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This looks awesome. About 15 years ago, I started working on a headless browser and maintained it for several years. It used SpiderMonkey as the js interpreter

by jm4 2y ago

This looks awesome. About 15 years ago, I started working on a headless browser and maintained it for several years. It used SpiderMonkey as the js interpreter and had a custom DOM implementation. It ran all the modern js from the time, AJAX, etc. Later, I added a custom Flash runtime. It basically did everything but draw to the screen. That project was a lot of fun. I'm definitely interested in going through this book.

aitchnyu 2y ago
Umm, if you wanted/want to draw to the screen, what library will you use?
- skeeterbug 2y ago
  I believe Chrome uses Skia
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    Yes [4]. > [1] The library is used as of 2023 in Google Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromiumOS, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Android, Firefox OS, Flutter,[5] Avalonia (from Alpha 4), LibreOffice (from version 7.0) and RAD Studio[6](since version 12.0). > [2] Changes to the Skia repository will be rolled into Chromium by the AutoRoll bot several times per day. > [3] It serves as the graphics engine for Google Chrome and ChromeOS, Android, Flutter, and many other products. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skia_Graphics_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skia_Graphics_Engine [2]: https://skia.org/docs/dev/chrome/ https://skia.org/docs/dev/chrome/ [3]: https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/ [4]: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/skia https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/skia
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      Whoa. Somehow I have not heard of this. Can this be used to make cross-platform GUI apps?
      - Rohansi 2y ago
        Sure you can, it's a 2D graphics library. It's more like the JS Canvas API though instead of a UI framework.
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Which rather importantly means that you still need to find something else to do: * layout * event handling which are not exactly trivial for a "real" application (whatever that means).
    - mnutt 2y ago
      As of 2024, WebKit's Linux ports (GTK and WPE) are switching to Skia too. [0] Prior to that, they used cairo. [0]: https://blogs.igalia.com/carlosgc/2024/02/19/webkit-switching-to-skia-for-2d-graphics-rendering/ https://blogs.igalia.com/carlosgc/2024/02/19/webkit-switchin...
- pavpanchekha 2y ago
  The book uses Tk (via Python's tkinter library) for the first 10 chapters and then switches to Skia, which is used by maybe all of the browsers now (I believe Webkit on Linux just switched to it from Cairo). It seems to be by far the most common high-performance 2D graphics library.
- jm4 2y ago
  I didn’t have a clue. That wasn’t part of my skillset. All we needed was a headless browser that was automated. It was crawling a few million pages a day. I had a debug console where I could see cached pages, headers, cookies, etc.

by jm4 2y ago

aitchnyu 2y ago

Umm, if you wanted/want to draw to the screen, what library will you use?

skeeterbug 2y ago
I believe Chrome uses Skia
- lesuorac 2y ago
  Yes [4]. > [1] The library is used as of 2023 in Google Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromiumOS, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Android, Firefox OS, Flutter,[5] Avalonia (from Alpha 4), LibreOffice (from version 7.0) and RAD Studio[6](since version 12.0). > [2] Changes to the Skia repository will be rolled into Chromium by the AutoRoll bot several times per day. > [3] It serves as the graphics engine for Google Chrome and ChromeOS, Android, Flutter, and many other products. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skia_Graphics_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skia_Graphics_Engine [2]: https://skia.org/docs/dev/chrome/ https://skia.org/docs/dev/chrome/ [3]: https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/ [4]: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/skia https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/skia
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    Whoa. Somehow I have not heard of this. Can this be used to make cross-platform GUI apps?
    - Rohansi 2y ago
      Sure you can, it's a 2D graphics library. It's more like the JS Canvas API though instead of a UI framework.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Which rather importantly means that you still need to find something else to do: * layout * event handling which are not exactly trivial for a "real" application (whatever that means).
  - mnutt 2y ago
    As of 2024, WebKit's Linux ports (GTK and WPE) are switching to Skia too. [0] Prior to that, they used cairo. [0]: https://blogs.igalia.com/carlosgc/2024/02/19/webkit-switching-to-skia-for-2d-graphics-rendering/ https://blogs.igalia.com/carlosgc/2024/02/19/webkit-switchin...
pavpanchekha 2y ago
The book uses Tk (via Python's tkinter library) for the first 10 chapters and then switches to Skia, which is used by maybe all of the browsers now (I believe Webkit on Linux just switched to it from Cairo). It seems to be by far the most common high-performance 2D graphics library.
jm4 2y ago
I didn’t have a clue. That wasn’t part of my skillset. All we needed was a headless browser that was automated. It was crawling a few million pages a day. I had a debug console where I could see cached pages, headers, cookies, etc.