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

(github.com)
233 points monax | 3 comments | 18 May 25 17:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.638s | 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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khimaros ◴[18 May 25 20:30 UTC] No.44024102[source]▶
i find myself requesting this whenever i see a new minimalist browser pop up:

it would be great to standardize alternative browsers on a consistent subset of web standards and document them so that "smolweb" enthusiasts can target that when building their websites and alternative browsers makers can target something useful without boiling the ocean

i personally prefer this approach to brand new protocols like Gemini, because it retains backward compatibility with popular browsers while offering an off ramp.

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idle_zealot ◴[18 May 25 22:47 UTC] No.44024868[source]▶
> standardize alternative browsers on a consistent subset of web standards and document them so that "smolweb" enthusiasts can target that

Could such a standard be based on the subset of HTML/CSS acceptable in emails? Maybe with a few extra things for interactivity.

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OJFord ◴[19 May 25 03:33 UTC] No.44026336[source]▶
A few extra things like.. JavaScript?
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fshafique ◴[19 May 25 06:14 UTC] No.44026917[source]▶
No interactivity! The email must be printable as-is. Not even CSS code to change styles when you hover over links. That's what I would for a minimum HTML for emails standard that's widely supported.
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1. notpushkin ◴[19 May 25 06:26 UTC] No.44026974[source]▶
It’s actually a bummer: you can’t use a <style> tag because some email clients don’t like them. Instead, you have to inline your styles in every element. the lack of :hover is just a side effect of that I think (although it plays out nicely here).

(While on it, can we also ban loading images from third-party servers?)

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2. MrLeap ◴[19 May 25 10:49 UTC] No.44028378[source]▶
you sure can if we resolve to make a text editor instead of a web browser!
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3. notpushkin ◴[19 May 25 11:01 UTC] No.44028439[source]▶
Hmm, that might not be a bad idea! We could ban CSS altogether: just leave some markup tags, maybe whatever you can do in Markdown + tables. No colors, no small print, no images. (We could even use something like gemtext as the format instead of HTML, but that wouldn’t be backward compatible with clients.)

But I don’t see any email clients with somewhat significant market share going through with this :(