Invalidation is a key technique all major browsers use tomake for fast rendering and smooth interactions, but it’s also famouslydifficult. Chapter 16 explains how to make it work right.

Images and iframes introduce performance and securityconcerns that impact browser architecture, but they also build on andextend existing concepts like event loops, rendering, and accessibilityin an elegant way. Chapter 15 explains how.

Accessibility is an important topic, and often not wellunderstood. Chapter 14 of Web Browser Engineering explains how it works,and also how almost every web user benefits from it in one way oranother.

Animations make browsers more fun, but they also requiresolving a lot of really interesting algorithmic and design challenges toutilize GPU-accelerated compositing. Find out how in our new chapter,Animating and Compositing!

With a new year and then some more time to actually finishthings, we present a new chapter on Scheduling Tasks and Threads. Thischapter splits the browser into multiple threads, with threaded rasterand scrolling, in only a couple thousand lines of code.

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Adding Visual Effects.This first chapter on Modern Browsers swaps in modern libraries andimplements some recent web features like blending, stacking contexts,surfaces, and clipping.

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Keeping Data Private.Cookies enable a whole economy of personalized web applications—but alsoraise issues of security and privacy. New, powerful browser-side toolscan help.

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Running InteractiveScripts. Binding a JavaScript engine to our browser—and building thesystem for passing data between JavaScript and browser code—makespossible a whole new world of interactive webapplications.

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Sending Information toServers. In it, our browser becomes an application platform, startingwith a 90s-style guest book. The next few chapters will explore thattheme, building more and more capable web applications as wego.

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Handling Buttons andLinks. This is the chapter when the browser really starts surfing theweb. It also becomes a pretty good way to read this book!

Today we’re releasing a chapter on Applying User Styles. Ihope you’ll find that building a simple CSS parser and implementingselector matching and inheritance is interesting, approachable andfun!

We’re working interactive widgets to Web BrowserEngineering to better explain the concepts and to make room fordiscoveries. But it’s not easy!

Today we’re releasing a new chapter on the History of theWeb. The rest of the book is about how web browsers work, but thischapter is about why. It’s about the goals and motivations for the weband for web browsers, which shape the way they work.

We’re releasing Chapter 5. It introduces layout trees, thedata structure at the center of layout. Building, laying out, andrendering layout trees is how every web page you view isrendered!

The intro chapter is here! Now you get to find out why thisbook was worth writing, mostly in Chris’s words. Plus you’ll learn a fewthings about where the web came from and how the sausage ismade.

Chapter 4 is out! It’s decked out with HTML parsing anderror handling, and starts building out the core data structures of thebrowser. Plus, it has tips for leveraging implicit tags to make yourHTML cleaner and simpler!

I’ve added a code outline tool to help you see theintermediate-level structure of a web browser. As Chris and I write morechapters, it’ll become more and more useful.

Chapter 3 is ready. Read about typography, baselines, andtags! Our browser lines up text with style! My favorite aside is theMichigan Supreme Court case on font sizes.

Why is Web Browser Engineering in Python? In short, Pythonis popular, readable, and has access to standard systemAPIs.

Have you noticed that the byline onhttps://browser.engineering has changed? Chris Harrelson will be joiningWeb Browser Engineering as a co-author. He’s already working to make WBEdeeper and more realistic based on his experience on the Chrometeam.

Chapter 2 is ready. Read about window handles, displaylists, and events. Our browser creates a window, draws text to it, andtells a story about a monkey. (My favorite part is the aside on Chineseline layout.)

I’ve written some code to crowdsource typo corrections andcomments from readers. Looking forward to seeing yourfeedback!

A quick backstory behind the book, and my plan for writingit.

Chapter 1 is about URLs, sockets, and HTTP requests. Readabout how a browser creates a network connection, what the OS does tohelp, and how it requests specific web pages.