10 ms·

Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

821 points by pabs3 2y ago

wongarsu 2y ago
According to https://servo.org/about/ https://servo.org/about/ Servo currently passes ~60% of the web platform tests. Does anyone have experience how far that subset gets you on the open internet?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Hackernews and LWN render reasonably correctly in recent nightlies. Reddit does not.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    New Reddit or Old Reddit?
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      New Reddit. Old reddit seems to work OK.
      - spankalee 2y ago
        The newest Reddit - not the React version, but the Lit version that's replacing it - uses very, very modern HTML and JavaScript. I'd love to see Servo get to the point of rendering it correctly!
        satvikpendem 2y ago
        How many times are they going to rewrite the site? And how can you see the Lit versus React version, is there another link for it?
        StrauXX 2y ago
        There is old.reddit.com, reddit.com and new.reddit.com. new.reddit.com is not the same site as reddit.com!
        CryZe 2y ago
        new.reddit.com seems to be an older layout than just reddit.com for me, one where most stuff still works (like video embeds).
        timeon 2y ago
        At least it is faster and seems to be less bug-y.
        culi 2y ago
        TIL. new.reddit seems to be a return to old.reddit in a lot of ways. It also seems really really fast unlike the current www.reddit. If they remove some annoying ads I might even be convinced to stop using old.
        bee_rider 2y ago
        The only downside is that new is still being developed. Old is nice because it is shielded from their post-success incompetence. Whatever bad ideas they decide to implement will hit new first.
        oblio 2y ago
        new.reddit seems almost... sane. Like they kicked out whoever pushed/implemented reddit aka the current version and figured out that old.reddit had a lot of virtues.
        jccalhoun 2y ago
        It is so crazy. I normally use "reddit.com" but a few weeks ago i followed a link to an article on "old.reddit.com" and saw I had notifications. I clicked the item and it was all notifications from days ago. So the read status of notifications on old reddit and current reddit aren't linked?
        hypeatei 2y ago
        Pretty amazing how a company can overengineer a basic feed that displays images and text (and ads). New Reddit is a dumpster fire, can't imagine another rewrite is going to fix it.
        BoredPositron 2y ago
        Yeah, I’ve never thought anyone could build a video player worse than realplayer but they achieved the impossible.
        throwaway894345 2y ago
        Yeah, one of the weirder things is that if someone blocks you, you are not allowed to reply to any comment in the thread (for example, if someone posts a toplevel comment and doesn’t reply to anything, and you reply to some comment a dozen layers below and have an exchange with some third party, if the toplevel commenter blocks you, you can’t reply to anything including comments left by others in response to your own comment) and you get a generic “internal server error”-type pop up with no information about why the request failed. This is most likely a server “feature” and thus a rewrite of the frontend won’t fix it but it seems like at very least the frontend could display a sane error message (assuming the backend forwards some information about the cause of the error).
    - d1sxeyes 2y ago
      New Reddit rendering “properly” is as useful as a chocolate fire guard. Do you want to view this content on the app? You Can Only View This Content In The App, THE APP is the WAY, JUST FUCKING DOWNLOAD THE APP!!! At least on mobile.
      - RamRodification 2y ago
        You will be registered, email verified and data mined or you can just go straight to hell.
      - moffkalast 2y ago
        Me: Okay fine, I'll download RedReader. Reddit: Wait no.
      - deergomoo 2y ago
        Can you imagine being on the team responsible for the mobile web Reddit experience? Having to implement a feature that tells every user, repeatedly, that their work is subpar and to please use something else.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - cge 2y ago
    Itappearsthatspacesdon'tworkformewhentyping,butitotherwiseseemsthatevencommentingonhnworksinVerso.Editingappearstoworkaswell,thoughlinebreaksdon't(maybebecauseofspaces...). Edit (with Firefox): the above text is from Verso. Logging in works (though the session is not stored across restarts), as does both commenting and editing comments. Since space can't seem to be entered, word wrapping doesn't work with text entered in Verso, though it does seem to work when there is text with spaces (eg, this edit). A cursor also doesn't appear for me, making editing a challenge.
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    I have a branch here https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/32619 https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/32619 that makes this significantly better (by greatly improving flexbox support and adding CSS grid support).
- culi 2y ago
  I'm assuming that's in reference to these tests? https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&ali... For comparison, there are 1.9 million tests Chrome passes 97.14% Edge passes 96.98 Firefox passes 95.96 Safari passes 95.22 I wonder where Ladybird stands in this
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    You can compare Servo and Ladybird results on wpt tests here: https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladybird https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladyb...
    - culi 2y ago
      Oh thanks. Seems like Servo is way ahead of LadyBird
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        Which isn't that surprising given it has been underway for much longer, and as built with people with actual browser engine experience. Ladybird isn't that bad in comparison.
        kevsim 2y ago
        FWIW Ladybird is also built by people with actual browser engine experience
        peoplefromibiza 2y ago
        Ladybird was mostly developed by one person (Andreas Kilng) with no financing whatsoever ,Servo was mostly developed by a team who was being paid with Mozilla money.
        webprofusion 2y ago
- mminer237 2y ago
  In my tests, it's pretty unusable atm. Probably half of websites render very wrong and servo crashes nonstop.
  - Galanwe 2y ago
    It cannot crash its written in Rust.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Rust can absolutely crash. It crashes ("panics" in Rust terminology) in a memory safe way but it's still a crash (please don't try to redefine the word "crash" to be more specific than it actually is). And Rust can still have unsafe code so it can crash in memory unsafe ways too (though it is very unlikely unless you're doing things very wrong).
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        > And Rust can still have unsafe code so it can crash in memory unsafe ways too (though it is very unlikely unless you're doing things very wrong). From when I grokked the code a bit (back in 2017) there was a non trivial amount of unsafe code, especially related to integration with SpiderMonkey (the js engine) so it wouldn't even be particularly surprising to see segfaults in servo, unlike most rust projects.
        jeroenhd 2y ago
        Most crashes I've seen trying this out seem to stem from panics. As an end user I would call that a crash, but from a programmer standpoint you could say it's an unexpected normal shutdown.
      - silver_silver 2y ago
        I believe that was a joke
    - efilife 2y ago
