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Let's build a browser engine, part 7: Intro to Painting

• bhhaskin 12y ago
  Thank you for making these. It is a neat way to see what goes on behind the scenes.
  • mbrubeck 12y ago
    You're welcome! :D
• amelius 12y ago
  Nice work. Very well explained. However, the main difficulty of building a browser engine is (IMHO) the fact that it should update the display incrementally whenever a change in the DOM-tree or the CSS occurs. That is, an update should cause a minimal (or close-to-minimal) number of (paint) operations to be performed. I'm looking forward to the discussion of this topic :)
  • mbrubeck 12y ago
    I doubt that I'll manage to implement incremental layout or display-list invalidation in robinson. If you're curious about how it works other browsers, though, check out http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/#Global_and_incremental_layout http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers...
    • bjz_ 12y ago
      Perhaps you could add a footnote at the end regarding this?
      • mbrubeck 12y ago
        I think I'll discuss some "advanced topics" like this in a separate post near the end of the series.
    • amelius 12y ago
      Even if you don't implement it, it could be nice if you discussed it in abstract terms. That is describe the architecture, rather than write a complete implementation. IMHO, architecture is more important than implementation, especially when explaining things.
  • bjz_ 12y ago
    This is currently implemented in Servo, but it is not a trivial problem. It was only added in the past several months, if I recall correctly (pcwalton will have to clarify). This is but a demonstration engine for educational purposes - kind of like Featherweight Java.
    • mbrubeck 12y ago
      For reference, here the starting point of the Servo implementation: https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/3590 https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/3590