7 ms·

Its not a new javascript engine. Its not a new rendering engine. So basically its just a different UI skin on chrome. That's cute, but its not a new browser.

Its not a new javascript engine. Its not a new rendering engine. So basically its just a different UI skin on chrome. That's cute, but its not a new browser. It's the same browser with a slightly new UI. Count me as skeptical and unexcited. I am similarly unexcited by the 'it's browser' webkits views in android and ios, for exactly the same reason; they're dime a dozen, and lack any compelling reason to switch or use. (Servo, by comparison, is a new rendering engine, with new features that make it extremely interesting)

0942v8653 12y ago
I was likewise hoping that if this new browser used Servo. When I got to the part that said it would be fast, and efficient, and run on old hardware, I thought that Servo would do a good job of that—it has none of the cruft that <WebKit|Gecko|Blink> has. But then I saw the part that said the browser's UI was Built on Web Technology, and then I read your comment, and my dreams were crushed forever. Disappointing. Seriously, I can't understand how they expect this to be any faster when everything on the homepage (which is still mostly content-free) says otherwise.
- sp332 12y ago
  Servo is for research. It's not production-ready and might never be. It's explicitly not intended to replace Gecko.
- sjwright 12y ago
  <WebKit|Gecko|Blink> has cruft? That seems to be a very relativistic statement. In ten years, people will be looking at the next next big thing because it has none of the cruft that <Servo> has.
detaro 12y ago
As a user, a different UI is a more compelling reason to switch than a new engine, as long as the "old, boring" engine performs well enough. I miss the Opera UI of the olden days, but Chrome's engine works just fine for me (memory usage is a bit annoying, but tolerable) (Not saying that it isn't important that people work on new, different engines as well in the long run)
- dethstar 12y ago
  I think both UI/UX and engines are both valid to work on. Since the work on this one example is done on UI, I'd feel better if I knew how the UI looks like (without having to install it).
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
Personally, I don't care about new engines as much as I care about having a good browser that is not controlled by Google. We need more competitors in this space.
- gsnedders 12y ago
  I dunno — to a fair extent Blink is still controlled by Google. Yes, Opera are now doing a fair bit of work, but if Google walked away there would no longer be nearly enough the resources to keep up the pace of development.
  - dale-cooper 12y ago
    A good blink/webkit-browser with the ability to self host sync services for it would go a long way. I think the new opera has that, but it's bad for other reasons..
- shadowmint 12y ago
  You say that, but look what Google has stumbled onto trying this path on iOS. Chrome on iOS is rubbish. ...because the Chrome guys are daft? Nope. ...because it's Apple's playground, and they don't want to play, so they've deliberately ('not deliberately') made it so anyone using their engine is a 2nd class citizen, and can only build a poor user experience. (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=423444 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=423444 for the meta bug if you're interested)
  - skrowl 12y ago
    Just one more reason to upgrade from iOS to Android. We have real Firefox and real Chrome over here... and have had them for yeaaaars now.
  - callum85 12y ago
    How have they made it so anyone using their engine is a 2nd class citizen? Does the engine perform differently outside Safari?
ugurk 12y ago
I think it is the good part. As a developer, I don't have to think about browser specific coding. As an user, I can use same technology with favourite UI skin and additional features.
signal11 12y ago
Not disagreeing with you, but some browsers on iOS do add useful features even while being webkit skins, for example Mercury Browser on iOS supports adblock lists, which Safari doesn't.
Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
To each their own, but I couldn't care less about the engine to be honest. I have like 20 reasons why I miss the old Opera and I currently don't have any browser I feel comfortable with. All of them have to do with the UI. None has to do with the engine.
EGreg 12y ago
LOL I started reading this thinking that Is the advertisement haha. I was actually struck by its honest at first and wanted to try it.
sp0rk 12y ago
I suppose you think every video game made using the Unreal Engine is basically the same game too, right? I can understand the disappointment that they're not creating a new JS or rendering engine, especially from a community like HN that is so technical, but it's absurd to state that this thing is not a new browser simply because it uses these existing technologies. How much end-user functionality really comes from a JS or rendering engine when it's adhering to the same standards that every other competing engine is?