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I just compiled it following the Linux instructions. I honestly thought Servo was better than this. Maybe there's something up with the Linux builds? I'd much rather use Ladybird in all its pre-beta glory than this. There are two window title bars, one by the OS and one from the application. The text in the URL bar is misaligned and is shifted down by half its height. There's a black bar between the browser chrome and the web view. Entering a domain name without http or https and hitting enter crashes the entire application. Clicking refresh spawns a new window that sort-of-but-not-really shares the same website being rendered. Very few websites work. Anything with a cookie banner just plain breaks. I can't tell how to edit the URL bar after failing to load/loading a page. Google.com is very wonky. The search box on Google doesn't seem to take space bar for some reason. For the websites that do work, rendering is very fast and scrolling is pretty smooth. I can see the potential, but there's a lot of work to be done.
- AndyKelley 2y ago
  If it's anything like learning Japanese, it gets you approximately nowhere.
hackerbadboy 2y ago
[flagged]
ksec 2y ago
So we will, in ~5 years time have two new browser, one in Rust and one in Swift. I hope in the process of doing it we will find new ways of doing things.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jitl 2y ago
  What swift browser are you referring to?
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    Ladybird has started using Swift.
    - monacobolid 2y ago
      For UI portion of their Mac OS version? What am I missing?
      - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
        For everything. Swift is—at least in theory—a general purpose language, it's not exclusively for Apple technologies. > First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics. > Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++. > The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites. https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208836
        sesm 2y ago
clot27 2y ago
Isn't servo is in development for more than a decade? They already have legacy code before it even became stable, lol.
- another-dave 2y ago
  What do you mean by legacy code here?
- orangepanda 2y ago
  Any code is legacy code once pushed upstream
- jhatemyjob 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Aerbil313 2y ago
    This is wrong. Servo development has picked up steam after merged into Linux Foundation, and multiple increasingly used Rust projects are all betting on Servo for the long term: Dioxus, Tauri, some others I forgot.
    - jhatemyjob 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - Aerbil313 2y ago
        Don’t think this really fits in with HN guidelines. Seriously, check out https://servo.org https://servo.org , they post monthly updates and the progress seems great. And their repo, too - too bad GitHub can’t display code frequency because there’s too many commits in the project.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
mariusor 2y ago
I'm happy to see work being done in integrating Servo into custom browser chrome. My dream browser would be a servo based Qutebrowser. I can only hope.
- dijit 2y ago
  I have the same dream, QTWebengine is super cool (chrome based as of version 4 afair) but seems to limit Qutebrowser a fair bit.
- niutech 2y ago
  There is Servo webview for Qt, so it should be possible to replace QtWebEngine with https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview.
erlend_sh 2y ago
In other exciting Servo-browser news, Servo and Redox OS have submitted a joint proposal to fund the porting of SpiderMonkey and WebRender to Redox: https://www.redox-os.org/news/this-month-240731/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/this-month-240731/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ape4 2y ago
Typo dont' -> don't
- revskill 2y ago
  Actually i prefer the dont', easy to comprehend and spell.
  - azangru 2y ago
    Wouldn't dont be even easier?
    - nequo 2y ago
      As an acceptable compromise we can separate all punctuation and put it at the end of the paragraph Although some oldfashioned enthusiasts of the Chicago Manual of Style will object But I think its good to bring some fresh ideas to our old and worn orthographyevery now and again,.-…’—.
      - shdon 2y ago
        Or write an entire book without them, then publish a second edition with an appendix of just punctuation marks, for the reader to place wherever they feel is appropriate. Oh wait... Timothy Dexter already did that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones
      - HeckFeck 2y ago
        Finally, RPN but for natural language!
  - jeffhuys 2y ago
    Wow. Every single day I’m still amazed by people.
  - lewisflude 2y ago
    Genuinely interested, if the ' represents skipped letters, how does this read to you? As an aside, if you have the sentence "This is Lewis' reply to the parent comment" the ' at the end of Lewis is used to avoid Lewis's with the extra s at the end.
Narhem 2y ago
[flagged]
- shreddit 2y ago
  Care to explain?
rubymamis 2y ago
The x64.dmg release[1] requires macOS 13+, why? [1] https://web.crabnebula.cloud/verso/verso-nightly/releases https://web.crabnebula.cloud/verso/verso-nightly/releases
- Keyframe 2y ago
  it's five years old release. Sounds reasonable or you're expecting release to work all the way back to commodore 64?
  - abhinavk 2y ago
    macOS 13 was released in Q4 2022.
    - Keyframe 2y ago
      My bad, I was thinking 10.13.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I'd hypothesize it's due to https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/blob/07a88a86347c67639f2262fb94acce713d989d5a/.github/workflows/build.yml#L215 https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/blob/07a88a86347c6763... and I thought maybe that was the lowest GH offered since they used an actual number versus "-latest" but no, GH does offer 12 https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners#standard-github-hosted-runners-for-public-repositories https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne... Since they already went to the trouble of writing the GHA, I just downgraded and gave it a whirl and it both completed and the resulting artifact launched a-ok on my 12.7.6 x86_64: https://github.com/mdaniel/verso/actions/runs/10341237698/job/28622883797 https://github.com/mdaniel/verso/actions/runs/10341237698/jo... I'm posting this reply from that build, although I had to compose the answer over in FF because the textarea doesn't scroll :-D
  - rubymamis 2y ago
    Thanks a lot! It works, but it's pretty unusable, even Google doesn't work and just hangs (like almost all other sites). Only HN seemed to work.
nequo 2y ago
I hope that this project will succeed. Incidentally, Verso is also the name of Lean 4’s DSL for typesetting documentation.[1] We are running out of words in the English language. [1] https://github.com/leanprover/verso https://github.com/leanprover/verso
- mroche 2y ago
  There are two simple solutions to this: 1. Translate the word to another language. 2. Get creative and make up an original name. Mixed translations, word-bashing, not-actual-words, there's a lot of options! Okay, so the latter isn't super easy but can be a lot of fun to do! In this case, it seems like a play on the core dependency name than choosing the actual word of "verso": servo -> verso.
- 627467 2y ago
  > we are running out of words in a 1000 years we'll be making this observation across the galactic internet.
- Emma_Goldman 2y ago
  It's also the name of the most successful left-wing press in the English-speaking world: https://www.versobooks.com https://www.versobooks.com
- Avshalom 2y ago
  Verso is a latin word.
  - nequo 2y ago
    It’s also English. It means the left side page of a book. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verso#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verso#English
