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Why is it so expensive to develop a web browser?
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Browsers are literally the best attempt at the everything app.
There's already been a lot of good answers on this. But a goody oldie article on making a browser is covered in Matt Brubeck's 2014 article, Let's Build A Browser Engine.
If you want to see one of the most minimal source code for a terminal based browser that is still in use today, I recommend downloading the source code for the Links Browser. Note that this site is very old and doesn't even use https. But the source code can still be had here.
Browser software is super interesting, but there's a lot even for a bare minimum setup like Links, so that's more or less why most people don't develop new ones from scratch anymore. Though there are a few exceptions like Servo, and Surf but they are pretty buggy tbh. Hope that helps and sparks your interest.
EDIT: Also of interest is Tali Garsiel's article, How Browsers Work. This is probably one of the best in depth articles on the subject.
Surf is just a wrapper around WebKit, which is developed by Apple and used in Safari. Surf isn't a from-scratch browser implementation.
Oh, I honestly didn't remember that, and just put that in as an afterthought. Should have double checked myself. Thanks for the clarification.
Well anyways. I love this subject enough to admit when I'm wrong. And also, in researching the subject more, I found that there is the Ladybird Browser which is apparently not based on Chromium nor Firefox. I have not played around with it, but it's nice to see people still putting in effort to make a new browser engine.
I also found this article where the author makes a browser based off of Matt Brubeck's aforementioned article. Very interesting stuff.