BuildABrowser
buildabrowser.net- Category
- Developer Tools
- Rank
- No. 3720Tools index
Previous survey · No. 3542 ·
- Pricing
- Open Source
- Type
- APP
- GitHub
- 4 stars
- Latest release
- 0.1.1
- Date
About
BuildABrowser is an open-source web browser and rendering engine written from scratch in Java, with its own HTML/CSS parsers and layout algorithms rather than a wrapper around an existing engine. It passes the Acid2 rendering test and supports layout modes including flow, flex, grid, and table, along with static/relative/absolute/sticky/fixed positioning, a broad set of CSS selectors and pseudo-classes, calc/var functions, CSS layers, and media queries. It runs on Linux, Windows, and an experimental Android build, and its modular renderer is embeddable via prebuilt Swing and Android Jetpack Compose layers.
At a glance
BuildABrowser is an experimental browser and rendering engine written in Java. It is worth reading if you want to see how HTML parsing, CSS matching and layout fit together in a smaller codebase.
Good fit
Students of browser internals and Java developers exploring an embeddable renderer.
Consider something else when
Keep an established browser for everyday browsing, account sign-ins or work that depends on broad web compatibility.
Start here
Use a tiny local page with a CSS grid and predictable element order. Compare the rendered boxes and DOM tree with your expectations before trying a real page.
Cost and requirements
MIT-licensed. The desktop browser documents Linux and Windows with Java 24 or newer. Android Desktop is experimental.
Limits to know
The README lists missing subgrid support and partial grid alignment. A successful render of one page tells you little about compatibility with a full web app.
Sources checked 2026-11-05. Source-based assessment.
Why it made the leaderboard
An embeddable, from-scratch browser engine gives Java/Android developers a real alternative for embedding web rendering without pulling in a full Chromium dependency.
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