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- Thunderbird: Dropped. - FirefoxOS : Dropped. - Servo: How many years do they need to build a new browser with the experience they already have? - Rust: I d

- Thunderbird: Dropped. - FirefoxOS : Dropped. - Servo: How many years do they need to build a new browser with the experience they already have? - Rust: I don't expect the world to rush to this language. - Finally, Mozilla is just Firefox now and they are aimed to privacy at all cost, that will cut their sources of revenues, of course.

pcwalton 11y ago
Servo is not a new browser. And nobody has "rushed" to any language introduced in the last decade. The "conquer the world" mentality introduced by Java is over. The big programming language success stories—Scala, node.js, Go, etc.—have all flourished with devoted communities using the languages in the niches they're strongest in. That's what Rust is aiming for, and the resulting community has been amazing so far.
- Touche 11y ago
  Hi pcwalton, I just wish Servo had clearer goals. In some ways the recent faster-browser initiates have all come out empty in my opinion, as they have nothing to truly show the for the work. Flexbox is a great example. We were told the problems with DOM updates was caused by the old layouts and things like floats. So Flexbox was supposed to fix those problems. Where's the proof? I find myself frustrated that now 8 years after the iPhone the web is still incapable of so many things. I wish the browser community would make some very specific goals and say "we'll do whatever it takes to reach these". Here's a very simple goal: A swipeable sidebar. Here's the requirements: * It must retain 60fps no matter how fast you swipe. * It must be easy to create; a virtual-dom shouldn't be a requirement to make up for slow dom updates. A elaborate library that correctly times everything shouldn't be necessary. That's it. Make that happen. Do whatever it takes. Create another new layout if necessary. Create a new touch spec that's faster, if necessary. Whatever. it. takes. And then when the work is done you can point to this new widget and say that the initiative paid off.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    > Hi pcwalton, I just wish Servo had clearer goals. What is not clear about "parallelize all parts of the pipeline", "get rendering GPU bound", and "write a memory safe browser"? > Flexbox is a great example. We were told the problems with DOM updates was caused by the old layouts and things like floats. Nobody said that. > So Flexbox was supposed to fix those problems. No, it wasn't. > I find myself frustrated that now 8 years after the iPhone the web is still incapable of so many things. Me too. > Here's a very simple goal: A swipeable sidebar. You can do it already at 60 FPS. Make an overflow:scroll div and allow the user to scroll it into view. Or even just do it manually with the DOM. It will easily be 60 FPS in existing engines if you animate transforms. > That's it. Make that happen. Do whatever it takes. Create another new layout if necessary. Create a new touch spec that's faster, if necessary. Whatever. it. takes. And then when the work is done you can point to this new widget and say that the initiative paid off. There's nothing to do here, as you've described it. But your comment is actually illustrative of the real problem (at least, what I think it is). We have a ton of ways to do things on the Web. Some of them are fast, and some of them are not. Web developers don't realize what the fast paths are (which is not entirely their fault). I think that all of the paths should be fast, and I think that many of Servo's technologies (such as WebRender) go a long way toward making that happen. What's frustrating is comments like yours that describe things that the Web can clearly already do and blame browsers for supposedly being unable to do simple things. I used to think the way you did—that the Web is incapable of rendering a 60 FPS scrollable view—and then quickly discovered that, if optimized properly, there is actually no problem. What I think the problem with Web slowness is that Web authors don't know what the fast paths are, and they use things like jQuery.animate() that hit all the slow paths. That is a problem that I think we are well equipped to solve in Servo due to things like parallel style recalculation, off main thread layout, and WebRender, but it's a lot more nuanced than what you describe.
    - Touche 11y ago
      > What is not clear about "parallelize layout" and "make better use of hardware"? The lack of a before/after demo. > No, it wasn't. What, specifically, were the performance goals then? > This is already done. Link?
- TheCoreh 11y ago
  > And nobody has "rushed" to any language introduced in the last decade. You forgot about Swift. (though it has been limited to Apple's eco system so far, let's see how their open source effort goes)
gsnedders 11y ago
> - Servo: How many years do they need to build a new browser with the experience they already have? Browsers are big. There's not really been a from-scratch browser written since the 90s, so there's not really any comparison point as to how long it takes. It's also worthwhile remembering that Gecko has over ten times the number of developers that Servo does—yet Servo has to catch up with much of what Gecko has done to it! Servo is certainly getting there (and honestly, the progress that's been made is incredibly impressive, both in terms of the man-hours involved per-feature and in absolute progress: many features are being implemented far quicker than they were in other browsers), and it seems plausible that this time next year there could be something relatively usable.

pcwalton 11y ago

Servo is not a new browser. And nobody has "rushed" to any language introduced in the last decade. The "conquer the world" mentality introduced by Java is over. The big programming language success stories—Scala, node.js, Go, etc.—have all flourished with devoted communities using the languages in the niches they're strongest in. That's what Rust is aiming for, and the resulting community has been amazing so far.

