickJS along with everything else he’s known for. Even he admits writing a browser is a very complicated task because a lot of information is not correctly specified. He did however write QuickEmacs 20 years ago which supported html and css rendering. It’s sad, even when W3C and other committees try their best to keep the web strictly standard, it truly isn’t. And like I said, it hasn’t been enough of an issue to raise any concern outside of bubbles like here. I think the masses need to learn about the importance of keeping fundamental software free and standard as a whole before they can learn why browsers and OS’s should be. But it’s tough because the average user doesn’t know what a library is. A lot of people think that even in app development, the programmer does it all from scratch.
freediver 4y ago
There are a lot of indie browsers. I have 130 web browsers currently installed on my Mac alone. https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1525168129784938496 https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1525168129784938496

lysergia 4y ago

Because a browser is very complex and does many things simultaneously. Not going to list them here. We all know the many things a browser has to do right. It’s a bundling of many separate components.

tablespoon 4y ago

> I never understood why we don't have more indie browsers. Individual developers love implementing their own take on anything: from the most simple projects to crazy ones like booting Linux from JavaScript or entire operating systems. Why are those talented individuals not implementing their own browsers? My understanding is it's been a long time since a browser was a cool little thing a single person could hack up in a reasonable amount of time. Now web standards are such that it's like some massive line-of-business app with a million requirements that all have to be implemented (and be fast, and be memory efficient) or something will break/someone will complain.

mamcx 4y ago

You see all that devs, even here, clapping when the web browser is more like a OS? That is why. A browser engine today is TOO complex.

badsectoracula 4y ago

Well, there is the web browser engine that the SerenityOS folks are making for their OS and IIRC their goal for it is to be advanced enough to be able to visit their Discord using it.

skywal_l 4y ago
I mean I love serenity OS and its community. A perfect mix of passion and talent. But let's get real here, implementing a usable browser implementing all the specs at half the speed of chrome is an undertaking that would requires a huge amount of work. Don't get me wrong I would love for this happen, just don't count on it. And please, when SerenityBrowser have 80% market share in 10 years, don't hesitate to parade that comment all over HN or whatever cool website we'll be on.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  You might already know though, a lot of chrome's Blink is enrooted in the KHTML project. So I at least feel optimistic that open source has a chance to fight back, I just don't know how or when....

r00fus 4y ago

A browser these days is a mini-OS running inside an OS. A browser that tried to be just an HTML/JS rendering engine with a basic UI would fail just like FF is failing, despite getting glowing reviews from HN/reddit.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

I thought Ekioh Flow was promising because it’s multithreaded. Believe it or not, Blinks KHTML’s roots are single threaded, so that’s apparently a big deal. Then I read their blog post where they proudly claimed to finally get Google Docs to work….yikes. They are a small team of I think 20 people, but it goes to show how complex and exhausting writing a modern browser truly is. In terms of talented individuals, I actually emailed Fabrice Bellard on the topic because he wrote QuickJS along with everything else he’s known for. Even he admits writing a browser is a very complicated task because a lot of information is not correctly specified. He did however write QuickEmacs 20 years ago which supported html and css rendering. It’s sad, even when W3C and other committees try their best to keep the web strictly standard, it truly isn’t. And like I said, it hasn’t been enough of an issue to raise any concern outside of bubbles like here. I think the masses need to learn about the importance of keeping fundamental software free and standard as a whole before they can learn why browsers and OS’s should be. But it’s tough because the average user doesn’t know what a library is. A lot of people think that even in app development, the programmer does it all from scratch.

freediver 4y ago

There are a lot of indie browsers. I have 130 web browsers currently installed on my Mac alone. https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1525168129784938496 https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1525168129784938496