4 ms·

Building a general purpose browser must be insanely complicated challenge with very little reward. It would be interesting to see more niche browsers for browsi

Building a general purpose browser must be insanely complicated challenge with very little reward. It would be interesting to see more niche browsers for browsing specific types of site, though.

bombcar 4y ago
The only way a new browser engine will be written in this day and age is if a massive company throws absolutely billions at it (Microsoft and Apple have both given up on this) or a competing browser on the Chromium engine gets popular enough that they become the main fork and begin to diverge. I don't really see any other way until HTML and the web is replaced by something else entirely.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  What browser engine did Apple give up on?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The sarcastic answer would be "webkit" but technically Chrome forked from that.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Yeah I’m not sure Apple has abandoned any previous engine they worked on - it’s all been incremental for them.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
I think this point often isn't mentioned enough to be fair. Chromium is a ridiculously complex project. Most of these "independant" browser teams are simply not capable to create a browser from scratch. I'm not saying people should praise Google or anything since they obviously have interest in it, But Google is still the one who (mostly) build chromium and leave it open source (I understand they have to since it was originally a fork of Webkit, but I feel Google can do it from scratch if they wanted). Without it none of these browsers would exist. If anything, why almost no one uses Gecko/Firefox as a template/start point instead is a more interesting question, TBH.
- dillpickle 4y ago
  I inspected and compared the gecko and chromium project structure once, when I was a hardcore advocate of Firefox. Chromium looked way better and organized than gecko. That is not the reason I stopped being an advocate though.

Building a general purpose browser must be insanely complicated challenge with very little reward. It would be interesting to see more niche browsers for browsing specific types of site, though.

bombcar 4y ago

The only way a new browser engine will be written in this day and age is if a massive company throws absolutely billions at it (Microsoft and Apple have both given up on this) or a competing browser on the Chromium engine gets popular enough that they become the main fork and begin to diverge. I don't really see any other way until HTML and the web is replaced by something else entirely.

chrisseaton 4y ago
What browser engine did Apple give up on?
- bombcar 4y ago
  The sarcastic answer would be "webkit" but technically Chrome forked from that.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Yeah I’m not sure Apple has abandoned any previous engine they worked on - it’s all been incremental for them.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

I think this point often isn't mentioned enough to be fair. Chromium is a ridiculously complex project. Most of these "independant" browser teams are simply not capable to create a browser from scratch. I'm not saying people should praise Google or anything since they obviously have interest in it, But Google is still the one who (mostly) build chromium and leave it open source (I understand they have to since it was originally a fork of Webkit, but I feel Google can do it from scratch if they wanted). Without it none of these browsers would exist. If anything, why almost no one uses Gecko/Firefox as a template/start point instead is a more interesting question, TBH.

dillpickle 4y ago
I inspected and compared the gecko and chromium project structure once, when I was a hardcore advocate of Firefox. Chromium looked way better and organized than gecko. That is not the reason I stopped being an advocate though.