    - franzkappa 2y ago
      Still latin…
F3nd0 2y ago
And of course, they've gone with a pushover licence. Or two of them, it looks like.
ericyd 2y ago
It might be the head cold I'm recovering from, but it took me about 3 passes to comprehend their tagline: > A web browser that plays old world blues to build new world hope
- NBJack 2y ago
  I'm healthy at the moment and I'm still not sure I understand. Poetic perhaps, but a bit nonsensical. Old world as in the past? Older technology? Older ideas? Bad ideas? Blues, as in the musical genre? Or the feeling it conveys? Are we riffing on it here? Plays strongly suggests music, but the blues originated from specific cultural roots tied to the end of slavery (which is implied even further by 'old world blues'). New world, as in a better tomorrow, or something more akin to a new world order? Hope I think I get.
- onli 2y ago
  Sounds like a Fallout New Vegas reference to me. Or maybe it is referencing what FNV was referencing?
tcper 2y ago
Have a read about Servo, it is binding with SpiderMonkey as JS engine. Is there some chance, that servo decomposed from SpiderMonkey? If it is not, I don't think anyone can tell difference between firefox and other browser use Servo.
- culi 2y ago
  There's a lot more to a browser than the JS engine. And in general, we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same. I think starting with an existing engine is the most logical approach
  - abhinavk 2y ago
    True but at this point of time, Firefox and Servo are using the same CSS engine, same JS engine and same compositor and rendering engine.
    - fabrice_d 2y ago
      That still leaves you with at least the layout engine, all the DOM apis, all the networking, multi process model & sandboxing, web extensions support, that are different implementations.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same You say until there is a CVE found.
  - tvshtr 2y ago
    They plan to abstract it (work is underway) to make it even possible to use chromium's js engine. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-JavaScript-Engine-Modular https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-JavaScript-Engine-Modula...
    - culi 2y ago
      Interesting. Kinda reminds me of the 360 Safe browser that's one of the most popular browsers used in China. It can render a website using WebKit, Blink, or Trident (Internet Explorer)
jijojohnxx 2y ago
Interesting perspective!
hanniabu 2y ago
There's still zero day exploits found in chromium, wouldn't using using this put you at a huge risk of running into malware in the wild that this browser can't protect against?
- 38 2y ago
  I agree, no one should ever bother writing a new browser again, too risky. We should just use chrome forever
  - hanniabu 2y ago
    Why not just fork chromium with all the Google analytics/tracking removed?
    - devsda 2y ago
      There's ungoogled chromium for that. Also doing that doesn't solve the standards problem we currently have. Google is able to push through any "standard". And those standards "unwittingly" help them maintain their search/ad dominance or prevent competitors. For example see manifest v3 or FloC (a.k.a Topics API). Once they gain enough traction and become indispensible, you either implement them or risk losing users.
      - hanniabu 2y ago
        But why would this change with a new browser written from scratch?
        38 2y ago
        are you being intentionally ignorant? the more browsers in popular use, the less control each has. currently Chrome has more usage than the other browsers combined: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share which means Google has significant control over web standards
TheRealPomax 2y ago
It'd be nice if people stopped recommending "yet another new and exciting package manager for Windows" that you have no idea of whether you can trust it or not. Git, Python, llvm, cmake, and curl all have perfectly normal windows installers available from their own websites, and if you're a programmer who has to, or chooses to work on Window, it's a good bet you already have either most or all of these already installed, making the job of completing your bonus objective probably one, maybe two installs at most.
- ncruces 2y ago
  Scoop is nice because, like homebrew, it's easy for package creators to create their own “buckets” and distribute packages that way.
  - TheRealPomax 2y ago
    I'm sure, but it's also "yet another package manager" because everyone has their own favourite package manager. It's a nit, but it's nice when a README.md goes "you need X, Y, and Z" and doesn't pretend you need a specific method for that. Tiny phrasing change, zero real world difference of course, but it's a nice little sign that the folks running a project know that you know what you're doing on the OS you're working with (either by choice, or by paycheque =)
    - abeltensor 2y ago
      Scoop is the main package manager I've been using for years on windows apart from chocolatey. Dunno many others aside from the official windows one: winget.
      - TheRealPomax 2y ago
        I've been using Windows as dev platform since it was called "DOS but don't look too closely", I know chocolatey, ninite, winget, and powershell's own built-in nonsense, and yet had never head of scoop until just now. So... that really just tells us that any application manager we think is popular, ubiquitous, and the obvious choice is still really just a niche program =( Contrast that to brew on MacOS: ever non-devs know about brew.
samstave 2y ago
Serious Question: With risk of being hated, this is an honest question: I've never sought out another browser than using pretty much any of the big three... Just because I have never had any sort of personal workflow/painpoint/interest in any of these other browsers/engines, that frankly I had never heard of and then another thing pops up every few years with yet another new one that I havent heard of -- but they all seem to have lively communities... The question is: What is the primary drive/utility that you/others are seeking/gaining with these none FF/chrome/edge things?
- dale_glass 2y ago
  Servo is written in Rust so one big aim would be to have better security. I believe it's supposed to also be much better parallelized. On my part, I'm very much looking forward to an embeddable browser engine. Neither Firefox nor Chrome are interested, and QtWebEngine exists, but takes extensive patching, and so depends on the Qt project remaining to exist and keeping up with upstream.
  - niutech 2y ago
    There are also: CEF, WebKitGTK (http://www.webkitgtk.org http://www.webkitgtk.org) or Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht https://ultralig.ht).
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  Diversification and modern codebases. Without these two we’re locked to made in US browsers full of CVEs. I don’t think any nation state can audit Chromium today, not even US DoD.
- ummonk 2y ago
  I primarily use Safari on Mac / iPhone because it's integrated with iCloud Keychain. I also use Brave because it's the only browser with which I've been able to screenshare streaming sites for group viewing without getting a black page due to DRM.
- niutech 2y ago
  All mainstream web browsers are bloated and use a lot of resources. I am looking for a tiny lightweight web browser with good HTML5 support but without bloat for older computers. Servo, Ladybird and Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht https://ultralig.ht) are promising. I even started developing Qt Ultralight Browser (https://github.com/niutech/qt-ultralight-browser https://github.com/niutech/qt-ultralight-browser).
rhabarba 2y ago
Every time a new browser appears and is applauded by HN, a NetSurf dev opens a beer...
- manwithaplan 2y ago
  And a Dillo developer pours un café con caña.
  - bravura 2y ago
