Web Apocrypha

We have decided to create a step-by-step guide to show you how to build your own browser based on the Content API. You might be familiar with our previous work on this topic. If not, you can start learning about the basics from here.

About this step-by-step guide

In this guide we intend to provide detailed instructions - break down in smaller sections (lessons), to make it easy to understand. We will start with an empty main function, and by the end of the lessons you will have a completely functional browser (with limited features of course, but if you follow us, you will be able to extend your own browser with new features).

First, the guide will focus only on the Linux port of the browser, later we will explain how to support Android as well.

Technical details

The Content API is part of the open source Chromium project. This API is a bridge to the Content Module which is responsible for rendering a webpage using a multi-process sandboxed browser. It supports HTML5 and GPU acceleration as well. Further details can be found here.

To integrate Content API into your project, first you have to download the source code of Chromium (or Blink). The community has created a great guide to do your first steps on this field. Check out the instructions here! The downloading takes several minutes - sometimes hours, depending on your internet connection. Before we move on, it is recommended to get familiar with the documentation and guides linked above. During the checkout you will have time to read all of them.

Sprocket

In the following we will create and extend a sample project for these lessons. The project is called Sprocket, and it is our experimental browser. If you are eager to see what we have achieved with the Content API so far, check out our GitHub repository.

The first section of the lessons will show the steps of creating a simple browser on Linux. (In the upcoming section we will teach you how to create a minimal browser for Android.)

Continue with the first lesson.