14 ms·

Servo to Advance in 2023

300 points by ewired 4y ago

_zllx 4y ago
Excited to see the renewed interest in Servo. Another new web engine that is coming along nicely is SerenityOS LibWeb: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/Libraries/LibWeb https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...
- mouse_ 4y ago
  First new browser engine to pass acid3 test since the test was invented. Nice. Hopefully this will turn into something end users can benefit from. I'd love to see done to Chrome what WireGuard did to OpenVPN.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    > I'd love to see done to Chrome what WireGuard did to OpenVPN. While I share the hope, the situation is (imho) very different. OpenVPN is FOSS while Chrome is proprietary... OpenVPN is a tool which still helps many many many users while Chrome is a mixed bag - pretty good browser made by a worlds largest advertising company.
    - cies 4y ago
      Also the project scope is of a totally different order magnitude.
  - alganet 4y ago
    The pace at which Ladybird is evolving is impressive, both LibWeb and LibJS. I've never seen anything like it. The amount of work needed to make a browser work is uncanny and they're making it look easy (it's not). I was around when webkit browsers started to appear. Back then, the engine was leveraging almost a decade of work on KHTML. It wasn't something pulled out of thin air. All popular browsers nowadays have their roots in 90's and early 2000's codebases. Servo is a very cool project as well, I'm rooting for them!
Vinnl 4y ago
Looks like the external funding at least consists of Igalia dedicating four people: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/ https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/
- dmix 4y ago
  From their wikipedia: > Igalia is a major contributor to each of the major Web engines (Blink, Gecko/Servo and WebKit). In 2019 they were the #2 committers to both the WebKit and Chromium codebases and in the top 10 contributors to Gecko/Servo. Igalia has helped the interoperability of some features across web engines; they implemented CSS Grid Layout in WebKit and Blink. They are maintainers for several areas of the Chromium codebase, such as CSS Grid Layout, MathML, Ozone-Wayland and MathML in Chromium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Not only that but they're a worker-owned cooperative. This is all very impressive. > Igalia is a private, worker-owned, employee-run cooperative model consultancy focused on open source software. Based in A Coruña, Galicia (Spain), Igalia is known for its contributions and commitments to both open-source and open standards. Igalia's primary focus is on open source solutions for a large set of hardware and software platforms centering on browsers, graphics, multimedia, compilers, device drivers, virtualization, embedded Linux, and device drivers.[2][3]
    - seanw444 4y ago
      I salute these kinds of companies. Including Collabora.
      - maxbond 4y ago
        Here's a list for people looking to work at at tech company worker's cooperative: https://tech-coops.xyz https://tech-coops.xyz
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.
- mariusor 4y ago
  I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.
  - stuaxo 4y ago
    Exactly - there are cases there where it wouldn't matter too much that it isn't complete yet.
  - fabrice_d 4y ago
    Servo has always been easy to embed. Basically the host needs to provide a GL surface and input events, and gets some callbacks from Servo. Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]... [0] https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/ https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser That's the case. From homepage: > Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards.
    - mariusor 4y ago
      I thought that's the old blurb. In the article they specifically mention they want to work on CSS2: > The focus for 2023 is to improve the situation of the layout system in Servo, with the initial goal of getting basic CSS2 layout working. But seeing another comment in the thread, it looks like that was the last thing the developers that will be sponsored were working on anyway, so it makes sense to pick up where they have left off.
revskill 4y ago
Is there any tool in Rust that allows auto import module based on usage ? A VSCode extension is perfect.
- d12bb 4y ago
  Rust Analyzer can add `use` statements on confirming completion and clippy will complain/remove unused ones, if that's what you want.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  When a symbol is unresolved, but could be made available in the current workspace -- e.g., HashMap when you haven't yet imported it, or a trait function whose trait isn't in scope -- rust-analyzer offers to import or qualify the symbol or import the necessary trait.
maverick74 4y ago
[flagged]
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  What has Mozilla done which is so bad? The only thing that annoys me is their refusal to support any api for writing to an existing file, but I am aware this is a niche concern for most of the web.
  - maverick74 4y ago
    well, in my personal opinion they shot themselves in the foot when: - they ditch their own extension system (which was far more powerful) to go hunt for leprechauns with google "unified extensions system" (read Google-Controled extensions system) - when they stopped servo development (yeah... there is lack of money, but not to pay the big ones on the top, right) - They give the boot to Brendan Eich (yeah... the Brave browser guy) - They spend coding time with useless features (oh i can mention a few... but lets start with those colorful themes that no one cares about..........) - i can go on and on... and on....... but... all in all, i'm HEAVY a Firefox user!!! (because there is nothing else to choose from)
  - maverick74 4y ago
    And, by the way, what's so wrong with my comment that had to be flagged???
DrBazza 4y ago
> The first task is to reactivate the project and the community around it What does that mean, when there's active development of the github repository? It's never been deactivated has it?
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  For all practical purposes the project was on pause. Looks like no-one had time / energy / willingness / knowledge to make real progress.
devit 4y ago
I'd suggest those priorities, in order: 1. Making a fully secure no-JavaScript browser for Tor usage 2. A secure browser that works on major websites 3. Android support 4. Embedding support 5. Extensions support 6. All missing features supported by both Firefox and Chrome, roughly in order of addition to the web standards 7. Replace Firefox 8. All features supported by any browser
- altairprime 4y ago
  It’s rather uncommon that you consider TOR support to be a higher priority than “a browser that works”, so I’d like to hear more about the ordering of your first two priorities, specifically.
  - devit 4y ago
    Because an unexploitable browser (which is the main fundamental advantage of Servo) is more important for Tor than elsewhere since an exploit will compromise anonymity. Also, since Tor browsing is often done with JavaScript off, and removing JavaScript removes a huge amount of web features that need to be supported (including a JavaScript engine, which I think Servo still doesn't have a pure Rust implementation of), it's much easier to make a usable browser for this use case than others.
shmerl 4y ago
Good to hear! I'd like to see Servo and Firefox switching to Vulkan from OpenGL on Linux.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
I think an Electron replacement would be a killer app for servo. I hope that happens.
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  That would be Tauri with Servo as a WebView instead of the OS default. I'm quite sure this will happen!
thrwawy74 4y ago
I know it's not related to the rendering engine, but I really hope side-effort is expended on marrying Firefox to the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF). This is a major roadblock to getting Firefox in more embedded, webview, and in-game spaces. (My naive understanding)

