Re:We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible
by ohgodplsno on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @01:09PM
(#35528031)
No, I understand what Andreas is saying. But the reality is, when you read and implement specs for a specific website, you end up cutting corners, even accidentally. Maybe Twitter relies on a particular behavior of fetch() that was screwed up in Chrome 97 and has had to be kept for backwards compat this entire time. Maybe it uses some CSS that never got properly documented or specified.
By targeting a single website, you end up accidentally writing in those site-specific fixes _in_ your implementation. You only realize it's fucked up because you visited Twitter. but maybe it screws up another site. Maybe something else depends on a quarter of that functionality, and you've accidentally broken it.
Re:We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible
by jonfw on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @01:36PM
(#35528396)
Maybe so. Hopefully you’d find that out while looking at the spec for that particular function. If not, you may have to rewrite some code as you learn more. Life goes on
Re:We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible
by vanviegen on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @01:44PM
(#35528512)
It seems that GP already addressed your concern: "read through the relevant specs, and try our best to implement the required features cleanly and correctly"
Of course some errors will be made along the way. That's to be expected, regardless of the approach taken.
Loading Twitter (etc.) is not really the goal, it's more of a prioritisation mechanism for tackling a huge spec. Actually getting Twitter to run is a nice reward for all that hard work though, and a series of such rewards keeps the contributors motivated in the marathon that is building a browser.