@smallcircles@alcinnz Thank you for the share! All feedback welcome. I've now updated my notes about project aims as well separately (most content is work in progress right now) gitlab.com/bkil/gemiweb
@kik This project is in the same realm as gemini: write your own engine so you don't have to depend on others and for maximal control. May also come in handy for a potential webxdc-lite implementation.
@smallcircles@alcinnz It's also worth noting that for people who can write a very small amount of code, you may not even need a browser, thanks to projects like webkit-gtk that make engines available with minimal code needed to get something running. https://webkitgtk.org/
I'm actually writing this in such a program :) (although, it's not anymore "a few lines", I kept adding hacks through the years)
@kik@smallcircles I've done that too! Very easy to get started that way.
I'm glad to see more WebKit browsers, but I also think there needs to be more browser engines. Ones that are maintainable & highlight an appealing alternate vision.
@alcinnz@smallcircles Indeed, I would love to see that too! The task is a bit too intimidating for me, though. 😅 The people building engines from scratch nowadays are superheroes.
@alcinnz@kik@smallcircles one thing I would love to see is a serious fork of the Mozilla codebase to make it embeddable into other projects, like it used to be. I feel like when Mozilla dropped support for Xulrunner it was a betrayal of the community.
They then turned around a few years later and made big promises for an embeddable engine with Servo, which they then (predictably) abandoned.
@jeang3nie@alcinnz@kik@smallcircles But when people ask for embeddable gecko they usually don't ask for something like xulrunner! Xulrunner was similar to Electron, suited to build a new gecko-based app, but not a way to embed a web view in another program.
@mousey@smallcircles In your list of 85, how many of those are still active? How many are Chromium under the hood? How many are WebKit under the hood? I recognize many of those logos as falling into those buckets.
There may be 85 browsers by your count, but there are only 2 or 3 "browser engines" which get taken seriously. Blink (Google Chrome's), Gecko (Firefox's), & WebKit (Safari's). I was writing specs to be reflective of those engines (like my own) which don't get taken seriously!
Well, I like the software. The company is having a dubious funding model, where the money comes in large part from Google. A marginal FF use likely helps stave off an anti-trust case for Google. "There's competition". Mozilla is part of the browser oligopoly.
But other than that the whole range of browser specs and API's and multi-million LoC intricate codebases hamper any newcomer from ever entering the market. And thus keeping this oligopoly in place.
@smallcircles@alcinnz All standards are open and documented. The high complexity of browsers is a consequence of the high market demand, almost anything must go through a web UI. So we are not talking about an oligopoly.
Firefox receives funding from private companies, such as Google, and invests it in Opensource projects. Don't you consider it a success? Do you think Mozilla would have gone so far with only donations?
@andros@smallcircles Yes, I do consider the entire problem to be the (non)-scope we demand browsers cover!
Though in actuality it seems to be a small yet dominant crowd who are the ones demanding that... Aside from a few popular sites amateur browserdev seems to be somewhat tractable...
This topic has long discussions, that rage on for a long time all across the internet with all kinds of opinions on whether we are in a good spot or not.
FWIW I hope to see more good browser engine alternatives to become available, and for different use case. Ideally among those are some that are on par with the very few choices we have today in general-purpose browser land.
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