Browsersphere

An article written nine months ago, The genius behind Google’s browser, goes in-depth with the main programmer behind Google Chrome’s v8 JavaScript engine, Lars Bak.  Although the article’s title and certain parts of the story perhaps give a little too much credit to one man (there’s a lot more to Google’s browser than its JavaScript engine), it’s a very interesting read nonetheless.  The following is a short excerpt from the article:

Many computer programs are built using previous versions, or related code, but V8 was started from scratch – a blank slate. When I meet [Kasper] Lund later in my Denmark trip, he takes great delight in underscoring this fact: “It’s the purest form of coding there is.” [Lars] Bak clearly agrees – as Lund speaks, he can’t stop smiling.

Beyond detailing the story behind v8’s development in Denmark, the article gives a personal glimpse at its key creator, something his Wikipedia article doesn’t quite achieve.

If you’re interested in the developers behind the browsers or browser-related technology you probably take for granted on a daily basis, I’d definitely give the well-written The genius behind Google’s browser a read.

Tags: Chrome, Developers, Development, Google, Google Chrome, JavaScript Engines, Kasper Lund, Lars Bak, V8

One of the things I’ve always been fascinated by is the low-level side of web browser development.  I used to look through Mozilla’s source code, take a look at patches that were added to Bugzilla, and try to find anyone on the web who actually did web browser development to get a sense for what it entailed.  Back in the day, getting that type of information was very much so a do-it-yourself kind of venture.  The closest I really came to getting low-level yet consumable details was when I used to follow David Hyatt’s work several years ago.

Having had those experiences in the past helps me appreciate even more the fact that the Chromium community has been publicly exposing details about the “guts” of Chromium in several tech talks posted over at the Chromium Blog.  The tech talks have been archived in video form on YouTube so that anyone interested in the details of Chromium development can find out more about what’s involved.

One video features Darin Fisher, who used to work for Mozilla, talking about The Chromium WebKit API.  In another, Pam Greene covers Chromium WebKit Layout Tests.  In another, Brett Wilson discusses Painting in Chromium.  Last but not least, Eric Seidel, who has worked on both Safari and Chrome, goes in-depth about Rendering in WebKit.

That last video is probably the most interesting to me, simply because it deals with the rendering engine and also unveils a few interesting facts.  For instance, WebKit is made up of almost 2 million lines of code and is developed by about 80 active committers, of which about half work for Google.

If you’re interested in how web browsers are tested, how HTML source gets transformed into what you see on a web page, etc., you’d be doing yourself a favor by checking out the Chromium tech talks.

Tags: Brett Wilson, Bugzilla, Chromium, Darin Fisher, David Hyatt, Developers, Development, Eric Seidel, Mozilla, Pam Greene, Source Code, Tech Talks, Testing, Videos, WebKit