JankyBrowser: The only cross-platform browser that fits in a Gist | Hacker News Reader

JankyBrowser: The only cross-platform browser that fits in a Gist

gist.github.com

25 pointsmorganrallen11 comments

And here's a two-line web browser written in bash:

    #!/bin/bash
    firefox

To clarify: If you're using a third-party rendering engine, your effort doesn't count as a "web browser". HTML parsing, CSS rendering, javascript support etc is the hard stuff - back/forward buttons and tabs aren't.

But those are the parts that make it a web browser. Good luck actually using the web by rendering out pngs.

This the most extreme Gist I have ever seen. So fun to see a functional browser implemented with only a few lines of code.

Disclaimer, I'm on of the dev being Thrust. That's exactly why we built Thrust, but @morganrallen pushed the envelope by distributing that through a Gist. So cool.

I'm about to try it.

Anyway, why the author didn't published the package on npmjs.org?

I chose not to because it's not really a serious project. It is more of a demonstration. But, I will be undertaking a more serious browser in the near future.

I understand. But I would have published.

There is a lot of crap on npmjs.org and your little toy, despite being just a toy, is organized and have a purpose; it makes sense to people other than you. Plus got on HN front page.

I see npmjs.org as something more handy than formal. It's just me?

I suppose, but with there being a lot of crap, why publish something I'm unlikely to support? I'll give it a re-think.

True, i say publish it, this package is a hell of alot better than most of the crap on npm.

What is this exactly?

It's a web browser.

It's a proof of concept that cross platform toolkits that include browser engines can be used to write cross platform browsers in an arbitrarily small amount of code.

It sorta like the qt browser I wrote in ~100 lines to debug a QWebView issue, but much more pleased with itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com