higherpurpose 12y ago
And super fast, apparently: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA A re-made Firefox in Rust could be not just much faster but also much more secure, even than Chrome, if combining Rust's safety features with Electrosis/a similar sandbox and multiprocess system.
lmkg 12y ago
I'll voice a dissenting opinion. Doing HTML and JavaScript are commodities. Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of room for innovative behavior. Any developments (faster, new HTML standards, etc) won't impact the market unless they're in one of the major browsers. Competition is good, but there's only room in the market for a handful of rendering engines. Maybe 3-5, tops. Conversely, UI and human interaction with the browser is a place where there's room for an unbounded number of players. This is where the competition can actually be happening. And it's where I think the competition should be happening. The idea of a browser as something that just renders HTML and executes JavaScript is kinda lame. I use Opera because I think it's also the browser's responsibility to include tab organization and search functionality and mouse gestures and flipping CSS in and out and synchronization. (And I like my mail integrated, but that's a personal thing.) And I want it to Just Work, instead of having to manage a half-dozen extensions. I am guardedly optimistic about Vivaldi, because it's what I actually out of a browser. (Specifically, an updated version of Opera 12, which Opera 15+ is not.)
- kibwen 12y ago
  > Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of > room for innovative behavior. This is incorrect. Servo, with its goal of being fanatically concurrent, is forging new ground in discovering exactly where the HTML specs both admit concurrency and where they unintentionally demand serial behavior. Browsers of its ilk, regardless of adoption, will be instrumental in informing future standards such that they are not accidentally hostile to concurrency and parallelism, thereby clearing the way for widely-adopted engines to implement such optimizations at their leisure.
  - ewzimm 12y ago
    > unless they're in one of the major browsers Servo is a research project for a future version of Firefox. That's the definition of a major browser. No web developers want a new browser with incompatible features to test or build against, but Mozilla/Google/Microsoft experimenting for future versions is expected. The original point is that independent browsers using established libraries and adding new UI concepts is great for users and doesn't make extra work for web developers. I'm looking forward to what they make of it!
mmcclure 12y ago
You sir, do not build things for browsers. It made me so incredibly happy that their goal was to innovate more for the experience of the every day end-user rather than toss yet another set of vendor prefixes. Anyway, I think the TL;DR here is, "A new browser for our friends". To me, this implies they're building a new browser for the everyman, not a bunch of curmudgeon-y developers on HackerNews. People outside of HN couldn't care less about new JS / rendering engines. They want to Google things, check their email / InstaTwitterVineBooks and generally just kinda meander around the web. To that person, new interface features is really the only thing they see. Honestly this is kinda refreshing to see in a weird way.
EugeneOZ 12y ago
Chrome with OldOpera features? Sounds great!
tommoor 12y ago
Looks like it's likely based on node-webkit / nwjs / atom - dead give away is rounded bottom corners and sharp top corners, a long standing issue for that project.
- ziahamza 12y ago
  Yeah, BTW I am also super curious how they merged the tabs UI with the top window bar. That also seems to be a pending issue in atom. I have a feeling it may just be nwjs.
foooh 12y ago
A skin is a set of images. This new browser isn't just replacing Chrome's images with its own. It has new UI code, apparently using web standards. In other words, it's about as far from a skin as you can get. When you replace images it's a skin. When you write code it isn't - it's a new UI.
pornel 12y ago
Netcaptor that invented tabbed browsing didn't have a custom new rendering engine either. It looks like this browser is a continuation of classic Opera, which pioneered a lot of stuff we take for granted today: - Speed Dial — the start page you get in every browser these days - mail client with filtered views, later known as "folders like in GMail" - page modifications with user-supplied JS and CSS (later known as Greasemonkey and basis for browser extensions, which ironically Opera didn't have for a long time) - address bar history based on full-text search of visited pages - bookmark sync across devices - pages rendered by a proxy server (like Amazon Silk browser) And they've tried plenty of things that didn't catch on: built-in Torrent client, built-in web server (like node.js) and Widgets. There's plenty of UI R&D to be done.