    I prefer the term caffè corretto, since the coffee clearly needs to be corrected by applying booze.
  - rhabarba 2y ago
    That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
38 2y ago
doesn't work with windows https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/issues/118 https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/issues/118
cosmicradiance 2y ago
If anyone is willing to put an effort in building a new browser, I have just one wish - allow embedding open-source transformers in the browser; available for both the user and websites/extensions.
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  Do you mean transformer as in AI algorithm or transformer as in some sort of content transformer? Browsers have already STT engines embedded and stuff like that. Not LMs but close.
  - cosmicradiance 2y ago
    I mean AI transformers. I understand we have pre-embedded STT, though I will like the option to include my own - say an English grammar GPT and expose it by an API for progressive enhancement of content.
nickpinkston 2y ago
[flagged]
kwhitefoot 2y ago
Does this do anything to improve the browser as a user agent? That is an agent that obeys the user over the server. None of the current browsers are user friendly and none are scriptable except by experts wielding large external programs. It should be possible to write a simple shell script to navigate the web, to log in to web sites, to extract information. Or something like Visual Basic.
- miohtama 2y ago
  The websites unfortunately do not want to co-operate with this idea.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
  I guess the closest thing to what you're describing is either conkeror(javascript) or nyxt(common lisp).
  - kwhitefoot 2y ago
    Thanks you! The last change to conkeror was in 2019. Does that mean it's complete or that it is abandoned? Nyxt looks interesting. Perhaps I'll finally have a reason to properly learn Lisp. But what I was really looking for was a way to use a web browser as a Unix style tool accessible from shell scripts.
- porphyra 2y ago
  Puppeteer, which recently added official Firefox support, allows you to write a simple script to navigate the web and such. [1] btw using the phrase "user agent" in the context of browsers is mildly confusing as it is a specific jargon term. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/08/puppeteer-support-for-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/08/puppeteer-support-for-fire...
  - thawab 2y ago
    that's really an interesting case, most puppeteer and playwright deployments are using chrome. If Verso will be faster they might have an advantage in crawl/scrap/QA.
einpoklum 2y ago
1. The repository README doesn't explain what Servo is. From its own repo README: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo "Servo is a prototype web browser engine written in the Rust language. It is currently developed on 64-bit macOS, 64-bit Linux, 64-bit Windows, and Android." So, this browser seems to be about using Rust, and somewhat Mac-centric. Not criticizing, just emphasizing. ------------------------------------------ 2. The repository does not explain: * How far along the project is. * What are the benefits / points of attraction of the browser (or - perhaps it's more of a proof-of-concept?) ------------------------------------------ 3. The project has a highly repressive Code of Conduct: * Forbidden behavior is open-ended and at the discretion of whoever handles a complaint. * No due process: Anonymous complaints, in-abstentia proceedings, no right to face accuser, no right to access and review evidence, etc. * The project leaders/owners presume to forbid community members from interacting with people whom project leaders decided to ban. This is a bit like how when the US sanctions a state, it also strong-arms everybody else to observe its sanctions or themselves get sanctioned by the US. Bottom line: I would avoid getting close to that project, if the CoC is actually applied. If it isn't - very much recommend removing it.
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  Not sure how you concluded that it's a "somewhat Mac-centric" project. Can you elaborate?
  - einpoklum 2y ago
    Their best deployment/installation instructions are for Macs, and for Linux they suggest things like nix-shell or flatpak, rather than straight-up packages for the popular distributions/package management systems. That's my reading of things, anyway.
    - fabrice_d 2y ago
      Running `./mach package` will create a tarball you can use easily in any distribution. Not perfect, but I would say good enough at this stage of the project - remember Servo is not a browser, it's a browser runtime that needs to be embedded. The `servoshell` itself is just a basic example to show how the embedding works.
tills13 2y ago
"a web browser that plays old world blues to give new world hope" Um... what?
kopirgan 2y ago
Any post or article that explains what this does better or new as compared to existing engines like Chromium or WebKit when it's feature complete?
- niutech 2y ago
  It should be more lightweight, not being bloated with unnecessary functionalities.
RachelM71948937 2y ago
[dead]
niutech 2y ago
Nice! There is also Servo webview for Qt: https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview and Servo webview for Tauri: https://github.com/tauri-apps/wry/tree/servo-wry-demo https://github.com/tauri-apps/wry/tree/servo-wry-demo Hopefully we can get more web browsers with embedded Servo engine (e.g. as a QtWebEngine replacement).
feverzsj 2y ago
As Mozilla chose to abandon it, is Firefox still using servo?
- bkardell 2y ago
  Bits of the servo project were integrated into FF/Gecko in Quantum (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quan...) - there's shared work where improvements in either end can help either.
- cjpearson 2y ago
  Stylo (CSS Engine) and WebRender (compositor) came from Servo and are still used in Firefox. I believe the Mozilla team still upstreams patches as well.
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    Actually Mozilla is the upstream for both projects now.
vegabook 2y ago
Nix first class citizen via `nix-shell`. Nice.
lucidmorto 2y ago
This seems really promising
Klasiaster 2y ago
I don't understand what the advantages are over Servo's inbuilt web browser¹. So far they look the same when opening but the inbuilt web browser is more stable (I see rendering bugs with Verso and it panics when entering a domain without the http(s):// prefix). ¹ https://servo.org/download/ https://servo.org/download/
- tormeh 2y ago
  Different project scopes. Servo's browser is just intended for testing. It recently got an address bar. Verso seems to aim for more features.
bkardell 2y ago
It's great to see the attention to servo growing - the number of people starring servo on gh just keeps going up! There's a chart on https://toot.cafe/@bkardell/112931971129556513 https://toot.cafe/@bkardell/112931971129556513 One big reason to want change is to change the funding model that currently supports the existing browser projects, which isn't great and is threatened too...
laweijfmvo 2y ago
The linux (flatpak) instructions seem to be out of date or at least not working for me on Fedora; but I'm a flatpak noob so maybe I missed something edit: missed the part where i still need to clone the repo. but also a requirements.txt would be appreciated!
EstanislaoStan 2y ago
Interesting but it seems like a super early stage (or maybe Windows support isn't there yet.) Nigh unusable on Windows (11). Mostly just opens an empty window that has stopped responding. I finally tried running as admin and it works more consistently now. Webview for https://www.google.com https://www.google.com looks like a messed up mobile view. My company's website doesn't work at all, (NextJS) so I guess they don't have a js engine yet?
kinderjaje 2y ago
I like it because it's Rust

