Let's build a browser engine!

August 8, 2014 9:49 AM

Let's build a browser engine!
I work for Mozilla as a web browser developer. I've found that it's hard to learn the inner workings of a browser, so I started building a “toy” HTML/CSS rendering engine designed to be easy to understand and modify. This is the first in a series of articles that will explain the code I wrote, and also walk you through the process of writing your own toy rendering engine from scratch.

Role: programmer

posted by mbrubeck (3 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by boo_radley on November 5, 2014: Let's build a browser engine!

I've just published Part 2. There will probably be a longer delay between parts after this, since I'm still working on the code too.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:27 AM on August 11, 2014

Hey, this is fantastic, thanks for doing it. I've done tutorial projects like this myself and am always frustrated at how few people I seem to reach. So just wanted to say a kind word of cheerleading, it looks great.

I wonder if the fact you're doing it in Rust will end up being more interesting to people than being a web browser. I think there's a lot of interest in Rust and few full-app examples for it.
posted by Nelson at 8:48 AM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Since this was posted, I've added a bunch more articles and last week I gave a presentation about the project at the Bay Area Rust Meetup.
posted by mbrubeck at 6:04 PM on November 9, 2014 [1 favorite]