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goose.icu

Software engineer @ ???? (check back Oct 1st ), perf @nodejs + many
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Introducing <shadow>

<shadow> is a new novel browser engine made almost entirely in JS

Oct 27, 2023

So I started making a browser engine (for fun) a few days ago, it
felt kind of inevitable so here we are. Here's a short rundown.
Source code too!

Try it in your browser!

Screenshot of <shadow>'s welcome page running inside <shadow> (as of
writing)

Screenshot of shadow&rsquo;s welcome page in shadow

What?

A browser(/web) engine essentially takes in a URL(/etc) and gives you
it rendered into a window for you to view and interact with. <shadow>
does this too, almost entirely from scratch, made in JS. It runs in
your browser! Node backend soon(tm) too? The host browser(/etc) is only
used for networking (fetch) and renderer backend (<canvas>).

Components of <shadow>

Component flowchart (red = external/not me)

Why make it?

It's just for fun, no really. Learning too. It will probably never
work with 90% of websites, and that's okay. [DEL:Also it's funny to
see people react in many forms of "wtf?":DEL]

Screenshot of serenityos.org running inside <shadow> (left) vs
Firefox (right)

Pretty spot on! No list markers yet. Colors are different as UA/
browser defined.

Name

As with all my recent projects, the name is because I thought it was
kind of funny at the time. <shadow> is named after the defunct
<shadow> element. I mostly stole this idea from Blink (was it
intentional to name it after a dead HTML element at the time?). Also
it sounds spooky and mysterious so that's a bonus I guess? (It's also
stylized as <shadow> because of this.)

It supports JavaScript??!

Yes, kind of. This is quite complicated (as you can probably
imagine), so I'll do it in a separate future dedicated post if you're
interested (DM/reply me on twitter).

Why publish it?

Why not? If someone can learn something or just find what I make fun/
interesting, that makes me happy :)

But making a new browser engine is impossible!

No. It. Isn't! (Also I don't really care how possible/feasible
something is.)

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