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Show HN: Vaev – A browser engine built from scratch (It renders google.com)

(github.com)
233 points monax | 4 comments | 18 May 25 17:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.608s | source

We’ve been working on Vaev, a minimal web browser engine built from scratch. It supports HTML/XHTML, the CSS cascade, @page rules for pagination, and print-to-PDF rendering. It even handles calc(), var(), and percentage units—and yes, it renders Google.com (mostly).

This is an experimental project focused on learning and exploration. Networking is basic (http:// and file:// only), and grid layouts aren’t supported yet, but we’re making progress fast.

We’d love your thoughts and feedback.

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DarkmSparks ◴[19 May 25 00:24 UTC] No.44025399[source]▶
I know its a tangent, but the idea that maybe ripping out android webview into a standalone cross platform project in its own right pops into my head everytime this problem arises. Keep meaning to check if anyones actually done it already.
replies(2): >>44025516 #>>44026374 #
1. flexagoon ◴[19 May 25 00:43 UTC] No.44025516[source]▶
What do you mean by that? WebView is just Chrome embedded inside of an Android app. Same thing already exists on Windows (Edge WebView2), macOS (WKWebView) and Linux (WebKitGTK). There's also a library that wraps all of them into a single interface:

https://github.com/webview/webview

The entire point of WebView is that it's a browser embedded inside of a different application, how do you expect it to be a "standalone project"?

replies(2): >>44026248 #>>44034160 #
2. throwaway2037 ◴[19 May 25 03:10 UTC] No.44026248[source]▶
Add one more: QtWebEngine -> https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine
3. DarkmSparks ◴[19 May 25 20:00 UTC] No.44034160[source]▶
The idea is it would be lightweight (so just a few megabytes of libraries) and give the same functionality you get with an android webview (so send it html to load and javascript to run and get json results back).

I know there are quite a few options that try and do something similar. But they are all so incredibly bloated when all you want to do is use html5 for a native application UI.

replies(1): >>44039689 #
4. flexagoon ◴[20 May 25 09:49 UTC] No.44039689[source]▶
All the options I mentioned are fully native and require no extra libraries.