[philip.j.fry]

I don't think he means 'building a browser from the ground up'. All he will be doing is compiling already existing source code, at the most basic level he can do this by installing all of the needed tools and then typing:

configure
make
make install (optional)

Unless I am mistaken and he wants to hack the source in which case he'll need some good programming skills, otherwise just building the source requires zero programming knowledge.