[talkingtab]

A thought experiment. What about a new kind of browser for a new kind of web? Much of CSS is obsolete. So doing a "modern" version (I'm thinking css grid and flex in particular) would provide the same functionality without the cruft. All that old stuff about the holy grail three columns layout.

And for me there is the question of canvas, threejs, react-three-fiber and react-drei. Is it possible that - especially with mobile - that canvas could be used to provide a better user experience? Who writes games for mobile with a HTML and CSS? Not saying it can't be done, but I wonder how many web sites require HTML & CSS instead of canvas?

A big barrier to browser competition is needing to implement obsolete and outdated technology. Why not just a minimum set of html and canvas.

Just thinking. Your thoughts?

[sho_hn]

I've worked a bit on browser engines, although it was quite some time ago.

I don't think it'd help much.

- There's been a Cambrian Explosion in the web API surface era. The modern stuff dwarfs the old stuff. Dropping support for older/less frequently used mechanisms does not shed as much code and complexity as you might think.

- Beyond mere surface area, the level of engineering required to implement a sort of "Restricted Core Profile" to a competitive degree (e.g. performance) is quite high, if you're talking true blank-canvas development.

- There's a long tail effect in full force, where even mostly-modern websites will use and rely on some cruft here and there, making very few pages work in your supposed browser.

That is to say, it's still a very large, tough project. But the FOSS community has achieved quite a few large, tough projects; it's not the same as saying that it's not possible, of course.

[BlueTemplar]

> Who writes games

Please stop following Google who is trying to turn the Web into an OS for their own ad-fueled, user-tracking profit.

If you want to make connected (or not) apps, there's already the Internet and OSes for that. And you don't have to make your interface worse by fighting with the browser about it ! (Especially important for games and other "deep" software.)

The whole point of the Web is to be an hyperlinked collection of documents, sometimes multimedia, with maybe a little bit of interactivity with some forms and scripts sprinkled on that.

(As an example to how incongruous the current situation is, imagine a parallel universe where it was Adobe rather than Google that got humongous, and it was the JavaScript in PDFs that was (ab)used instead to make apps.)

[fzzzy]

What exactly is obsolete about css? There are still valid use cases for float and inline block. border-box also fixes most of the teeth-gnashing from the 00s. I think it's a nice idea but I don't see what would get cut. Tables are still best for actual tables of data, too.

[novagameco]

I think there are modern frameworks which render everything in webgl/webgpu with the canvas