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For the first time in years, someone is building a web browser from scratch:
For more than two decades, building a new web browser from scratch has been practically unheard of. But a small company called Ekioh has its reasons.
The Cambridge, U.K.-based company is developing a browser called Flow, and unlike the vast majority of browsers that have arrived in recent years, it's not based on Google's Chromium or Apple's WebKit open-source code. Instead, Flow is starting with a blank slate and building its own rendering engine. Its goal is to make web-based apps run smoothly even on cheap microcomputers such as the Raspberry Pi.
There's a reason companies don't do this anymore: Experts say building new browsers isn't worth the trouble when anyone can just modify the work that Apple and Google are doing. But if Flow succeeds, it could rethink the way we browse the web and open the door to cheaper gadgets. That at least seems like a goal worth pursuing.
"It's a huge task, but if you want something which is very small and very fast, you typically can't start with one of the other engines," says Stephen Reeder, Ekioh's commercial director.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @04:25PM (3 children)
I don't have high hopes.
When applications ran directly on an OS, there needed to be a standard OS. That became Microsoft DOS at first, then Windows. Apple Macintosh was a tiny niche OS for certain apps only. Now that so many apps run on the browser, there needs to be a standard browser. Same result will occur. There is room for one very dominant standard, another also-ran, and NOTHING ELSE.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 17 2021, @06:29PM (2 children)
Pragmatically, yeah. There are benefits to avoiding monoculture, but being able to be lazy/interoperate everywhere with minimal effort wins out in the end.
See also MS Office vs Free/LibreOffice / ODF vs OOXML. MS using their dominance to smother the technically better competition (compare the length of the "standards" spec on ODF vs OOXML?).
Or how it would be great if we had a *real* viable third party in politics, but the electoral college in the U.S. basically prevents that from ever happening. If either party dies a new one replaces it, or if a third party starts gaining too much traction one of the big two incorporate the 3p platform into their own (or at least pay lip service to it) before that can happen.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18 2021, @02:04AM (1 child)
Blaming that mess on the Electoral College misses a much bigger problem. The USA has the same two parties at both federal and state level and the federal heads control everything. If state-level politics could be split off so that the federal parties weren't allowed to interfere with state elections and each state had to have its own parties, with separate leadership and finances for all, that would break things up enough to give local issues a real voice in the public square and give the states legitimate incentive to push back against federal overreach. The founders were big on separation of powers, but that was the biggest one they missed. Of course fixing it would take power away from some of the most powerful people in the world so there would be murder done to prevent such an idea from ever gaining traction.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday March 19 2021, @01:50AM
Just as difficult to get through is another scheme to give third parties a chance -- ranked ballot with instant runoff.