Recently, I read something quite interesting on the internet. I read about a new browser engine, supposedly written from scratch. I read about the project for the ladybird web browser. Not only that, but I was intrigued about the possibility of having another browser engine next to the very dominant chromium engine, which powers everything from Google Chrome (duh!), to Brave1 as well as Microsoft’s default browser, Edge2.
So I started to read a bit and figure out how this entire thing with browser engines works.
What do browser engines do?
Browser engines are responsible for how a website looks when you open your browser. It’s not the browser directly but rather a middle part that translates HTML, CSS, and JS to a visible output. Since web apps are becoming ever more powerful, these engines need to be ever better at what they do. All the engines need to agree on the features that are shared between them so all of them can successfully display a website. Having more browser engines means that the steering of the features is more broadly supported. When all of them have to agree, there is less of a chance that a big company, let’s say, Microsoft, starts to add their features or implement their own way of doing things.
Current browser engines
The largest browser engine by usage is Chromium’s Blink. It is used in Google’s own Chrome browser as well as a whole litany of other browsers. Next seems to be Apple’s WebKit, which primarily has a big distribution on Apple’s own devices and is for a large part the only browser you can use on apple’s very popular mobile devices3. Finally, Mozilla’s Firefox has its very own browser engine called Gecko. It is probably the smallest of the three, but still very much important.
New and in development engines
I have also found two in development engines, projects promising to be the next, independent browser engines. One is the aforementioned Ladybird, which seems to just be starting up. I see potential there, but a browser engine is a rather large piece of software, so it might still have some time to go. Also, it seems to be wrapped up in some political discussions which I’d rather not get into, but I guess we’ll see how they go.
But through my research I found another interesting project, called Servo. This is a Mozilla offspring that was partly used in Firefox, but is now developed by volunteers and managed by the Linux Foundation. It is written in Rust, which is already kind of fascinating and is probably a way more mature project than Ladybird is right now. While it is not stable now, with the wonderful warning “Please don’t log into your bank with Servo just yet!”, it is most likely the most promising thing.
What’s the state now
As user’s of the internet, which we all are constantly anyway. We have a certain responsibility to make sure the web as we know it, the open web, continues to exist. One way of supporting this is by using different engines and forcing everyone to implement standards, standards that are agreed upon by a large committee. The trend towards more Chrome-only websites is worrying and will be a bad thing for everyone.
Since none of these new engines are ready, here’s what I’m doing currently: Make sure that my stuff works. Works on Mozilla Firefox and works on Chromium-based browsers. Personally, I use Firefox as my daily driver and I will try to not use websites that don’t allow Firefox to access them. And yes, I have cancelled a bank because of this. I recommend everyone to use Firefox, they don’t have the backing of a huge company as the other two, but they have a pretty awesome product, and it works amazingly well.
If you read this blog, you’ll probably know how to download a browser, but just in case here’s a link anyway.
I’m not a big fan of brave, as it seems too closely linked to cryptocurrency stuff. But I do generally applaud trying to be an alternative next to the dominant Google Chrome. Although using the same engine might not be the way to go in my opinion. ↩︎
I think Edge with the chromium engine is a big step up from Internet Explorer, and it’s trident engine. I would, however, argue that this is a rather shallow hurdle to clear, and perhaps it’s actually not doing much good if the engine is the same as everywhere else. But also I don’t have any positive feelings towards Trident, so maybe this is more or less a null sum game. ↩︎
This comes with the caveat that in the European Union Apple is forced (and by that mean it’s excellent that they are being forced because they keep dragging their feet) to allow alternative browser engines. But where is the rest of the world, dear Apple? ↩︎