4 ms·

What can one actually do with Servo today? It’s apparently still not ready to be used as a browser engine (and may never be), so what exactly is it for?

by p-e-w 10d ago

foresterre 10d ago
Regardless of actual use as an (embedded) browser, it is useful in the sense that it can be used to provide (another) source of validation about whether specs and WPT [1] tests are properly and clearly defined. That helps for long term browser compatibility. [1] https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&product=servo&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&pro...
- charcircuit 10d ago
  >long term browser compatibility Making a new browser engine hurts browser compatibility more than it helps it. It now becomes one more target that needs to be tested against, limitations need to be kept tracked of, etc. The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. In regards to the standard we can use LLMs to cross reference the spec, with tests, and with the implementation to make sure all match.
  - teekert 10d ago
    Ah, you must be too young to have experienced early Internet Explorer, which attempted just this.
    - charcircuit 10d ago
      Internet Explorer was not open source acting as engine everyone's browser could use and it got abandoned by Microsoft. It is not the same situation.
      - teekert 10d ago
        One could argue that effectively Blink is also not open source. At any rate users don't have power over it, as witnessed by the manifest v3 stuff jammed down our throats.
        pygy_ 10d ago
        Churn makes it impossible to keep up a fork, Google weaponizes its manpower, making the "open source" argument moot.
        charcircuit 10d ago
        There are many active forks that are an existence proof that it's possible. It's also a ton of man power to maintain your own browser engine.
      - le-mark 10d ago
        Monocultures are bad full stop. Blink is corporate controlled open source, which has been clearly less than.
      - mohamedkoubaa 10d ago
        At this point Microsoft should just open source it for science.
  - Oxodao 10d ago
    yeah in a perfect world google dictates how the standard will evolve, we kill all competition so we're sure that you have only one target to build your software against, I'm sure a monopoly will greatly improves innovation and not be used to stiffen competition. /s
    - charcircuit 10d ago
      Using Blink doesn't mean you have to defer all decisions to Google. You just benefit from not having to duplicate work.
      - samus 10d ago
        Except one does since Google is the primary maintainer. Anyway, work on other browser engines is not duplicated or wasted.
        charcircuit 10d ago
        It's easier maintaining a fork of Blink than an entirely different engine. Google being the primary maintainer doesn't mean that browsers can't make large forks. >work on other browser engines is not duplicated or wasted. How is having N engine developers implement some new addition to the EMCAScript or CSS standard for each of their engines not duplicated work?
        samus 9d ago
        > It's easier maintaining a fork of Blink than an entirely different engine. Google being the primary maintainer doesn't mean that browsers can't make large forks. Maintaining a fork is not fun as taking patches from the origin repo becomes more complicated the longer the fork exists and the bigger the divergence becomes. > How is having N engine developers implement some new addition to the EMCAScript or CSS standard for each of their engines not duplicated work? It would be duplicated only if they all maintained, say, a Blink fork.
      - kryptiskt 10d ago
  - latexr 10d ago
    > The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. That’s what makes Google more dominant, and if you think that’s a good idea you should really put down your LLM and go read up on a bit of history. Do you want to live in a world where a single company controls your access to the web? Are you eager to navigate through ad pages with a little bit of web? To have even more of your data mined? Browser diversity may be a bit annoying for developers, but it is good for users, and developers are users too. When there’s a lack of diversity, everyone but the dominant player is squeezed.
    - charcircuit 10d ago
      Google's dominance comes from market share not from owning upstream. If a different fork took 90% market share that fork would have the dominance and power.
      - samus 10d ago
        And that market share is maintained by integration with Android and low-key sabotage of others browsers, especially Firefox. Similar to how Microsoft maintained its monopoly decades ago.
        charcircuit 10d ago
        Whether a new browser uses a brand new engine or not that doesn't stop Chrome being integrated with Android.
        samus 9d ago
        The argument was not about stopping Chrome from becoming integrated into Android.
      - latexr 10d ago
        > If a different fork took 90% That can only happen if we don’t all focus resources on Blink, which is the point. By definition, we can only have other engines if diversity is a thing. The problem isn’t specifically Google (though they are a problem), but any one individual company having all the power.
  - embedding-shape 10d ago
    > The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. Lol, for Blink perhaps, what about the rest of the ecosystem, the web and the users, like the ones who don't even use Blink? Very idealistic point-of-view with no basis in reality, sadly, because wouldn't it be nice if we could care about just one engine?
nextaccountic 10d ago
https://v2.tauri.app/blog/tauri-verso-integration/ https://v2.tauri.app/blog/tauri-verso-integration/ https://github.com/versotile-org/tauri-runtime-verso https://github.com/versotile-org/tauri-runtime-verso Servo doesn't implement the whole web platform, but your own desktop app isn't the whole web. You can generally work around any limitations or missing features. And it might be lighter than CEF or whatever.
- gyulai 10d ago
  Couldn't agree more. Looking at [1], it seems to me like Servo has a much better adoption story than Ladybird. The latter seems to be just building a browser that's going to be crashy and not really work on the web. The former is addressing problem spaces where, even with the limitations of the half-finished state it's in, it can be usefully applied: WebView/Electron-replacement and headless browsers. Things not currently on this list that could/should be: HTML rendering for desktop E-Mail clients. Also, I wonder to what extent they're implementing paged media and capable of targetting PDF output or similar (like weasyprint). That could be another domain, where you don't need full web-scale abilities. And yet, somehow, Ladybird seems to be the darling of the masses (in certain circles at least). Doing vibe-ports to Rust, while going closed-contribution also, in my mind, sits in a marked contrast to the origin story that initially generated so much goodwill. [1] https://servo.org/made-with/ https://servo.org/made-with/
- everybodyknows 10d ago
  Naive question then: Where does Servo stand, relative to Electron?
nerdypepper 10d ago
servo is incredibly cool. super easy API to embed, and to build browsers around it.
LogicWolfe 10d ago
I use servo to render e-ink UIs and screenshot them to push to the displays. About 10% of the memory usage and 5% of the render time as doing the same thing with headless chrome. It doesn’t handle every possible feature, but it handles enough that it’s never been an issue when it’s my only target rendering environment. I love it.
- lastontheboat 10d ago
  This sounds very cool! If you'd like to talk about your experience with the project on the Servo zulip (servo.zulipchat.com), we love hearing feedback from embedders.
iamnothere 10d ago
It’s not really a finished product yet (in terms of being production-ready), but it would already be usable as an embedded kiosk for applications where you own the pages being accessed.
phkahler 10d ago
>> What can one actually do with Servo today? You can run CAD in it: https://solvespace.com/webver.pl https://solvespace.com/webver.pl

