Web browsers as compilers

Scott Buckley
Macquarie University

The written standards that make up the Web come to almost a million words
of text and can be very difficult to implement, which is one of the reasons
there are so many inconsistencies between browser behaviours.
In this presentation we explore the similarities between web browsers and
programming language compilers, and examine how compiler design techniques
can be applied to the web browser implementation problem.
Most notably we will explore how CSS can be seen as semantic analysis, and
therefore how attribute grammars are well- suited to implement CSS layout.
Some demonstrations are given from a working CSS layout engine written in
Kiama attribute grammars.