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Integrating chunks of chromium code into gecko should massively reduce their maintenance costs. E.g spidermonkey is sub-par to v8 since so many years. If mozill

Integrating chunks of chromium code into gecko should massively reduce their maintenance costs. E.g spidermonkey is sub-par to v8 since so many years. If mozilla invested the money it invest into spidermonkey, into v8, the web would be faster for everyone. Should I repeat? The web would be faster for everyone. Nodejs servers too and also electron apps. We would also get new js features, faster. But mozilla doesn't seems to get the point of open source. They have a reinventing the wheel cognitive disease that is going to stay.

Jonnax 7y ago
The point of opensource is to follow along with the leader?
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  It is to make synergies through code sharing. Let's fork the Linux kernel into a redundant implementation and take half kernel developers in order to slow down progress by a factor of two.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I suggest you take a look at Blink’s history ;)
  - Jonnax 7y ago
    That's a bad comparison. They're not forks. Firefox's is a separate implementation. The equivalent would be asking BSD to merge with Linux.
simion314 7y ago
We don't need JS to get 2% more faster, the limits of those speed improvements were reached, web assembly combined with a compiled language could offer more speed. I would like to see Firefox move faster in implementing good web APIs, like the lazy loading of images, push for HTML and CSS improvements(like let me customize the numeric text input arrows with css instead of forcing me to use a JS library) . Maybe the Rust rewrite will make Firefox better achitected so you could have a node version based on Mozilla technologies or you could easily use the web assembly VM in your application without having to load the full Chrome code.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Wasn’t Netscape the case study of why you shouldn’t do a full rewrite?
  - simion314 7y ago
    AFAIK Firefox is not doing a full rewrite but incremental refactoring then attempting to swap components. The unfortunate truth is that writing a browser is almost impossible because of the complexity, IMO we need a new version of the web that breaks compatibility, make everything strict(no longer ignore errors and guess a fix for them) no more 12 ways to center an element , for the legacy web we can use the existing engines
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      Write websites with Wasm, render UI with WebGL or something similar. Implement JavaScript as a compiler to Wasm (which runs on Wasmitself), implement HTML+CSS renderer as a library which runs on Wasm as well. So basically your browser need to implement Wasm and WebGL which sounds reasonable task. Well, that's simplification, of course, it need to implement some HTTP API like XMLHttpRequest, local storage API and so on, but it's manageable. Here's an example of website written with Rust and rendering all UI to canvas: https://makepad.github.io/makepad/ https://makepad.github.io/makepad/ it works right now and it's very fast and smooth. IMO tech for next generation web apps is already here and it's great.
      - simion314 7y ago
        Implementing an html rendered that is compatible with all the css rules and it also implements all the extra workarounds that the current browser implement ( like handling illegal markup is not trivial) markup . I mean think about it, you hit invalid html markup and what do you do? You need to continue but now you need to check what Firefox or Chrome do for each case (missing end tags , P inside span, weird nesting of elements ) I would not want to implement a browser that is compatible with the current garbage. There was also an article earlier this month or previous month from a Firefox developer about font/text rendering, in case you missed it rendering text in a way that works with all writing system is super hard.
saagarjha 7y ago
I, for one, am happy that there are multiple competing JavaScript engines. And that’s coming from someone who put in work to improve one you haven’t mentioned.

Jonnax 7y ago

The point of opensource is to follow along with the leader?

The_rationalist 7y ago
It is to make synergies through code sharing. Let's fork the Linux kernel into a redundant implementation and take half kernel developers in order to slow down progress by a factor of two.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I suggest you take a look at Blink’s history ;)
- Jonnax 7y ago
  That's a bad comparison. They're not forks. Firefox's is a separate implementation. The equivalent would be asking BSD to merge with Linux.

simion314 7y ago

We don't need JS to get 2% more faster, the limits of those speed improvements were reached, web assembly combined with a compiled language could offer more speed. I would like to see Firefox move faster in implementing good web APIs, like the lazy loading of images, push for HTML and CSS improvements(like let me customize the numeric text input arrows with css instead of forcing me to use a JS library) . Maybe the Rust rewrite will make Firefox better achitected so you could have a node version based on Mozilla technologies or you could easily use the web assembly VM in your application without having to load the full Chrome code.

scarface74 7y ago
Wasn’t Netscape the case study of why you shouldn’t do a full rewrite?
- simion314 7y ago
  AFAIK Firefox is not doing a full rewrite but incremental refactoring then attempting to swap components. The unfortunate truth is that writing a browser is almost impossible because of the complexity, IMO we need a new version of the web that breaks compatibility, make everything strict(no longer ignore errors and guess a fix for them) no more 12 ways to center an element , for the legacy web we can use the existing engines
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    Write websites with Wasm, render UI with WebGL or something similar. Implement JavaScript as a compiler to Wasm (which runs on Wasmitself), implement HTML+CSS renderer as a library which runs on Wasm as well. So basically your browser need to implement Wasm and WebGL which sounds reasonable task. Well, that's simplification, of course, it need to implement some HTTP API like XMLHttpRequest, local storage API and so on, but it's manageable. Here's an example of website written with Rust and rendering all UI to canvas: https://makepad.github.io/makepad/ https://makepad.github.io/makepad/ it works right now and it's very fast and smooth. IMO tech for next generation web apps is already here and it's great.
    - simion314 7y ago
      Implementing an html rendered that is compatible with all the css rules and it also implements all the extra workarounds that the current browser implement ( like handling illegal markup is not trivial) markup . I mean think about it, you hit invalid html markup and what do you do? You need to continue but now you need to check what Firefox or Chrome do for each case (missing end tags , P inside span, weird nesting of elements ) I would not want to implement a browser that is compatible with the current garbage. There was also an article earlier this month or previous month from a Firefox developer about font/text rendering, in case you missed it rendering text in a way that works with all writing system is super hard.

saagarjha 7y ago

I, for one, am happy that there are multiple competing JavaScript engines. And that’s coming from someone who put in work to improve one you haven’t mentioned.