Category Archives: dev

Demystifying Browsers

Last update: October 29, 2024 Web browsers are conceptually pretty simple, but their code and the ecosystems that arise around the platforms they expose are immensely complicated. I started building browser extensions more than 22 years ago, and I started building browsers directly just over 16 years ago. At this point, I think it’s fairContinue reading “Demystifying Browsers”

App-to-Web Communication: Launching Web Apps

In recent posts, I’ve explored mechanisms to communicate from web content to local (native) apps, and I explained how web apps can use the HTML5 registerProtocolHandler API to allow launching them from either local apps or other websites. In today’s post, we’ll explore how local apps can launch web apps in the browser. It’s Simple…Continue reading “App-to-Web Communication: Launching Web Apps”

My New Chromium Build PC

While I do most of my work in an office, from time to time I work on code changes to Chromium at home. With the recent deprecation of Jumbo Builds, building the browser on my cheap 2016-era Dell XPS 8900 (i7-6700K) went from unpleasant to impractical. While I pondered buying a high-end Threadripper, I couldn’tContinue reading “My New Chromium Build PC”

Capture Network Logs (NetLog) from Edge and Chrome (and Electron and WebView2)

Problems in accessing websites can often be found and fixed if the network traffic between the browser and the website is captured as the problem occurs and the resulting log file is shared with engineers. This short post explains how to capture such log files. Capturing Network Traffic Logs If someone asked you to readContinue reading “Capture Network Logs (NetLog) from Edge and Chrome (and Electron and WebView2)”