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It's cool to see the work on Servo since Igalia picked it up. There was a lot of tech debt to work through due to years of minimal maintenance, but they seem to

It's cool to see the work on Servo since Igalia picked it up. There was a lot of tech debt to work through due to years of minimal maintenance, but they seem to have been making real progress. My personal hope is they push hard on the modularity angle. Seems to me that: 1) there's probably a niche to be filled by an OSS browser engine focussed on embedability and 2) That it could be a huge boon for the long-term health of the web platform if there are build-your-own-browser "lego building block" libraries that people can mix and match to create new engines.

arlcode 3y ago
Wild speculation: With iphones being forced to open their web engine there might be some apps interested in embedding their own engines across mobile devices.
capableweb 3y ago
> 1) there's probably a niche to be filled by an OSS browser engine focussed on embedability Absolutely. Electron or something Electron-like with Servo embedded could be a nice outcome. Tauri already fills that niche a bit, but uses whatever the OS provides, rather than embedding anything. Would be nice with something in-between that.
- the_duke 3y ago
  Tauri is actually adding experimental Servo support.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Oh wow, I wasn't aware of this! So proper embedded cross-platform engine into the final binary? That'd be awesome.
    - igrunert 3y ago
      Yep, embedding the Servo engine into the final binary. This work is sponsored by another (separate) NLnet grant: https://nlnet.nl/project/Tauri-Servo/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Tauri-Servo/
paulrouget 3y ago
> My personal hope is they push hard on the modularity angle It is strongly designed that way (the component model and the embed layer).
wongarsu 3y ago
An embedded engine is also a much faster path to viable use cases. For example Sciter [1] has some degree of success despite implementing only a sane subset of the DOM API. It doesn't work well for general internet surfing, but when used as an UI library you just avoid the parts that don't work. 1: https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/

arlcode 3y ago

Wild speculation: With iphones being forced to open their web engine there might be some apps interested in embedding their own engines across mobile devices.

capableweb 3y ago

> 1) there's probably a niche to be filled by an OSS browser engine focussed on embedability Absolutely. Electron or something Electron-like with Servo embedded could be a nice outcome. Tauri already fills that niche a bit, but uses whatever the OS provides, rather than embedding anything. Would be nice with something in-between that.

the_duke 3y ago
Tauri is actually adding experimental Servo support.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Oh wow, I wasn't aware of this! So proper embedded cross-platform engine into the final binary? That'd be awesome.
  - igrunert 3y ago
    Yep, embedding the Servo engine into the final binary. This work is sponsored by another (separate) NLnet grant: https://nlnet.nl/project/Tauri-Servo/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Tauri-Servo/

paulrouget 3y ago

> My personal hope is they push hard on the modularity angle It is strongly designed that way (the component model and the embed layer).

wongarsu 3y ago

An embedded engine is also a much faster path to viable use cases. For example Sciter [1] has some degree of success despite implementing only a sane subset of the DOM API. It doesn't work well for general internet surfing, but when used as an UI library you just avoid the parts that don't work. 1: https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/