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0 pointsilaksh2y ago0 comments

Study the Microsoft and Firefox projects to see why it turns out that way.

The basic thing I am saying is that if you call it a web browser and use the same core protocols etc., you have a practically infinite (for an individual) set of requirements to implement and will never be truly compatible.

What ideas like Tersenet and systems like Gemini propose is similar to what you say, except even simpler. HTML and ECMAScript are quite complex and have a lot of challenging expectations as far as performance and flexibility.

The idea is to try to break things off in a clean way that is feasible to implement without having to worry about a fuzzy and ever-expanding definition of what you have to support.

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zdunn2y ago

> The basic thing I am saying is that if you call it a web browser and use the same core protocols etc., you have a practically infinite (for an individual) set of requirements to implement and will never be truly compatible

But what the parent is saying is you don't have to be compatible with 100% of websites. If you build a browser with good HTML/CSS/Javascript handling, you'll be compatible with the large majority of the web. Yes, there are other specs that are in use by a tiny portion of the web. But your browser can still exist if it doesn't support them. Users of that website will know or find out that they can't use your browser for that, but for every other user that browser could be exactly what they need.

> without having to worry about a fuzzy and ever-expanding definition of what you have to support.

It's only ever-expanding if you're trying to keep up with the Jones's. You can define a subset of the web you want to support and build a clean, small browser that supports that.

emodendroket2y ago

> If you build a browser with good HTML/CSS/Javascript handling, you'll be compatible with the large majority of the web.

Will you? I very much doubt this is the case.

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