DevBrowser
Posted
There are a plethora of available web browsers in use right not, but only three rendering engines powering nearly all of them. Webkit powers Safari (including the iPhone browser), Gecko powers Firefox and its derivatives like IceWeasel, and Blink powers Chrome and all the Chromium spin-offs, including Microsoft Edge. From a web development standpoint, this means that while the more browsers you can test in the better, as long as you test in these three engines you are mostly covered (though there are obviously various versions to worry about too). As a Linux user, I use Chrome for Blink, Firefox for Gecko, and Epiphany for Webkit. However, I would love a new browser that could streamline this process.
All I want is a basic viewport and devtools, but an option in the devtools that can switch between the three engines. No other features required. All three engines are open source so this shouldn't be much of a problem. Perhaps even the ability to change the version of the engine as well.
Actually now that I think about it there used to be a Firefox extension that could switch to Trident (the old Internet Explorer engine) on Windows; i wonder if that could be modified. I know even that night be a pretty large project, and might not be possible.
If anyone is interested in creating this and wants to create a Kickstarter to fund it, let me know and I will happily contribute. Optional requirements worth more donation money:
- Code it in Python
- Release it as open source
- Call the browser Joshing Around (just kidding, it should obviously be called DevBrowser or something like that, I was just joshing around there)