Firefox Ported Entirely to WebAssembly
coolelectronics · hn · 2026-07-16
The author compiled the entire Firefox browser to run inside a <canvas>: Gecko, all UI components, and the SpiderMonkey JS engine execute within WebAssembly.
Key points include:
- Tunneling TCP over WebSocket via the WISP protocol to achieve end-to-end encryption.
- Building an experimental WASM→JS JIT to speed up site loading.
- The port required over 25,000 opus/fable tokens for debugging and JIT research.
The author positions this as a fun experiment to "push the boundaries of WebAssembly." For a more practical "browser-in-a-browser" solution, they also mention the more memory-efficient browser.js.
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