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Web Browser Engineering (2021)

(browser.engineering)
679 points MrVandemar | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.192s | source
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mannyv ◴[] No.41848587[source]
One great thing about this book is the 'stuff I didn't do' part.

Layout is really hard. Just tables by themselves are hard, even without any css around them. CSS makes layout impossibly difficult. I challenge anyone to keep the whole CSS spec and its associated behaviors in their head.

At this point css + html + javascript have become a dynamic PDL, and probably is one of the most complex pieces of software today.

As an aside, video decoding is offloaded onto hardware, so it's not as battery intensive as it used to be.

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vbezhenar ◴[] No.41848784[source]
This Babylonian tower will crumble one day.

Layout does not have to be so complex. There are dozens of GUI frameworks with simpler layout system. Those are enough for applications everyone uses.

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1. msie ◴[] No.41851738[source]
Pixel positioning is so nice! I remember how easy it was to layout UIs with VB.