On Tuesday, 26 May 2026 at 19:34:08 UTC, c-smile wrote:
One more urban legend, sigh ...
When i said DOM I should have said DOM in the sense of what we typically mean when we use this term - browser DOM. So no, it is not urban legend, it is the truth.
Sciter, it seems to me, implements only ~30-40% of the DOM/CSS specification - just what application UIs actually need - while browsers must support the full spec plus legacy quirks, security sandboxing, mutation observers, live collections, DevTools hooks, and a separate accessibility tree for arbitrary untrusted web content.
Browsers also maintain separate DOM → Layout → Paint → Compositing trees with pointers between them, while Sciter uses a more integrated design with fewer indirections.
Simply put, Sciter is built to run *our* (Sciter users) trusted application UI efficiently, while browsers are built to run *any* untrusted website safely and completely - that difference alone accounts for the 5-8x node size reduction you are so proud of.
Perhaps in the future conversation we should refer to Sciter-DOM when we talk about Sciter specifically, as you can't realistically claim Sciter follows the DOM/CSS specification "to the letter".
I do like Sciter! Just let's not spread BS here and let's be realistic.