821 points by pabs3 2y ago

According to https://servo.org/about/ https://servo.org/about/ Servo currently passes ~60% of the web platform tests. Does anyone have experience how far that subset gets you on the open internet?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
timschmidt 2y ago
Hackernews and LWN render reasonably correctly in recent nightlies. Reddit does not.
- jsheard 2y ago
  New Reddit or Old Reddit?
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    New Reddit. Old reddit seems to work OK.
    - spankalee 2y ago
      The newest Reddit - not the React version, but the Lit version that's replacing it - uses very, very modern HTML and JavaScript. I'd love to see Servo get to the point of rendering it correctly!
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        How many times are they going to rewrite the site? And how can you see the Lit versus React version, is there another link for it?
        StrauXX 2y ago
        There is old.reddit.com, reddit.com and new.reddit.com. new.reddit.com is not the same site as reddit.com!
        CryZe 2y ago
        new.reddit.com seems to be an older layout than just reddit.com for me, one where most stuff still works (like video embeds).
        timeon 2y ago
        At least it is faster and seems to be less bug-y.
        culi 2y ago
        TIL. new.reddit seems to be a return to old.reddit in a lot of ways. It also seems really really fast unlike the current www.reddit. If they remove some annoying ads I might even be convinced to stop using old.
        bee_rider 2y ago
        The only downside is that new is still being developed. Old is nice because it is shielded from their post-success incompetence. Whatever bad ideas they decide to implement will hit new first.
        oblio 2y ago
        new.reddit seems almost... sane. Like they kicked out whoever pushed/implemented reddit aka the current version and figured out that old.reddit had a lot of virtues.
        jccalhoun 2y ago
        It is so crazy. I normally use "reddit.com" but a few weeks ago i followed a link to an article on "old.reddit.com" and saw I had notifications. I clicked the item and it was all notifications from days ago. So the read status of notifications on old reddit and current reddit aren't linked?
      - hypeatei 2y ago
        Pretty amazing how a company can overengineer a basic feed that displays images and text (and ads). New Reddit is a dumpster fire, can't imagine another rewrite is going to fix it.
        BoredPositron 2y ago
        Yeah, I’ve never thought anyone could build a video player worse than realplayer but they achieved the impossible.
        throwaway894345 2y ago
        Yeah, one of the weirder things is that if someone blocks you, you are not allowed to reply to any comment in the thread (for example, if someone posts a toplevel comment and doesn’t reply to anything, and you reply to some comment a dozen layers below and have an exchange with some third party, if the toplevel commenter blocks you, you can’t reply to anything including comments left by others in response to your own comment) and you get a generic “internal server error”-type pop up with no information about why the request failed. This is most likely a server “feature” and thus a rewrite of the frontend won’t fix it but it seems like at very least the frontend could display a sane error message (assuming the backend forwards some information about the cause of the error).
  - d1sxeyes 2y ago
    New Reddit rendering “properly” is as useful as a chocolate fire guard. Do you want to view this content on the app? You Can Only View This Content In The App, THE APP is the WAY, JUST FUCKING DOWNLOAD THE APP!!! At least on mobile.
    - RamRodification 2y ago
      You will be registered, email verified and data mined or you can just go straight to hell.
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      Me: Okay fine, I'll download RedReader. Reddit: Wait no.
    - deergomoo 2y ago
      Can you imagine being on the team responsible for the mobile web Reddit experience? Having to implement a feature that tells every user, repeatedly, that their work is subpar and to please use something else.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cge 2y ago
  Itappearsthatspacesdon'tworkformewhentyping,butitotherwiseseemsthatevencommentingonhnworksinVerso.Editingappearstoworkaswell,thoughlinebreaksdon't(maybebecauseofspaces...). Edit (with Firefox): the above text is from Verso. Logging in works (though the session is not stored across restarts), as does both commenting and editing comments. Since space can't seem to be entered, word wrapping doesn't work with text entered in Verso, though it does seem to work when there is text with spaces (eg, this edit). A cursor also doesn't appear for me, making editing a challenge.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  I have a branch here https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/32619 https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/32619 that makes this significantly better (by greatly improving flexbox support and adding CSS grid support).
culi 2y ago
I'm assuming that's in reference to these tests? https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&ali... For comparison, there are 1.9 million tests Chrome passes 97.14% Edge passes 96.98 Firefox passes 95.96 Safari passes 95.22 I wonder where Ladybird stands in this
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  You can compare Servo and Ladybird results on wpt tests here: https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladybird https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladyb...
  - culi 2y ago
    Oh thanks. Seems like Servo is way ahead of LadyBird
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      Which isn't that surprising given it has been underway for much longer, and as built with people with actual browser engine experience. Ladybird isn't that bad in comparison.
      - kevsim 2y ago
        FWIW Ladybird is also built by people with actual browser engine experience
        peoplefromibiza 2y ago
        Ladybird was mostly developed by one person (Andreas Kilng) with no financing whatsoever ,Servo was mostly developed by a team who was being paid with Mozilla money.
        webprofusion 2y ago
mminer237 2y ago
In my tests, it's pretty unusable atm. Probably half of websites render very wrong and servo crashes nonstop.
- Galanwe 2y ago
  It cannot crash its written in Rust.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Rust can absolutely crash. It crashes ("panics" in Rust terminology) in a memory safe way but it's still a crash (please don't try to redefine the word "crash" to be more specific than it actually is). And Rust can still have unsafe code so it can crash in memory unsafe ways too (though it is very unlikely unless you're doing things very wrong).
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      > And Rust can still have unsafe code so it can crash in memory unsafe ways too (though it is very unlikely unless you're doing things very wrong). From when I grokked the code a bit (back in 2017) there was a non trivial amount of unsafe code, especially related to integration with SpiderMonkey (the js engine) so it wouldn't even be particularly surprising to see segfaults in servo, unlike most rust projects.
      - jeroenhd 2y ago
        Most crashes I've seen trying this out seem to stem from panics. As an end user I would call that a crash, but from a programmer standpoint you could say it's an unexpected normal shutdown.
    - silver_silver 2y ago
      I believe that was a joke
  - efilife 2y ago
jeroenhd 2y ago
I just compiled it following the Linux instructions. I honestly thought Servo was better than this. Maybe there's something up with the Linux builds? I'd much rather use Ladybird in all its pre-beta glory than this. There are two window title bars, one by the OS and one from the application. The text in the URL bar is misaligned and is shifted down by half its height. There's a black bar between the browser chrome and the web view. Entering a domain name without http or https and hitting enter crashes the entire application. Clicking refresh spawns a new window that sort-of-but-not-really shares the same website being rendered. Very few websites work. Anything with a cookie banner just plain breaks. I can't tell how to edit the URL bar after failing to load/loading a page. Google.com is very wonky. The search box on Google doesn't seem to take space bar for some reason. For the websites that do work, rendering is very fast and scrolling is pretty smooth. I can see the potential, but there's a lot of work to be done.
AndyKelley 2y ago
If it's anything like learning Japanese, it gets you approximately nowhere.