0942v8653 12y ago

I was likewise hoping that if this new browser used Servo. When I got to the part that said it would be fast, and efficient, and run on old hardware, I thought that Servo would do a good job of that—it has none of the cruft that <WebKit|Gecko|Blink> has. But then I saw the part that said the browser's UI was Built on Web Technology, and then I read your comment, and my dreams were crushed forever. Disappointing. Seriously, I can't understand how they expect this to be any faster when everything on the homepage (which is still mostly content-free) says otherwise.

sp332 12y ago
Servo is for research. It's not production-ready and might never be. It's explicitly not intended to replace Gecko.
sjwright 12y ago
<WebKit|Gecko|Blink> has cruft? That seems to be a very relativistic statement. In ten years, people will be looking at the next next big thing because it has none of the cruft that <Servo> has.

detaro 12y ago

As a user, a different UI is a more compelling reason to switch than a new engine, as long as the "old, boring" engine performs well enough. I miss the Opera UI of the olden days, but Chrome's engine works just fine for me (memory usage is a bit annoying, but tolerable) (Not saying that it isn't important that people work on new, different engines as well in the long run)

dethstar 12y ago
I think both UI/UX and engines are both valid to work on. Since the work on this one example is done on UI, I'd feel better if I knew how the UI looks like (without having to install it).

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

Personally, I don't care about new engines as much as I care about having a good browser that is not controlled by Google. We need more competitors in this space.

gsnedders 12y ago
I dunno — to a fair extent Blink is still controlled by Google. Yes, Opera are now doing a fair bit of work, but if Google walked away there would no longer be nearly enough the resources to keep up the pace of development.
- dale-cooper 12y ago
  A good blink/webkit-browser with the ability to self host sync services for it would go a long way. I think the new opera has that, but it's bad for other reasons..
shadowmint 12y ago
You say that, but look what Google has stumbled onto trying this path on iOS. Chrome on iOS is rubbish. ...because the Chrome guys are daft? Nope. ...because it's Apple's playground, and they don't want to play, so they've deliberately ('not deliberately') made it so anyone using their engine is a 2nd class citizen, and can only build a poor user experience. (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=423444 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=423444 for the meta bug if you're interested)
- skrowl 12y ago
  Just one more reason to upgrade from iOS to Android. We have real Firefox and real Chrome over here... and have had them for yeaaaars now.
- callum85 12y ago
  How have they made it so anyone using their engine is a 2nd class citizen? Does the engine perform differently outside Safari?

ugurk 12y ago

I think it is the good part. As a developer, I don't have to think about browser specific coding. As an user, I can use same technology with favourite UI skin and additional features.

signal11 12y ago

Not disagreeing with you, but some browsers on iOS do add useful features even while being webkit skins, for example Mercury Browser on iOS supports adblock lists, which Safari doesn't.

Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago

To each their own, but I couldn't care less about the engine to be honest. I have like 20 reasons why I miss the old Opera and I currently don't have any browser I feel comfortable with. All of them have to do with the UI. None has to do with the engine.

EGreg 12y ago

LOL I started reading this thinking that Is the advertisement haha. I was actually struck by its honest at first and wanted to try it.

sp0rk 12y ago

I suppose you think every video game made using the Unreal Engine is basically the same game too, right? I can understand the disappointment that they're not creating a new JS or rendering engine, especially from a community like HN that is so technical, but it's absurd to state that this thing is not a new browser simply because it uses these existing technologies. How much end-user functionality really comes from a JS or rendering engine when it's adhering to the same standards that every other competing engine is?

