given that Electron is really just a featureless browser shouldn't it be straightforward to make your own browser now? An address bar, navigation, and bookmarks ought to be enough to get you there. Seems like you should be able to make a browser for your specific needs/wants pretty easily these days. I'm not suggesting some sort of money making venture where you're beholden to investors to try and turn revenue with it but more just like a utility. Like a script or something... maybe that's the way to think about it, something cobbled together quickly to read websites.
given that Electron is really just a featureless browser shouldn't it be straightforward to make your own browser now?
That's not what Electron is but there are piles of fork-ish browser projects out there statistically nobody uses. This also answers the second question in the negative - it is not straightforward to make your own browser that's as useful as the browser you're likely using.
> > given that Electron is really just a featureless browser [...]
> That's not what Electron is
I mean...isn't it?
Forget the idea of what it's used for and just look at how it works. It's a framework for making apps that uses Chromium for rendering and a Node backend. Strip off the Node backend and you're left with Chromium.
And Chromium on its own is a web browser. Electron just doesn't show the controls for it.
As far as I'm concerned, Electron is a featureless web browser with a backend added to do things a browser normally can't do on its own, like reading local files without presenting a dialog.
That's a huge change which allows for things like turning XSS into RCEs. It's a bit like 'why can't you make your own street legal sports car by removing the rear spoiler and replacing it with a jet engine'.