hackerbadboy 2y ago

[flagged]

ksec 2y ago

So we will, in ~5 years time have two new browser, one in Rust and one in Swift. I hope in the process of doing it we will find new ways of doing things.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jitl 2y ago
What swift browser are you referring to?
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Ladybird has started using Swift.
  - monacobolid 2y ago
    For UI portion of their Mac OS version? What am I missing?
    - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      For everything. Swift is—at least in theory—a general purpose language, it's not exclusively for Apple technologies. > First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics. > Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++. > The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites. https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208836
      - sesm 2y ago

clot27 2y ago

Isn't servo is in development for more than a decade? They already have legacy code before it even became stable, lol.

another-dave 2y ago
What do you mean by legacy code here?
orangepanda 2y ago
Any code is legacy code once pushed upstream
jhatemyjob 2y ago
[flagged]
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  This is wrong. Servo development has picked up steam after merged into Linux Foundation, and multiple increasingly used Rust projects are all betting on Servo for the long term: Dioxus, Tauri, some others I forgot.
  - jhatemyjob 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Aerbil313 2y ago
      Don’t think this really fits in with HN guidelines. Seriously, check out https://servo.org https://servo.org , they post monthly updates and the progress seems great. And their repo, too - too bad GitHub can’t display code frequency because there’s too many commits in the project.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]

mariusor 2y ago

I'm happy to see work being done in integrating Servo into custom browser chrome. My dream browser would be a servo based Qutebrowser. I can only hope.

dijit 2y ago
I have the same dream, QTWebengine is super cool (chrome based as of version 4 afair) but seems to limit Qutebrowser a fair bit.
niutech 2y ago
There is Servo webview for Qt, so it should be possible to replace QtWebEngine with https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview.

erlend_sh 2y ago

In other exciting Servo-browser news, Servo and Redox OS have submitted a joint proposal to fund the porting of SpiderMonkey and WebRender to Redox: https://www.redox-os.org/news/this-month-240731/ https://www.redox-os.org/news/this-month-240731/

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ape4 2y ago

Typo dont' -> don't

revskill 2y ago
Actually i prefer the dont', easy to comprehend and spell.
- azangru 2y ago
  Wouldn't dont be even easier?
  - nequo 2y ago
    As an acceptable compromise we can separate all punctuation and put it at the end of the paragraph Although some oldfashioned enthusiasts of the Chicago Manual of Style will object But I think its good to bring some fresh ideas to our old and worn orthographyevery now and again,.-…’—.
    - shdon 2y ago
      Or write an entire book without them, then publish a second edition with an appendix of just punctuation marks, for the reader to place wherever they feel is appropriate. Oh wait... Timothy Dexter already did that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones
    - HeckFeck 2y ago
      Finally, RPN but for natural language!
- jeffhuys 2y ago
  Wow. Every single day I’m still amazed by people.
- lewisflude 2y ago
  Genuinely interested, if the ' represents skipped letters, how does this read to you? As an aside, if you have the sentence "This is Lewis' reply to the parent comment" the ' at the end of Lewis is used to avoid Lewis's with the extra s at the end.

Narhem 2y ago

[flagged]

shreddit 2y ago
Care to explain?

rubymamis 2y ago

The x64.dmg release[1] requires macOS 13+, why? [1] https://web.crabnebula.cloud/verso/verso-nightly/releases https://web.crabnebula.cloud/verso/verso-nightly/releases

Keyframe 2y ago
it's five years old release. Sounds reasonable or you're expecting release to work all the way back to commodore 64?
- abhinavk 2y ago
  macOS 13 was released in Q4 2022.
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    My bad, I was thinking 10.13.
mdaniel 2y ago
I'd hypothesize it's due to https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/blob/07a88a86347c67639f2262fb94acce713d989d5a/.github/workflows/build.yml#L215 https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/blob/07a88a86347c6763... and I thought maybe that was the lowest GH offered since they used an actual number versus "-latest" but no, GH does offer 12 https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners#standard-github-hosted-runners-for-public-repositories https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne... Since they already went to the trouble of writing the GHA, I just downgraded and gave it a whirl and it both completed and the resulting artifact launched a-ok on my 12.7.6 x86_64: https://github.com/mdaniel/verso/actions/runs/10341237698/job/28622883797 https://github.com/mdaniel/verso/actions/runs/10341237698/jo... I'm posting this reply from that build, although I had to compose the answer over in FF because the textarea doesn't scroll :-D
- rubymamis 2y ago
  Thanks a lot! It works, but it's pretty unusable, even Google doesn't work and just hangs (like almost all other sites). Only HN seemed to work.

nequo 2y ago

I hope that this project will succeed. Incidentally, Verso is also the name of Lean 4’s DSL for typesetting documentation.[1] We are running out of words in the English language. [1] https://github.com/leanprover/verso https://github.com/leanprover/verso

mroche 2y ago
There are two simple solutions to this: 1. Translate the word to another language. 2. Get creative and make up an original name. Mixed translations, word-bashing, not-actual-words, there's a lot of options! Okay, so the latter isn't super easy but can be a lot of fun to do! In this case, it seems like a play on the core dependency name than choosing the actual word of "verso": servo -> verso.
627467 2y ago
> we are running out of words in a 1000 years we'll be making this observation across the galactic internet.
Emma_Goldman 2y ago
It's also the name of the most successful left-wing press in the English-speaking world: https://www.versobooks.com https://www.versobooks.com
Avshalom 2y ago
Verso is a latin word.
- nequo 2y ago
  It’s also English. It means the left side page of a book. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verso#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verso#English
  - franzkappa 2y ago
    Still latin…

F3nd0 2y ago

And of course, they've gone with a pushover licence. Or two of them, it looks like.

