This blogpost starts with me switching of my car radio, and ends with me writing a browser. There is some stuff in between as well.
Interesting take from the author; exactly the kind of thing that might start something big — or maybe it won’t, and that’s OK, too. Either way, I can appreciate the attitude!
(There’s also a discussion on the orange site)
The author is a bit early announcing their browser at the “proof of concept for an HTML parser” stage. Ladybird is probably a better “new” browser to follow. Originally written as a browser for SerenityOS, Ladybird is now actually getting funded to build the web engine into something practical.
It’s still in its early stages; layouts don’t look right, Javascript is very very slow, frequent crashes and errors, but on the other hand, it’s developing quite rapidly for a complete browser rewrite.
Dumb question, will it be possible to create a browser that will trick the shitty new web into thinking you’re using an approved non-ad-blocking-browser while you still block the malware/ads?
Building adblock into the browser could enable better countermeasures for adblock detection, but uBlock Origin’s filters usually work fine in my experience. Hiding that adblock is being used is essentially just an arms race between adblock detectors and ad blockers.
I hope you are right about this moving forward. My experience so far has been the same as yours (re: the arms race, uBlock working well). My understanding is Google is being super aggressive about this and they are not dumb, they know about uBlock, Pi Hole, and other ad blockers that people use. They want to make it impossible to use them by basically profiling your browser and its extensions. However, that could just kick off a variation on the arms race. A lot of things about their attitude makes me angry, but they are just ignoring the fact that advertisements are a vector for malware and don’t really care if they help spread malware as long as they are getting that sweet revenue.
I believe they’re asking about the DRM enabled browser tech that Google just rolled out and is pushing webmasters to support.
Ah, my bad. Bypassing such integrity checks should still be doable, either by reverse engineering and spoofing the communications between the browser and Google, or by modifying a “trusted browser” in a way that keeps it from detecting such alterations. It might not be very reliable though, as the internals could be changed arbitrarily with each update, and old versions blocked in the name of security.
The author of the article can’t even be bothered to keep his server up-to-date (my first attempt at viewing the article bounced me with a warning that suggests he only has obsolete crypto protocols available for SSL—why bother with SSL at all, then?). He’s quite correct that this initiative is going to come to nothing.
There are currently only four web rendering engines that could be considered remotely usable as daily drivers: WebKit, its fork Blink, and Gecko, with its fork Goanna. WebKit and Blink both have major corporate backing (Apple and Google respectively). Gecko has the Mozilla Foundation paying the major bills. Even Pale Moon’s Goanna has multiple people working on it (and since it’s my daily driver, I know it has persistent issues with a few sites that have to be papered over with extensions). And the rendering engine is not the only thing you need for a browser, just the largest single part. A one-man project starting from scratch is not going to be viable in this day and age.
Don’t forget the greatest rendering engine of all: Lynx
A one-man project starting from scratch is not going to be viable in this day and age.
It’s a pet project; it doesn’t need to be “viable”.
I think this attitude is part of the reason why we have so few browsers. Every time someone tries to start their own browser, even just for fun, a lot of the response is just bitching about how big and complex browsers are and how the effort to start a new one is wasted. It makes it so that people interested in writing their own browser (for fun or profit) are less likely to share about it and probably less likely to pursue it seriously