higherpurpose 12y ago

And super fast, apparently: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA A re-made Firefox in Rust could be not just much faster but also much more secure, even than Chrome, if combining Rust's safety features with Electrosis/a similar sandbox and multiprocess system.

lmkg 12y ago

I'll voice a dissenting opinion. Doing HTML and JavaScript are commodities. Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of room for innovative behavior. Any developments (faster, new HTML standards, etc) won't impact the market unless they're in one of the major browsers. Competition is good, but there's only room in the market for a handful of rendering engines. Maybe 3-5, tops. Conversely, UI and human interaction with the browser is a place where there's room for an unbounded number of players. This is where the competition can actually be happening. And it's where I think the competition should be happening. The idea of a browser as something that just renders HTML and executes JavaScript is kinda lame. I use Opera because I think it's also the browser's responsibility to include tab organization and search functionality and mouse gestures and flipping CSS in and out and synchronization. (And I like my mail integrated, but that's a personal thing.) And I want it to Just Work, instead of having to manage a half-dozen extensions. I am guardedly optimistic about Vivaldi, because it's what I actually out of a browser. (Specifically, an updated version of Opera 12, which Opera 15+ is not.)

kibwen 12y ago
> Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of > room for innovative behavior. This is incorrect. Servo, with its goal of being fanatically concurrent, is forging new ground in discovering exactly where the HTML specs both admit concurrency and where they unintentionally demand serial behavior. Browsers of its ilk, regardless of adoption, will be instrumental in informing future standards such that they are not accidentally hostile to concurrency and parallelism, thereby clearing the way for widely-adopted engines to implement such optimizations at their leisure.
- ewzimm 12y ago
  > unless they're in one of the major browsers Servo is a research project for a future version of Firefox. That's the definition of a major browser. No web developers want a new browser with incompatible features to test or build against, but Mozilla/Google/Microsoft experimenting for future versions is expected. The original point is that independent browsers using established libraries and adding new UI concepts is great for users and doesn't make extra work for web developers. I'm looking forward to what they make of it!

mmcclure 12y ago

You sir, do not build things for browsers. It made me so incredibly happy that their goal was to innovate more for the experience of the every day end-user rather than toss yet another set of vendor prefixes. Anyway, I think the TL;DR here is, "A new browser for our friends". To me, this implies they're building a new browser for the everyman, not a bunch of curmudgeon-y developers on HackerNews. People outside of HN couldn't care less about new JS / rendering engines. They want to Google things, check their email / InstaTwitterVineBooks and generally just kinda meander around the web. To that person, new interface features is really the only thing they see. Honestly this is kinda refreshing to see in a weird way.

EugeneOZ 12y ago

Chrome with OldOpera features? Sounds great!

tommoor 12y ago

Looks like it's likely based on node-webkit / nwjs / atom - dead give away is rounded bottom corners and sharp top corners, a long standing issue for that project.

ziahamza 12y ago
Yeah, BTW I am also super curious how they merged the tabs UI with the top window bar. That also seems to be a pending issue in atom. I have a feeling it may just be nwjs.

foooh 12y ago

A skin is a set of images. This new browser isn't just replacing Chrome's images with its own. It has new UI code, apparently using web standards. In other words, it's about as far from a skin as you can get. When you replace images it's a skin. When you write code it isn't - it's a new UI.

pornel 12y ago

Netcaptor that invented tabbed browsing didn't have a custom new rendering engine either. It looks like this browser is a continuation of classic Opera, which pioneered a lot of stuff we take for granted today: - Speed Dial — the start page you get in every browser these days - mail client with filtered views, later known as "folders like in GMail" - page modifications with user-supplied JS and CSS (later known as Greasemonkey and basis for browser extensions, which ironically Opera didn't have for a long time) - address bar history based on full-text search of visited pages - bookmark sync across devices - pages rendered by a proxy server (like Amazon Silk browser) And they've tried plenty of things that didn't catch on: built-in Torrent client, built-in web server (like node.js) and Widgets. There's plenty of UI R&D to be done.