It’s been a while since my last truly silly project, so i thought i’d come up with something else.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how the web is essentially replacing desktop applications, which to me sounds great.
But there is something missing from this new age of web applications. In order to run web apps you need a web browser, which is still a desktop app. It seems to me odd that a platform which replaces another still requires that platform to operate.
Which is where htmlcanvas comes in. It’s a HTML renderer implemented in JavaScript, which runs nicely in any capable web browser which supports the Canvas element.
In essence, it’s a web browser implemented within a web browser. The above example was rendered from this HTML:
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body><!-- Begin test -->
<p class="woo" id="render">
Rendering <b>HTML</b>...</p>
<p><span>In <b>Canvas</b></span>!</p>
<p>0_0</p>
</body>
</html>
This sort of recursive abstraction is not uncommon in the computing world. For example, C compilers are written in C, Pascal compilers are written in Pascal. There’s even a version of Python implemented within Python. So a web platform implemented within a web platform is quite natural.
Still, it will be a long while before htmlcanvas is remotely capable of running within itself, so a truly recursive web browsing experience is still a long way off.
As with most of my silly projects, the code to htmlcanvas is hosted on github. Fork it here!
Note: Currently only known to work in Safari 4, FireFox 3.5, or Google Chrome.