ericyd 2y ago

It might be the head cold I'm recovering from, but it took me about 3 passes to comprehend their tagline: > A web browser that plays old world blues to build new world hope

NBJack 2y ago
I'm healthy at the moment and I'm still not sure I understand. Poetic perhaps, but a bit nonsensical. Old world as in the past? Older technology? Older ideas? Bad ideas? Blues, as in the musical genre? Or the feeling it conveys? Are we riffing on it here? Plays strongly suggests music, but the blues originated from specific cultural roots tied to the end of slavery (which is implied even further by 'old world blues'). New world, as in a better tomorrow, or something more akin to a new world order? Hope I think I get.
onli 2y ago
Sounds like a Fallout New Vegas reference to me. Or maybe it is referencing what FNV was referencing?

tcper 2y ago

Have a read about Servo, it is binding with SpiderMonkey as JS engine. Is there some chance, that servo decomposed from SpiderMonkey? If it is not, I don't think anyone can tell difference between firefox and other browser use Servo.

culi 2y ago
There's a lot more to a browser than the JS engine. And in general, we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same. I think starting with an existing engine is the most logical approach
- abhinavk 2y ago
  True but at this point of time, Firefox and Servo are using the same CSS engine, same JS engine and same compositor and rendering engine.
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    That still leaves you with at least the layout engine, all the DOM apis, all the networking, multi process model & sandboxing, web extensions support, that are different implementations.
- akira2501 2y ago
  > we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same You say until there is a CVE found.
- tvshtr 2y ago
  They plan to abstract it (work is underway) to make it even possible to use chromium's js engine. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-JavaScript-Engine-Modular https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-JavaScript-Engine-Modula...
  - culi 2y ago
    Interesting. Kinda reminds me of the 360 Safe browser that's one of the most popular browsers used in China. It can render a website using WebKit, Blink, or Trident (Internet Explorer)

jijojohnxx 2y ago

Interesting perspective!

hanniabu 2y ago

There's still zero day exploits found in chromium, wouldn't using using this put you at a huge risk of running into malware in the wild that this browser can't protect against?

38 2y ago
I agree, no one should ever bother writing a new browser again, too risky. We should just use chrome forever
- hanniabu 2y ago
  Why not just fork chromium with all the Google analytics/tracking removed?
  - devsda 2y ago
    There's ungoogled chromium for that. Also doing that doesn't solve the standards problem we currently have. Google is able to push through any "standard". And those standards "unwittingly" help them maintain their search/ad dominance or prevent competitors. For example see manifest v3 or FloC (a.k.a Topics API). Once they gain enough traction and become indispensible, you either implement them or risk losing users.
    - hanniabu 2y ago
      But why would this change with a new browser written from scratch?
      - 38 2y ago
        are you being intentionally ignorant? the more browsers in popular use, the less control each has. currently Chrome has more usage than the other browsers combined: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share which means Google has significant control over web standards

TheRealPomax 2y ago

It'd be nice if people stopped recommending "yet another new and exciting package manager for Windows" that you have no idea of whether you can trust it or not. Git, Python, llvm, cmake, and curl all have perfectly normal windows installers available from their own websites, and if you're a programmer who has to, or chooses to work on Window, it's a good bet you already have either most or all of these already installed, making the job of completing your bonus objective probably one, maybe two installs at most.

ncruces 2y ago
Scoop is nice because, like homebrew, it's easy for package creators to create their own “buckets” and distribute packages that way.
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  I'm sure, but it's also "yet another package manager" because everyone has their own favourite package manager. It's a nit, but it's nice when a README.md goes "you need X, Y, and Z" and doesn't pretend you need a specific method for that. Tiny phrasing change, zero real world difference of course, but it's a nice little sign that the folks running a project know that you know what you're doing on the OS you're working with (either by choice, or by paycheque =)
  - abeltensor 2y ago
    Scoop is the main package manager I've been using for years on windows apart from chocolatey. Dunno many others aside from the official windows one: winget.
    - TheRealPomax 2y ago
      I've been using Windows as dev platform since it was called "DOS but don't look too closely", I know chocolatey, ninite, winget, and powershell's own built-in nonsense, and yet had never head of scoop until just now. So... that really just tells us that any application manager we think is popular, ubiquitous, and the obvious choice is still really just a niche program =( Contrast that to brew on MacOS: ever non-devs know about brew.

samstave 2y ago

Serious Question: With risk of being hated, this is an honest question: I've never sought out another browser than using pretty much any of the big three... Just because I have never had any sort of personal workflow/painpoint/interest in any of these other browsers/engines, that frankly I had never heard of and then another thing pops up every few years with yet another new one that I havent heard of -- but they all seem to have lively communities... The question is: What is the primary drive/utility that you/others are seeking/gaining with these none FF/chrome/edge things?

dale_glass 2y ago
Servo is written in Rust so one big aim would be to have better security. I believe it's supposed to also be much better parallelized. On my part, I'm very much looking forward to an embeddable browser engine. Neither Firefox nor Chrome are interested, and QtWebEngine exists, but takes extensive patching, and so depends on the Qt project remaining to exist and keeping up with upstream.
- niutech 2y ago
  There are also: CEF, WebKitGTK (http://www.webkitgtk.org http://www.webkitgtk.org) or Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht https://ultralig.ht).
Aerbil313 2y ago
Diversification and modern codebases. Without these two we’re locked to made in US browsers full of CVEs. I don’t think any nation state can audit Chromium today, not even US DoD.
ummonk 2y ago
I primarily use Safari on Mac / iPhone because it's integrated with iCloud Keychain. I also use Brave because it's the only browser with which I've been able to screenshare streaming sites for group viewing without getting a black page due to DRM.
niutech 2y ago
All mainstream web browsers are bloated and use a lot of resources. I am looking for a tiny lightweight web browser with good HTML5 support but without bloat for older computers. Servo, Ladybird and Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht https://ultralig.ht) are promising. I even started developing Qt Ultralight Browser (https://github.com/niutech/qt-ultralight-browser https://github.com/niutech/qt-ultralight-browser).

rhabarba 2y ago

Every time a new browser appears and is applauded by HN, a NetSurf dev opens a beer...

manwithaplan 2y ago
And a Dillo developer pours un café con caña.
- bravura 2y ago
  I prefer the term caffè corretto, since the coffee clearly needs to be corrected by applying booze.
- rhabarba 2y ago
  That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

38 2y ago

doesn't work with windows https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/issues/118 https://github.com/versotile-org/verso/issues/118

cosmicradiance 2y ago

If anyone is willing to put an effort in building a new browser, I have just one wish - allow embedding open-source transformers in the browser; available for both the user and websites/extensions.

