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**Jerod Santo:** \[44:21\] Oh, I see. |
**Andreas Kling:** And we've certainly found many issues that just don't come up if somebody is just working on like an existing mature implementation; but us having to do everything from scratch, we kind of discover missing things and inconsistencies, and stuff. So that's something that we're engaging with more and mo... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Isn't a browser engines similar to the way Linux is used, though? I mean, itself? Linux has a kernel, there's many flavors, many distros... Chromium is open source... I'm still not sure I understand why it's such an issue that we only have one dominant. |
**Andreas Kling:** So Chromium is open source, but it's effectively controlled by like the hundreds of Google full-time engineers who work on it. And yes, they let other people in, but it's ultimately Google who decides what goes in the Chrome browser. And they have just way bigger power than anybody else over what hap... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Does having many engines mean repeating? Like, multiple JavaScript engines, that kind of thing. Wouldn't that produce more bugs potentially, or more breakpoints for the web? I think the one issue with the web as it's trended up, obviously - like, the internet has; it is the web. But specifically lik... |
**Andreas Kling:** That's a really good question. It's funny, because in the last couple of days I've been messing around with 1997 Arrow browsers. So I got IE 4 and Netscape 4 on my computer... And then I've been just doing web dev as if it's 1997, just to amuse myself... And it's exactly -- like you say, it's impossi... |
\[48:09\] So Netscape thought, "Oh dynamic content should work in this way." And they just added their own elements for that, and their own APIs, and their own ways of doing it. And then IE came along, and they had some other ideas, and they added that... And I don't know if you did web dev back in the '90s... I was a ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** 2000s. |
**Andreas Kling:** 2000s, okay. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** 2000s plus, yeah. |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah. So I had my first homepage I think in '96 or '97, and I definitely remember copy-pasting sweet JavaScript snippets... And they very often had like these big if statements where it was like "detect Netscape 4", "detect Netscape 3", "Detect IE", "Detect Mosaic". Everything had to be built in that... |
But today, standards are fantastic. And there's millions of tests written by the people who make the standards, and people who work on browsers. And there's even a shared effort between browser vendors called the Web Platform Tests, where - I forget how many tests exactly, but it's over a million tests, which are just ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. So because web standards are so strong, and so well documented, and so vetted out, there's room for multiple engines, because -- and then you can only support X standards. Because I'm sure you don't support all the standards, as you mentioned already. |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So you can have a grid similar to I Can Use, for example, like "Which do I support? Do I support these features or those features, or these standards?" It's similar to that, right? ...because the standards are so strong, that's why you're advocating for more engines. |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And I think more engines also means that the standards can become stronger, because more engines verify that the standards actually live up to their name, that they actually deliver on describing exactly how something should work. And yeah, it seems to be workin... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It will be interesting if that was like a feature of implementing the standard, because then that would encourage more engines, because you can easily, or in some way, standardize the way you would depict what percentage of the standard you support, you know? |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[52:09\] It's kind of interesting that we have Chromium and WebKit... And I'm not sure, because I'm not from elsewhere in the world, but at least here in the States where I live, and my experience in life is, my choice as a developer is to build on either of those two engines, essentially, if I wan... |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, you've got Gecko, and you've got Firefox. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, haven't they given up, too? I'm pretty sure they're Chromium, aren't they? |
**Jerod Santo:** No, Gecko is a thing. |
**Andreas Kling:** Gecko is still out there. |
**Jerod Santo:** Gecko lives. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Is Firefox built on Gecko then still yet? |
**Andreas Kling:** Yup. |
**Jerod Santo:** I'm pretty sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I thought they gave up and went Chromium, too. |
**Jerod Santo:** No. |
**Andreas Kling:** No, Gecko is -- or Firefox in general is very well funded. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Is that right? |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, they pull in a lot of money, because they still have the Google Search deal... So Google is paying handsomely for the privilege of being the default search provider, so... Of course, I don't know how long that deal will last, but at least for the time being, they are very well funded. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It says right here, "Firefox runs on our Quantum browser engine built specifically for Firefox, so you can ensure your data is handled respectfully and kept private." And that's from the Firefox FAQ on Mozilla.org. The question in the FAQ is "Is Firefox Chromium-based?" Firefox is not based on Chrom... |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So okay, I take that back. Three - we've got Quantum, WebKit, Chromium. |
**Andreas Kling:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So why not ship Quantum then, versus -- |
**Jerod Santo:** Because he wants to write everything from scratch. |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, that's right. I want to write everything from scratch. For fun. \[laughter\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We're getting to the whys here. We're getting to the whys here. |
**Jerod Santo:** This is the why. What's interesting about it is there's an educational angle at this, I think, which is very valuable for us humans, those who want to learn how to do these things. How a web browser works is a complicated thing, and if you wanted to learn about it, having a simple web browser - and I'm... |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. I think that's cool. |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, one of the big draws for people, I think, is that they get to learn about systems programming, and they get to develop themselves as programmers... And one of my weird pleasures in life is seeing people learn new things, and get better. I didn't know I had this passion when I started building S... |
\[56:14\] And in terms of books, I had whatever books I could find at the local library, but they had to be translated to Swedish, so there was that... And nowadays, kids around the world who are interested in programming, they can find infinite reading material, and they can find infinite communities, who are super-ex... |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, I'm just trying to grok the Gecko versus Quantum thing as we talk here... Speak to complexity - I mean, just the Wikipedia page about how Quantum is a new project, that encompasses Gecko plus the CSS thing, some Servo stuff, and it's like, if I was to say, "How does a web browser work?" and if I ... |
**Andreas Kling:** For sure. For sure. Yeah. And you mentioned sort of accumulating cruft over the years, which no doubt has happened to Firefox and to WebKit, and Chromium as well... Although I know - at least I know from experience that WebKit and Chromium have very, very strong, sort of continuous refactoring cultur... |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, that's gotta be frustrating, right? That's a moving target. You're coding it up, and all sudden it's different. You're like "Wait a second..." |
**Andreas Kling:** Yeah, it's definitely frustrating. But it's the nature of the platform; it is a living standard. |
**Jerod Santo:** Which is nice when you can provide feedback. You said you're working with them to a certain degree now. |
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