How hard is it to create a web browser?

Question

How hard is it to make a web browser and why aren't there many? what are the main challenges on creating a web browser?

Answer 1

posted this thread elsewhere and here are some of the replies I got
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✴ Its not just HTML, you also need Javascript, CSS, news feeds, and all the other things that webpages have to do today.
HTML itself is quite difficult to "parse" - for a program to interpret what the various commands are. Very messy.

The HTML has to deal with an almost infinite variety of bad code. Many, many web pages have HTML that doesn't meet any spec, but works on all browsers because they are designed to handle badly constructed HTML.
Its a mature market with seriously engineered competitors. For example, Google has spent a fortune on Chrome, which is a key strategic product for them. Fancy going head-to-head with Google, Apple and Microsoft simultaneously?

There's no money in them. Nobody buys a browser. The people who spend the fortune necessary to build web browsers are doing it because of strategic reasons - Apple, MS, Google - not because they make a cent directly from these products.

Not a good marketplace to enter. A very, very bad marketplace indeed for a new entrant.

Answer 2

there are lots of web browsers. not many popular ones. I would imagine security would really be a big challenge.

It would be straight forward to make one with no real features. I guess that is why there is only a few "good" browsers.

Answer 3

Chrome and Firefox are excellent browsers. If you want to be the next programmer hero, try something different

Answer 4

main challenge while creating browser on production level is browser must be lightweight, stable , secure. while building such software it requires team of coders , testers ,etc. its not a thing one can get off with lone efforts. that's why Firefox and chrome (google) are open source products and have large community for helping hands .. if you just want to do it for learning purpose then its not that hard... browser is just software which fetch webpages from web ... look into this free course from udacity , it will give you good idea ... https://www.udacity.com/course/programming-languages--cs262