What can one actually do with Servo today? It’s apparently still not ready to be used as a browser engine (and may never be), so what exactly is it for?

by p-e-w 10d ago

What can one actually do with Servo today? It’s apparently still not ready to be used as a browser engine (and may never be), so what exactly is it for?

foresterre 10d ago

Regardless of actual use as an (embedded) browser, it is useful in the sense that it can be used to provide (another) source of validation about whether specs and WPT [1] tests are properly and clearly defined. That helps for long term browser compatibility. [1] https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&product=servo&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&pro...

charcircuit 10d ago
>long term browser compatibility Making a new browser engine hurts browser compatibility more than it helps it. It now becomes one more target that needs to be tested against, limitations need to be kept tracked of, etc. The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. In regards to the standard we can use LLMs to cross reference the spec, with tests, and with the implementation to make sure all match.
- teekert 10d ago
  Ah, you must be too young to have experienced early Internet Explorer, which attempted just this.
  - charcircuit 10d ago
    Internet Explorer was not open source acting as engine everyone's browser could use and it got abandoned by Microsoft. It is not the same situation.
    - teekert 10d ago
      One could argue that effectively Blink is also not open source. At any rate users don't have power over it, as witnessed by the manifest v3 stuff jammed down our throats.
      - pygy_ 10d ago
        Churn makes it impossible to keep up a fork, Google weaponizes its manpower, making the "open source" argument moot.
        charcircuit 10d ago
        There are many active forks that are an existence proof that it's possible. It's also a ton of man power to maintain your own browser engine.
    - le-mark 10d ago
      Monocultures are bad full stop. Blink is corporate controlled open source, which has been clearly less than.
    - mohamedkoubaa 10d ago
      At this point Microsoft should just open source it for science.
- Oxodao 10d ago
  yeah in a perfect world google dictates how the standard will evolve, we kill all competition so we're sure that you have only one target to build your software against, I'm sure a monopoly will greatly improves innovation and not be used to stiffen competition. /s
  - charcircuit 10d ago
    Using Blink doesn't mean you have to defer all decisions to Google. You just benefit from not having to duplicate work.
    - samus 10d ago
      Except one does since Google is the primary maintainer. Anyway, work on other browser engines is not duplicated or wasted.
      - charcircuit 10d ago
        It's easier maintaining a fork of Blink than an entirely different engine. Google being the primary maintainer doesn't mean that browsers can't make large forks. >work on other browser engines is not duplicated or wasted. How is having N engine developers implement some new addition to the EMCAScript or CSS standard for each of their engines not duplicated work?
        samus 9d ago
        > It's easier maintaining a fork of Blink than an entirely different engine. Google being the primary maintainer doesn't mean that browsers can't make large forks. Maintaining a fork is not fun as taking patches from the origin repo becomes more complicated the longer the fork exists and the bigger the divergence becomes. > How is having N engine developers implement some new addition to the EMCAScript or CSS standard for each of their engines not duplicated work? It would be duplicated only if they all maintained, say, a Blink fork.
    - kryptiskt 10d ago
- latexr 10d ago
  > The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. That’s what makes Google more dominant, and if you think that’s a good idea you should really put down your LLM and go read up on a bit of history. Do you want to live in a world where a single company controls your access to the web? Are you eager to navigate through ad pages with a little bit of web? To have even more of your data mined? Browser diversity may be a bit annoying for developers, but it is good for users, and developers are users too. When there’s a lack of diversity, everyone but the dominant player is squeezed.