300 points by ewired 4y ago

Excited to see the renewed interest in Servo. Another new web engine that is coming along nicely is SerenityOS LibWeb: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/Libraries/LibWeb https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...

mouse_ 4y ago
First new browser engine to pass acid3 test since the test was invented. Nice. Hopefully this will turn into something end users can benefit from. I'd love to see done to Chrome what WireGuard did to OpenVPN.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  > I'd love to see done to Chrome what WireGuard did to OpenVPN. While I share the hope, the situation is (imho) very different. OpenVPN is FOSS while Chrome is proprietary... OpenVPN is a tool which still helps many many many users while Chrome is a mixed bag - pretty good browser made by a worlds largest advertising company.
  - cies 4y ago
    Also the project scope is of a totally different order magnitude.
- alganet 4y ago
  The pace at which Ladybird is evolving is impressive, both LibWeb and LibJS. I've never seen anything like it. The amount of work needed to make a browser work is uncanny and they're making it look easy (it's not). I was around when webkit browsers started to appear. Back then, the engine was leveraging almost a decade of work on KHTML. It wasn't something pulled out of thin air. All popular browsers nowadays have their roots in 90's and early 2000's codebases. Servo is a very cool project as well, I'm rooting for them!

Vinnl 4y ago

Looks like the external funding at least consists of Igalia dedicating four people: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/ https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/

dmix 4y ago
From their wikipedia: > Igalia is a major contributor to each of the major Web engines (Blink, Gecko/Servo and WebKit). In 2019 they were the #2 committers to both the WebKit and Chromium codebases and in the top 10 contributors to Gecko/Servo. Igalia has helped the interoperability of some features across web engines; they implemented CSS Grid Layout in WebKit and Blink. They are maintainers for several areas of the Chromium codebase, such as CSS Grid Layout, MathML, Ozone-Wayland and MathML in Chromium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Not only that but they're a worker-owned cooperative. This is all very impressive. > Igalia is a private, worker-owned, employee-run cooperative model consultancy focused on open source software. Based in A Coruña, Galicia (Spain), Igalia is known for its contributions and commitments to both open-source and open standards. Igalia's primary focus is on open source solutions for a large set of hardware and software platforms centering on browsers, graphics, multimedia, compilers, device drivers, virtualization, embedded Linux, and device drivers.[2][3]
  - seanw444 4y ago
    I salute these kinds of companies. Including Collabora.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Here's a list for people looking to work at at tech company worker's cooperative: https://tech-coops.xyz https://tech-coops.xyz

