Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?
I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing this, again?".
EDIT: Still impressive though, nice proof of concept!
EDIT 2: As much as I hate the "Why am I getting downvoted?" shenaningans that people usually pull, I want to clarify the intent behind this post. I'm not flaming or hating on the project, it's a cool idea. I was trying to spark some insightful conversation on "where do we want to go from here?" and "do we really need a browser if we have gone this far?". If you want to downvote me, why not just reply to this post and have a nice interesting conversation instead?
A browser is 2 things: a HTML engine and a UI (tabs, urlbar, back button, …). Usually, the UI is built in C++/ObjectiveC/XUL. Here, I'm proposing to use the HTML engine to render the UI as well. It's already the case with Firefox, the engine also renders the UI. But it doesn't use html, but another markup language (XUL).
I don't think the search-box and tabs are rendering it.
The firefox interface is already described in an XML format (XUL) and rendered from that. Instead of having two markups and two renderers, this allows you to simplify and consolidate to a single one.
I would hardly construe that as having "gone too far".
The rendering engine (Gecko). I guess for it to make sense you must separate the drawing engine from the browser, which adds things like tabs, bookmarks, themes and add-ons.
This can be seen today in Servo, which can browse the internet but has no GUI of to speak of (e.g. to visit a URL you must pass it as a command-line parameter to the executable).
In addition to things mentioned by other users, a browser also enforces a security model and (nowadays) provides a Javascript engine and the browser object model, and handles HTTP and session state,
I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing this, again?".
EDIT: Still impressive though, nice proof of concept!
EDIT 2: As much as I hate the "Why am I getting downvoted?" shenaningans that people usually pull, I want to clarify the intent behind this post. I'm not flaming or hating on the project, it's a cool idea. I was trying to spark some insightful conversation on "where do we want to go from here?" and "do we really need a browser if we have gone this far?". If you want to downvote me, why not just reply to this post and have a nice interesting conversation instead?