Touche 11y ago
Hi pcwalton, I just wish Servo had clearer goals. In some ways the recent faster-browser initiates have all come out empty in my opinion, as they have nothing to truly show the for the work. Flexbox is a great example. We were told the problems with DOM updates was caused by the old layouts and things like floats. So Flexbox was supposed to fix those problems. Where's the proof? I find myself frustrated that now 8 years after the iPhone the web is still incapable of so many things. I wish the browser community would make some very specific goals and say "we'll do whatever it takes to reach these". Here's a very simple goal: A swipeable sidebar. Here's the requirements: * It must retain 60fps no matter how fast you swipe. * It must be easy to create; a virtual-dom shouldn't be a requirement to make up for slow dom updates. A elaborate library that correctly times everything shouldn't be necessary. That's it. Make that happen. Do whatever it takes. Create another new layout if necessary. Create a new touch spec that's faster, if necessary. Whatever. it. takes. And then when the work is done you can point to this new widget and say that the initiative paid off.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  > Hi pcwalton, I just wish Servo had clearer goals. What is not clear about "parallelize all parts of the pipeline", "get rendering GPU bound", and "write a memory safe browser"? > Flexbox is a great example. We were told the problems with DOM updates was caused by the old layouts and things like floats. Nobody said that. > So Flexbox was supposed to fix those problems. No, it wasn't. > I find myself frustrated that now 8 years after the iPhone the web is still incapable of so many things. Me too. > Here's a very simple goal: A swipeable sidebar. You can do it already at 60 FPS. Make an overflow:scroll div and allow the user to scroll it into view. Or even just do it manually with the DOM. It will easily be 60 FPS in existing engines if you animate transforms. > That's it. Make that happen. Do whatever it takes. Create another new layout if necessary. Create a new touch spec that's faster, if necessary. Whatever. it. takes. And then when the work is done you can point to this new widget and say that the initiative paid off. There's nothing to do here, as you've described it. But your comment is actually illustrative of the real problem (at least, what I think it is). We have a ton of ways to do things on the Web. Some of them are fast, and some of them are not. Web developers don't realize what the fast paths are (which is not entirely their fault). I think that all of the paths should be fast, and I think that many of Servo's technologies (such as WebRender) go a long way toward making that happen. What's frustrating is comments like yours that describe things that the Web can clearly already do and blame browsers for supposedly being unable to do simple things. I used to think the way you did—that the Web is incapable of rendering a 60 FPS scrollable view—and then quickly discovered that, if optimized properly, there is actually no problem. What I think the problem with Web slowness is that Web authors don't know what the fast paths are, and they use things like jQuery.animate() that hit all the slow paths. That is a problem that I think we are well equipped to solve in Servo due to things like parallel style recalculation, off main thread layout, and WebRender, but it's a lot more nuanced than what you describe.
  - Touche 11y ago
    > What is not clear about "parallelize layout" and "make better use of hardware"? The lack of a before/after demo. > No, it wasn't. What, specifically, were the performance goals then? > This is already done. Link?
TheCoreh 11y ago
> And nobody has "rushed" to any language introduced in the last decade. You forgot about Swift. (though it has been limited to Apple's eco system so far, let's see how their open source effort goes)

gsnedders 11y ago

> - Servo: How many years do they need to build a new browser with the experience they already have? Browsers are big. There's not really been a from-scratch browser written since the 90s, so there's not really any comparison point as to how long it takes. It's also worthwhile remembering that Gecko has over ten times the number of developers that Servo does—yet Servo has to catch up with much of what Gecko has done to it! Servo is certainly getting there (and honestly, the progress that's been made is incredibly impressive, both in terms of the man-hours involved per-feature and in absolute progress: many features are being implemented far quicker than they were in other browsers), and it seems plausible that this time next year there could be something relatively usable.