SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @06:12PM
I think it's largely unintentional. The constant focus on the latest new shiny while leaving last week's products to rot appears to be an endemic cultural problem at Google. The proliferation of web "living standards" and whatnot is just the natural result when you have this attitude.
"What do you mean someone is not be running the latest software just released 10 minutes ago? Acceptance testing? What's that? Why don't you just constantly rewrite all your critical infrastructure to use the latest and greatest features? That old stuff is no fun, new stuff is fun, you should be using new stuff, oh and BTW we're gonna disable the old API in 3 days because we came up with a new interface yesterday which changes one function name because we like how "fluffydog" sounds better than "fuzzycat" and it's too much effort to maintain both."