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

(github.com)
233 points monax | 5 comments | 18 May 25 17:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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43920 ◴[19 May 25 03:37 UTC] No.44026342[source]▶
AFAIK, "email HTML" isn't standardized either; most organizations that make nice-looking HTML emails have to do a ton of testing across different clients and come up with workarounds to make everything look consistent.
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notpushkin ◴[19 May 25 06:24 UTC] No.44026966[source]▶
Could we standardize email HTML?
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1. jeroenhd ◴[19 May 25 09:17 UTC] No.44027869[source]▶
If you can convince Apple, Google, and Microsoft to implement your standard: sure. Attempts have been made with varying success.

Your standard still needs to render in Outlook on Windows, though, which means you need to support the weird Office version of IE11 as an upper limit.

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2. notpushkin ◴[19 May 25 11:03 UTC] No.44028465[source]▶
Does the email client on Windows still use IE11? (Some older versions might still have significant market share, but I’m not sure it would be for much longer?)
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3. WorldMaker ◴[19 May 25 15:54 UTC] No.44031151[source]▶
"Outlook (New)" (aka "One Outlook") is React Native with a full Chromium webview, and the transition from out-of-the-box Windows-provided "Outlook Mobile" (Windows 8-10) to "Outlook (New)" has mostly completed, but the transition from Outlook (Classic) (aka "Bloated Corporate Outlook") seems somewhat stalled because a few big corporations have extensive plugins and cranky IT admins. (Also Outlook Mobile had a better than IE11 support and also has been Chromium on most platforms, it is "Outlook (Classic)" that continues to haunt us all with its ancient Word-based micro-browser fork of IE.)
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4. WorldMaker ◴[19 May 25 15:59 UTC] No.44031220[source]▶
Google has recently been pivoting AMP which nearly broke the web towards email. It might actually be a better use of AMP than the web, but I'm still skeptical about some of its privacy stance and ad-injection focus: https://amp.dev/about/email
5. notpushkin ◴[19 May 25 16:26 UTC] No.44031521{3}[source]▶
Sometimes I really wish MSFT broke backwards compatibility in the places that matter, not places their corporate customers don’t care about.