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

mariusor 4y ago
I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Exactly - there are cases there where it wouldn't matter too much that it isn't complete yet.
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  Servo has always been easy to embed. Basically the host needs to provide a GL surface and input events, and gets some callbacks from Servo. Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]... [0] https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/ https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser That's the case. From homepage: > Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    I thought that's the old blurb. In the article they specifically mention they want to work on CSS2: > The focus for 2023 is to improve the situation of the layout system in Servo, with the initial goal of getting basic CSS2 layout working. But seeing another comment in the thread, it looks like that was the last thing the developers that will be sponsored were working on anyway, so it makes sense to pick up where they have left off.

revskill 4y ago

Is there any tool in Rust that allows auto import module based on usage ? A VSCode extension is perfect.

d12bb 4y ago
Rust Analyzer can add `use` statements on confirming completion and clippy will complain/remove unused ones, if that's what you want.
bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
When a symbol is unresolved, but could be made available in the current workspace -- e.g., HashMap when you haven't yet imported it, or a trait function whose trait isn't in scope -- rust-analyzer offers to import or qualify the symbol or import the necessary trait.

maverick74 4y ago

[flagged]

sebzim4500 4y ago
What has Mozilla done which is so bad? The only thing that annoys me is their refusal to support any api for writing to an existing file, but I am aware this is a niche concern for most of the web.
- maverick74 4y ago
  well, in my personal opinion they shot themselves in the foot when: - they ditch their own extension system (which was far more powerful) to go hunt for leprechauns with google "unified extensions system" (read Google-Controled extensions system) - when they stopped servo development (yeah... there is lack of money, but not to pay the big ones on the top, right) - They give the boot to Brendan Eich (yeah... the Brave browser guy) - They spend coding time with useless features (oh i can mention a few... but lets start with those colorful themes that no one cares about..........) - i can go on and on... and on....... but... all in all, i'm HEAVY a Firefox user!!! (because there is nothing else to choose from)
- maverick74 4y ago
  And, by the way, what's so wrong with my comment that had to be flagged???

DrBazza 4y ago

> The first task is to reactivate the project and the community around it What does that mean, when there's active development of the github repository? It's never been deactivated has it?

fabrice_d 4y ago
For all practical purposes the project was on pause. Looks like no-one had time / energy / willingness / knowledge to make real progress.

devit 4y ago

I'd suggest those priorities, in order: 1. Making a fully secure no-JavaScript browser for Tor usage 2. A secure browser that works on major websites 3. Android support 4. Embedding support 5. Extensions support 6. All missing features supported by both Firefox and Chrome, roughly in order of addition to the web standards 7. Replace Firefox 8. All features supported by any browser

altairprime 4y ago
It’s rather uncommon that you consider TOR support to be a higher priority than “a browser that works”, so I’d like to hear more about the ordering of your first two priorities, specifically.
- devit 4y ago
  Because an unexploitable browser (which is the main fundamental advantage of Servo) is more important for Tor than elsewhere since an exploit will compromise anonymity. Also, since Tor browsing is often done with JavaScript off, and removing JavaScript removes a huge amount of web features that need to be supported (including a JavaScript engine, which I think Servo still doesn't have a pure Rust implementation of), it's much easier to make a usable browser for this use case than others.

shmerl 4y ago

Good to hear! I'd like to see Servo and Firefox switching to Vulkan from OpenGL on Linux.

tracerbulletx 4y ago

I think an Electron replacement would be a killer app for servo. I hope that happens.

fabrice_d 4y ago
That would be Tauri with Servo as a WebView instead of the OS default. I'm quite sure this will happen!

thrwawy74 4y ago

I know it's not related to the rendering engine, but I really hope side-effort is expended on marrying Firefox to the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF). This is a major roadblock to getting Firefox in more embedded, webview, and in-game spaces. (My naive understanding)