Aerbil313 2y ago
Do you mean transformer as in AI algorithm or transformer as in some sort of content transformer? Browsers have already STT engines embedded and stuff like that. Not LMs but close.
- cosmicradiance 2y ago
  I mean AI transformers. I understand we have pre-embedded STT, though I will like the option to include my own - say an English grammar GPT and expose it by an API for progressive enhancement of content.

nickpinkston 2y ago

[flagged]

kwhitefoot 2y ago

Does this do anything to improve the browser as a user agent? That is an agent that obeys the user over the server. None of the current browsers are user friendly and none are scriptable except by experts wielding large external programs. It should be possible to write a simple shell script to navigate the web, to log in to web sites, to extract information. Or something like Visual Basic.

miohtama 2y ago
The websites unfortunately do not want to co-operate with this idea.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
I guess the closest thing to what you're describing is either conkeror(javascript) or nyxt(common lisp).
- kwhitefoot 2y ago
  Thanks you! The last change to conkeror was in 2019. Does that mean it's complete or that it is abandoned? Nyxt looks interesting. Perhaps I'll finally have a reason to properly learn Lisp. But what I was really looking for was a way to use a web browser as a Unix style tool accessible from shell scripts.
porphyra 2y ago
Puppeteer, which recently added official Firefox support, allows you to write a simple script to navigate the web and such. [1] btw using the phrase "user agent" in the context of browsers is mildly confusing as it is a specific jargon term. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/08/puppeteer-support-for-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/08/puppeteer-support-for-fire...
- thawab 2y ago
  that's really an interesting case, most puppeteer and playwright deployments are using chrome. If Verso will be faster they might have an advantage in crawl/scrap/QA.

einpoklum 2y ago

1. The repository README doesn't explain what Servo is. From its own repo README: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo "Servo is a prototype web browser engine written in the Rust language. It is currently developed on 64-bit macOS, 64-bit Linux, 64-bit Windows, and Android." So, this browser seems to be about using Rust, and somewhat Mac-centric. Not criticizing, just emphasizing. ------------------------------------------ 2. The repository does not explain: * How far along the project is. * What are the benefits / points of attraction of the browser (or - perhaps it's more of a proof-of-concept?) ------------------------------------------ 3. The project has a highly repressive Code of Conduct: * Forbidden behavior is open-ended and at the discretion of whoever handles a complaint. * No due process: Anonymous complaints, in-abstentia proceedings, no right to face accuser, no right to access and review evidence, etc. * The project leaders/owners presume to forbid community members from interacting with people whom project leaders decided to ban. This is a bit like how when the US sanctions a state, it also strong-arms everybody else to observe its sanctions or themselves get sanctioned by the US. Bottom line: I would avoid getting close to that project, if the CoC is actually applied. If it isn't - very much recommend removing it.

fabrice_d 2y ago
Not sure how you concluded that it's a "somewhat Mac-centric" project. Can you elaborate?
- einpoklum 2y ago
  Their best deployment/installation instructions are for Macs, and for Linux they suggest things like nix-shell or flatpak, rather than straight-up packages for the popular distributions/package management systems. That's my reading of things, anyway.
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    Running `./mach package` will create a tarball you can use easily in any distribution. Not perfect, but I would say good enough at this stage of the project - remember Servo is not a browser, it's a browser runtime that needs to be embedded. The `servoshell` itself is just a basic example to show how the embedding works.

tills13 2y ago

"a web browser that plays old world blues to give new world hope" Um... what?

kopirgan 2y ago

Any post or article that explains what this does better or new as compared to existing engines like Chromium or WebKit when it's feature complete?

niutech 2y ago
It should be more lightweight, not being bloated with unnecessary functionalities.

RachelM71948937 2y ago

[dead]

niutech 2y ago

Nice! There is also Servo webview for Qt: https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview https://github.com/KDABLabs/cxx-qt-servo-webview and Servo webview for Tauri: https://github.com/tauri-apps/wry/tree/servo-wry-demo https://github.com/tauri-apps/wry/tree/servo-wry-demo Hopefully we can get more web browsers with embedded Servo engine (e.g. as a QtWebEngine replacement).

feverzsj 2y ago

As Mozilla chose to abandon it, is Firefox still using servo?

bkardell 2y ago
Bits of the servo project were integrated into FF/Gecko in Quantum (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quan...) - there's shared work where improvements in either end can help either.
cjpearson 2y ago
Stylo (CSS Engine) and WebRender (compositor) came from Servo and are still used in Firefox. I believe the Mozilla team still upstreams patches as well.
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  Actually Mozilla is the upstream for both projects now.

vegabook 2y ago

Nix first class citizen via `nix-shell`. Nice.

lucidmorto 2y ago

This seems really promising

Klasiaster 2y ago

I don't understand what the advantages are over Servo's inbuilt web browser¹. So far they look the same when opening but the inbuilt web browser is more stable (I see rendering bugs with Verso and it panics when entering a domain without the http(s):// prefix). ¹ https://servo.org/download/ https://servo.org/download/

tormeh 2y ago
Different project scopes. Servo's browser is just intended for testing. It recently got an address bar. Verso seems to aim for more features.

bkardell 2y ago

It's great to see the attention to servo growing - the number of people starring servo on gh just keeps going up! There's a chart on https://toot.cafe/@bkardell/112931971129556513 https://toot.cafe/@bkardell/112931971129556513 One big reason to want change is to change the funding model that currently supports the existing browser projects, which isn't great and is threatened too...

laweijfmvo 2y ago

The linux (flatpak) instructions seem to be out of date or at least not working for me on Fedora; but I'm a flatpak noob so maybe I missed something edit: missed the part where i still need to clone the repo. but also a requirements.txt would be appreciated!

EstanislaoStan 2y ago

Interesting but it seems like a super early stage (or maybe Windows support isn't there yet.) Nigh unusable on Windows (11). Mostly just opens an empty window that has stopped responding. I finally tried running as admin and it works more consistently now. Webview for https://www.google.com https://www.google.com looks like a messed up mobile view. My company's website doesn't work at all, (NextJS) so I guess they don't have a js engine yet?

kinderjaje 2y ago

I like it because it's Rust