  - charcircuit 10d ago
    Google's dominance comes from market share not from owning upstream. If a different fork took 90% market share that fork would have the dominance and power.
    - samus 10d ago
      And that market share is maintained by integration with Android and low-key sabotage of others browsers, especially Firefox. Similar to how Microsoft maintained its monopoly decades ago.
      - charcircuit 10d ago
        Whether a new browser uses a brand new engine or not that doesn't stop Chrome being integrated with Android.
        samus 9d ago
        The argument was not about stopping Chrome from becoming integrated into Android.
    - latexr 10d ago
      > If a different fork took 90% That can only happen if we don’t all focus resources on Blink, which is the point. By definition, we can only have other engines if diversity is a thing. The problem isn’t specifically Google (though they are a problem), but any one individual company having all the power.
- embedding-shape 10d ago
  > The best thing for long term browser compatibility is focusing resources into Blink. Lol, for Blink perhaps, what about the rest of the ecosystem, the web and the users, like the ones who don't even use Blink? Very idealistic point-of-view with no basis in reality, sadly, because wouldn't it be nice if we could care about just one engine?

nextaccountic 10d ago

https://v2.tauri.app/blog/tauri-verso-integration/ https://v2.tauri.app/blog/tauri-verso-integration/ https://github.com/versotile-org/tauri-runtime-verso https://github.com/versotile-org/tauri-runtime-verso Servo doesn't implement the whole web platform, but your own desktop app isn't the whole web. You can generally work around any limitations or missing features. And it might be lighter than CEF or whatever.

gyulai 10d ago
Couldn't agree more. Looking at [1], it seems to me like Servo has a much better adoption story than Ladybird. The latter seems to be just building a browser that's going to be crashy and not really work on the web. The former is addressing problem spaces where, even with the limitations of the half-finished state it's in, it can be usefully applied: WebView/Electron-replacement and headless browsers. Things not currently on this list that could/should be: HTML rendering for desktop E-Mail clients. Also, I wonder to what extent they're implementing paged media and capable of targetting PDF output or similar (like weasyprint). That could be another domain, where you don't need full web-scale abilities. And yet, somehow, Ladybird seems to be the darling of the masses (in certain circles at least). Doing vibe-ports to Rust, while going closed-contribution also, in my mind, sits in a marked contrast to the origin story that initially generated so much goodwill. [1] https://servo.org/made-with/ https://servo.org/made-with/
everybodyknows 10d ago
Naive question then: Where does Servo stand, relative to Electron?

nerdypepper 10d ago

servo is incredibly cool. super easy API to embed, and to build browsers around it.

LogicWolfe 10d ago

I use servo to render e-ink UIs and screenshot them to push to the displays. About 10% of the memory usage and 5% of the render time as doing the same thing with headless chrome. It doesn’t handle every possible feature, but it handles enough that it’s never been an issue when it’s my only target rendering environment. I love it.

lastontheboat 10d ago
This sounds very cool! If you'd like to talk about your experience with the project on the Servo zulip (servo.zulipchat.com), we love hearing feedback from embedders.

iamnothere 10d ago

It’s not really a finished product yet (in terms of being production-ready), but it would already be usable as an embedded kiosk for applications where you own the pages being accessed.

phkahler 10d ago

>> What can one actually do with Servo today? You can run CAD in it: https://solvespace.com/webver.pl https://solvespace.com/webver.pl