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

(github.com)
233 points monax | 1 comments | 18 May 25 17:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | 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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1. WorldMaker ◴[19 May 25 16:05 UTC] No.44031295[source]▶
It's fascinating how much "email HTML" is trapped in about HTML ~2.5, with limited CSS support and still a ton of FONT tags and TABLE layouts.

HTML 2 might be an interesting subset of HTML to "focus on" for smolweb, but it would be a big retro throwback, and not feel at all modern.

If you were starting today, might be more interesting to start with the most modern stuff and work backwards. HTML 2 TABLE could be implemented as a specialization of CSS Grid, for instance.