Flow browser passes the Acid tests (ekioh.com)

Article summary

The Flow browser has passed the Acid tests, a set of stress tests for browser engines. This achievement is notable as no new browser engine has passed these tests since their creation over 12 years ago. The Flow browser is a clean sheet rewrite and is designed to render websites correctly on the first try. It has also implemented support for full Google Mail and has achieved greater than 4x better framerate due to its multicore architecture.

Main themes

• browser development
• Acid tests
• multicore architecture
• browser compatibility
• web complexity
• Chromium and Google's influence
• open-source development
• performance optimization

What commenters say

• Some commenters believe that developing a new browser from scratch is a significant achievement, especially considering the complexity of modern browsers.
• Others think that using an existing engine, such as Chromium, might be a more practical approach for achieving compatibility and performance quickly.
• There is a concern that the web has become too complex, with too many features and protocols, making it difficult for new browsers to be developed and maintained.
• A few commenters suggest that the web should have been designed as a bytecode interpreter instead of a document format to simplify browser development and improve compatibility.
• Some argue that the decision-making process for Chromium is separate from Google, while others believe that Google's influence is still significant.
• The idea of open-sourcing the Flow browser is discussed, but it is not currently planned due to the company's limited resources.
• The potential benefits and limitations of multicore architecture in browser development are debated, including its impact on performance and memory consumption.