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Thread: Web Browser (aiming too high?)

  1. #1
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    Web Browser (aiming too high?)

    I am interested in makeing a web browser of my own. I know that I would need to become familiar with Socket programing in the language of my choice, I would need to also be familiar with Win32 API development as I want it to be Windows compatible. And I would assume a good understanding of TCP/IP and HTTP in particular.

    My question is what other things should I learn first before atempting to make a web browser. I am very willing to learn. I also have lots of time on my hands, I dont go to school and dont have a job so I have 24/7 to work on it.

    I am very familiar with C, and am starting to move over to C++. I have experimented a little bit with both sockets in C and useing the Win32 API. I am somewhat confedent with HTTP, I could always look up anything I dont remember such as the HTTP request and responce headers, and error codes.

    I have been made aware that for javascript suport you need a javascript interpriter, which I am guessing could be a javascript plugin.

    But is there anything you think that I am missing, or that I need to play with more or learn?

    Please give me some advice. How would you start makeing your own web browser?
    In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom
    which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. But must I know what must not come, for I shale become those of knowledgedome. Peace~

  2. #2
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    Most internet applications have to comply to certain standards. Read the latest RFC's for http, ip, etc. If you can create a good browser that can handle IPv6, people might pay some interest.

  3. #3
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    A good place to start would be mozilla@ www.mozilla.org . You can look through the code, which will give you the idea for implementation. Besides you will need perfect knowledge of everything you plan your browser to support: CSS, HTML, JS, JVM, VML, etc.

  4. #4
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    Heh

    If you want to go the Java route, you can have a browser in under 20 lines of code or so. Trivial.

  5. #5
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    I think it would be good to learn the C++ STL and use it throughout - it will save a lot of effort.

    It will be important to sort out international language support early on, the browser should ideally use UTF-8 internally or something so that you have the maximum support for web pages in different encodings.

    It would be nice to make a web browser that's not only standards-compliant, but ignores deprecated HTML and gives warnings about badly formed HTML.

    Don't worry too much about Javascript - there are plenty of implementations out there, and that's a long way down the road anyway.

    You could of course look for an open source web browser that needs help and meets your requirements and improve that instead.

    See how AO looks then

  6. #6
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    Thank you everyone. I just found a excelent HTTP tutorial last night, to teach me the HTTP protocol. I know a little of it as I have made a small CGI script. I think slarty has a good sugestion to make the browser with C++, So I will finish learning that first. I definately want to suport CSS, HTML, JS and JVM. I have played with JavaScript, HTML and CSS, but I will need to brush up on that.

    Language sets and encodeings is something I did not realy think about, but is a good point, I once got interested in learning Japanese, and figureing out how to get my browser to display japanese characters was a bit of a chalenge for me. Perhaps I can incoporate suport for the Microsoft Global IME which alows your browser to display characters and write characters in any language. Im not quite sure how that all works, but it seems to auto detect the language you are viewing.

    Well, I think im gona start finishing up learning HTTP, then brush up on reading some RFCs, and learn about web page encodeing.

    Thanks for all the advice.
    In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom
    which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. But must I know what must not come, for I shale become those of knowledgedome. Peace~

  7. #7
    Junior Member
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    i suggest you first get familiar with the source of an open-source browser, try this:

    Mozilla 1.1 Soure Code: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/

    then you will have an idea in what direction to go in.

    good luck

  8. #8
    "I also have lots of time on my hands, I dont go to school and dont have a job so I have 24/7 to work on it. "

    High school dropout still living with mom and dad? nah just kidding. =]

    what do you do then if u dont work or go to school? bank fruad?

  9. #9
    Senior Member
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    One advice: like you said in the title, don't aim to high right from the start: start with a text only browser; graphical html interpretation is a big deal!

    Ammo
    Credit travels up, blame travels down -- The Boss

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