# Serval - an Experimental Web Browser Engine
[](https://travis-ci.com/hayatoito/serval)
**Serval** is an experimental web browser engine written in Rust. The author
(@hayatoito) is using Serval as a playground when designing and implementing a
new idea or concept into the Web Platform, before starting to implement it
actually in Chromium [Blink](https://www.chromium.org/blink) engine in C++.
I'd love to have a small rendering engine which has only essential parts so I
can experiment something new, and get insights from there quickly. Rust would be
better than C++ for this kind of prototyping.
## Highlights
- Serval is not for end users.
- Serval is an experimental minimum rendering engine. I only implement what I
need for my experiments in the rendering engine.
- Some people might consider Serval as a good project for educational purposes,
however, that is not my goal.
- Serval is my personal project. Serval is not related to Chromium Blink engine.
I commit nothing about Serval.
## Features
- [x] DOM (element and text)
- [x] HTML (This is NOT HTML which you know. Serval HTML is implemented as an
s-expression, as of now)
- [x] CSS (simple selector)
- [x] Layout (block layout)
- [x] Paint (canvas and png)
- [ ] Layout (inline layout)
- [ ] Paint (output as json)
- [ ] WASM binding, interpreter, JIT
- [ ] Shadow DOM
- [ ] Copy-on-Write shadow trees
- [ ] WebTemplate
- [ ] Parallel style recalc and layout
- [ ] Networking, asynchronous I/O based scheduling
- [ ] Interactive UI (I think which is never implemented)
# Examples
Given the following _HTML_ (in an s-expression)
```
(div class=a
(div class=b
(div class=c
(div class=d
(div class=e
(div class=f
(div class=g))))))))
```
and CSS,
```css
* {
display: block;
padding: 12px;
}
.a {
background: #ff0000;
}
.b {
background: #ffa500;
}
.c {
background: #ffff00;
}
.d {
background: #008000;
}
.e {
background: #0000ff;
}
.f {
background: #4b0082;
}
.g {
background: #800080;
}
```
Serval can output png as follows:
```shellsession
> serval paint ./example.html ./example.css ./example.png png
```
example.png:
<img src="./examples/color.png" style="width: 800px; height: 168px; object-fit: none; object-position: 0 0">
# Acknowledgments
[Matt Brubeck: Let's build a browser engine](https://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2014/08/08/toy-layout-engine-1.html)