The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser

http://www.woodencomputer.net/posts/2015/6/25/the-nigerian-teenagers-who-built-crocodile-browser

by crablar • 11 years ago

64 27 11 years ago

woodencomputer.net

whalesalad• 11 years ago

Seriously? Have you seen their website? http://www.bludoors.com/

state• 11 years ago

Somehow it's still kind of fascinating.

awfullyjohn• 11 years ago

They're kids. Give them a break. Would you like to show us the website you had when you were 16?

smtddr• 11 years ago

The sliding effect and animations are cool at least.

You should have seen my first webpage. Animated rainbow gifs, crazy backgrounds on crazier font-colors. Their site is much better. Mine looked like those Myspace pages from back in the day. autoplaying midi music included.

hackuser3• 11 years ago

Please consider deleting your comment. Imagine if those kids find out they're on Hacker News, and find this. It's not very interesting to your fellow commenters either.

ams6110• 11 years ago

IMO it's no worse than yours.

userbinator3• 11 years ago

At least his site is viewable without JavaScript.

hackuser3• 11 years ago

To Osine and Anesi, if you read this:

1) Awesome job, keep going!

2) You'll find some naysayers, nitpickers and other critics here: Your heroes, including Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk, all had to deal with them too, before they were legends (and still do to some extent). You can't avoid them; they are drawn to risk-taking and [EDIT: innovation] like ants to a picnic. Just ignore them, their criticisms are just wind in your face as you move forward. They wish their projects made the front page of Hacker News!

3) We'd love to hear from you; feel free to leave a comment!

Osine_I4• 11 years ago

Thanks

hackuser3• 11 years ago

Welcome! Out of curiousity, why did you choose to make a web browser (and not something else)? It's a great project, just curious what motivated your choice.

codingdave• 11 years ago

2) Naysayers can have value - some criticisms will be valid and helpful. Ignoring all feedback unless it is positive is not wise. The trick is to listen to it, evaluate it for yourself, and decide which criticisms should be ignored, and which should be heeded.

pratyushag• 11 years ago

THIS is awesome! Great to see some positive news of talent coming from NIgeria. <as somebody who moved from SF to Nigeria>

clark-kent• 11 years ago

The interview is cool, and even inspirational. They needed a faster browser for slower networks, so they did the research, found an appropriate rendering engine and built it. They solved their own unique problem and built a better browser for Nigerian networks.

Osine and Anesi, you guys can ping me, if there's anyway I can help.

bobajeff• 11 years ago

So did they build the Rendering Engine, JavaScript Engine, Network Interface etc. stuff from scratch? If so I'm impressed. I also wonder how it's supposed work better on bad connections.

userbinator3• 11 years ago

Did they write their own rendering engine and everything? If so, that would be very impressive indeed. The Web really needs more diversity in browsers, for a wide variety of reasons.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it; Google the name and almost all the pages are about how amazingly awesome its creators are, and not the product itself... potential users really want to know about what makes this better than existing browsers.

kumarm• 11 years ago

In the link there is interview where they explained.

No they did not build a Browser from Scratch. They wrote a UI for Default webkit engine that comes with Android.

Is it a technical accomplishment? Not by any means for a professional. But it is awesome that these kids figured how to do this and mostly appear to be self learners.

Edit: Reddit Thread here talks about using a GPL Browser (built over Webkit engine that comes with Android). https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...

bootload• 11 years ago

"Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it"

Listen to the talk. All the good questions are asked & answered.

aninteger• 11 years ago

I think this might be a violation of the GPL

More discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...

Osine_I4• 11 years ago

It is not a violation of GPL because we referenced tint browser in the about section of the app.

userbinator3• 11 years ago

If you distribute a program based on GPL sources you have modified, you have to also distribute that source code. That is, unless the original authors gave you the sources under a different license.

nickpsecurity3• 11 years ago

He is right. If you modify and distribute GPL code, whatever changes you made have to be distributed with it in source code form. The BSD licensed code doesn't have this restriction, which is why it's used in place of GPL for those not wanting to redistribute their source. Maybe use that in the future for such things.

For now, if you're app forks GPL code, you have to release the source, pull it, or hope nobody cares. Good to start noticing these little, but important, things early to develop good habits.

nickpsecurity3• 11 years ago

Keep at it! You're off to a great start. :)

stann• 11 years ago

This is impressive. As a player in the Nigerian tech market, it is good to see budding local talents

The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser

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