I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++
Details
- External ID
- 46795540
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Jan. 28, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 146
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9400527009222661
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college.I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works!Features:- HTML parsing with error correction- CSS cascade and inheritance- Block/inline layout engine- Async image loading + caching- Link navigation + historyHardest parts:- String parsing(html, css)- Rendering- Image Caching & Layout ReflowingWhat I learned (beyond code):- Systematic debugging is crucial- Ship with known bugs rather than chase perfection- The Power of "Why?"~3,000 lines of C++17/Qt6. Would love feedback on code architecture and C++ best practices!GitHub: https://github.com/beginner-jhj/mini_browser
Enrichment
- Theme
- browser automation and scraping for AI
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- browser engine in c++
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Writing a browser engine from scratch in C++ requires implementing complex spec-compliant HTML/CSS parsers, layout trees, and rendering pipelines.
What it would actually take: Requires C++ alongside low-level graphics backends (such as Skia or direct OS windowing APIs). The engine demands writing tokenizers, DOM tree constructors with error correction, CSS specificity/inheritance cascades, box model reflow algorithms, and a rasterization engine from spec documentation.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: FastRender (Cursor), Ladybird browser, one-agent-one-browser, HiWave, emsh's Rust browser project
Concerns raised: Only toy implementation, not full browser engine, HTML parsing far more complex than implementation, Rendering and network outsourced to Qt, JavaScript not supported, Limited CSS property support with imperfect implementation
Feature requests: JavaScript support, More complete CSS property coverage
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 250 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #16 of 251 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 86 days after the earliest competitor.
- C/C++ Cheatsheet · hn · 2026-01-23 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Horizon Engine · hn · 2026-01-10 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- I built an HTTP/2 server in C++ to learn the protocol and language · hn · 2026-01-04 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I built a Cargo-like build tool for C/C++ · hn · 2026-04-09 · 177 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I vibe-coded a custom WebGPU engine for my MMO · hn · 2026-02-23 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- I built a declarative layout engine for SVG, Canvas, WebGL · hn · 2026-07-03 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- A C/C++ IDE written in C from scratch with zero dependencies · hn · 2026-03-22 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- CJIT, a single-binary C compiler that can self host · hn · 2026-04-13 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.