Nematode Web Browser

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Finally! A Web Browser For The 90s

Nematode is a web browser engine modeled after the browser engines of the mid 90s. That is to say, it will probably not render any modern pages with any sort of accuracy. However, if you are feeling like a nostalgia trip, or maybe just have become jaded to the modern web, Nematode may be a nice escape.

Nematode viewing this page

At the core of Nematode is the browser rendering engine, which as of now just shares the same name. The engine supports most of the basic HTML element, with the notable exception of table. CSS and JavaScript will not be added. Because of how Nematode works, CSS and Javascript would not be possible thanks to the exclusion of the DOM tree. Early browsers didn't use it, so neither will Nematode.

At the moment, Nematode supports no protocols, as the rendering engine is priority #1. I guess technically it supports the file:// protocol right now... but nothing network based as of yet. In the future, Nematode will support HTTP, HTTPS, Gopher, Gemini, FTP, FTPS, and possibly others. The sky is the limit when you are working with simple technology.

Since Nematode is so simple, it supports (or will support) many frontends and backends. Every part of the browser for the most part is plug and play. At its core is the CDraw library which I have created specifically for the purpose of making Nematode possible. CDraw is able to use a Cairo or Qt backend at the moment, with more ports coming very soon (they might already be out by the time you read this). The frontend at the moment is written in Qt, but native ports will hopefully be avaliable for every major platform. Since CDraw supports Cairo natively, a port to Gtk+ would be extremely easy as well...

So if any of this sounds interesting to you, give Nematode a shot!