I'm a developer, writer and speaker on web APIs and the future of the web. I've been a developer since graduating in 2003 and mostly developing for the web since 2005. My key technology interests are around how web and native app capabilities are converging (e.g. Progressive Web App technologies) and how the physical and digital worlds are converging (Physical Web, Web Bluetooth, VR, Mixed Reality...) I joined Samsung Internet's new developer advocacy team last year, to help developers fulfil their ambitions with the latest web technologies.
Samsung Internet and the Rise of the "Chromia"
Google Chrome is not the only browser based on the Chromium project. Samsung Internet - along with Opera, Brave, Yandex, Vivaldi and others - all come from the same open source foundations, to which Samsung and others are major contributors.
Having a vibrant community of browsers, each pushing forwards in interesting ways, helps to advance the web. However, many of these “Chromia” tend to be under the radar for developers, especially since some prominent analytics and market share services do not count them correctly. In fact, they may have hundreds of millions of active users. Samsung Internet is one of the top 3 or 4 mobile browsers worldwide.
In this talk, I’ll shed some light on these browsers we might not think about so often. I’ll cover Samsung’s motivations for developing our own browser, launching a developer relations team and opening up our first public beta. I’ll share some of the web technologies we’re most excited about, including the latest PWA advances, Web Payments and WebVR. Plus, how we’re contributing back into open source and web standards - and how we hope to help advance the web platform in the future.