Browser Engines… Chromium, V8, Blink? Gecko? WebKit? For some developers (like me 😂), the distinction between a browser and a browser engine may not be clear. This article will help you out.

Brief history and others

Microsoft has released a new version of its Microsoft Edge browser based on Google’s Chromium. This shows how the JavaScript engine world is consolidating.

The world’s first JavaScript engine came with the first browser capable of running JavaScript programs, Namely Netscape Navigator. Since then, several browser vendors, including Microsoft, have built their own engines for interpreting and compiling JavaScript, and the competition was healthy.

For a while, Internet Explorer 6 cornered the market and almost no one used any other browser. But Internet Explorer is not standards-compliant and is slow to implement new JavaScript features, leading developers to design and develop on a mid-level browser with a mid-level engine.

Fortunately, Microsoft’s victory in the browser wars was short-lived. Despite the failure of Netscape Navigator, some excellent alternatives to Internet Explorer have since emerged to help improve the web environment.

Mozilla’s Firefox was the first major competitor to try to make Microsoft’s nearly obsolete browser obsolete. Along with Firefox, There are also WebKit-powered Safari (owned by Apple), Presto followed by Blink (owned by Opera), and WebKit followed by Blink Chrome (owned by Google).

All of these browser engines not only manage the layout of the web page, but also include a JavaScript engine that interprets and compiles JavaScript code. The most popular of these JavaScript engines is V8, and V8 is not just used in Chrome.

Electron, developed and maintained by GitHub for creating cross-platform desktop applications, is powered by a V8 engine at the bottom.

Not only that, but the Node.js runtime system is also powered by the V8 engine. This allows Node.js to continue to benefit from V8 development and improvements and provide a great and fast server experience. Since V8 is written in C++, the ability to compile JavaScript to local machine code, rather than interpret it in real time, has made node.js so competitive in the server market so quickly.

Three major browser engines

Now a new version of Microsoft’s Edge browser based on Chromium has been released, and other browser vendors, including Opera, have made the switch. There are only three major browser engines on the market: Mozilla’s Gecko, Google’s Blink, and Apple’s WebKit (a close relative of Blink).

Wait, what about Blink? Blink is the rendering engine for Google Chrome and V8 is Blink’s built-in JavaScript engine. Chromium is an open source browser project from Google, powered by Blink rendering engine. The relationship between Chromium and Google Chrome can be understood as: Chromium + integrated with Google products = Google Chrome.

Google Chrome is a commercial project, while Chromium is a neutral, non-partisan (theoretically) open source project.

V8 knows nothing about the DOM (Document Object Model) because it is only used to process JavaScript. Blink’s built-in layout engine handles the layout and presentation of web pages. Since Node.js doesn’t need to use the DOM, node.js uses the V8 engine instead of using the entire Blink engine.

Three major JavaScript engines

Under the three major browser engines, there are three different JavaScript engines. That means there are only three major JavaScript engines on the market right now. Chromium accounts for 65% of the market, plus about 15% from Edge and Internet Explorer, and it’s going to grow. Today, Web developers are building sites that perform best on the most popular browser engines. But could Chromium end up going the way of Internet Explorer 6? Hopefully Chromium will keep up with the standards, and with competition from Firefox and Safari, the future will be more positive. Hopefully Google won’t slow down Chromium development and remain competitive with such a high market share.

Here’s a summary:

  • V8 — open source, developed by Google and written in C++
  • SpiderMonkey — The first JavaScript engine that used to drive Netscape Navigator and now drives Firefox.
  • JavaScriptCore – Open source, developed by Apple for the Safair browser

Here’s an interesting tidbit: Blink didn’t support the HTML < Blink > tag from the start. Check out the following effects to see why:

That’s an annoying effect.

Develop reading

  1. Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more open source collaboration
  2. Browser market share report
  3. Cheat Sheet: What you need to know about Edge on Chromium
  4. Microsoft guy: Mozilla should give up on Firefox and go with Chromium too

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