A Quantum Leap for the Web • Hacker News Board

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#11

Post by azakai » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

yalooze wrote: post #10

Does anyone know how this compares to the current implementations of competing browsers? ie. is Firefox still playing catch up in some respects or is this leaps ahead of the competition too?

Currently no major browser has significant components implemented in a safe language like Rust. And while there are some efforts towards granular parallelism in existing major browsers, none really took a "start from scratch and get it right" approach like the Servo components that Quantum intends to adopt (and that's very noticeable in Servo perf).

So on both of those aspects, the plan here is to go significantly further than any existing major browser.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#12

Post by bobajeff » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase.

It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#13

Post by mtgx » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

> A first version of our new engine will ship on Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Someday we hope to offer this new engine for iOS, too.

More people need to put pressure on Apple to allow third-party browser engines on iOS. Fortunately, they're already getting sued over this, but just in case that doesn't succeed, there should also be bigger public pressure on Apple to allow them.

http://www.recode.net/2016/10/7/13201832/apple-sued-ios-brow...

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#14

Post by larsberg » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

Project Quantum is an opportunity to ship some of the Servo components in Firefox and gain millions of users, real-world tests of the technology, and hopefully dramatically expand our contributor base. As we mention in a post to the Servo mailing list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.servo/3b... ), Servo has a lot coming in 2017 unrelated to Project Quantum or Firefox.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#15

Post by dblohm7 » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

Servo has always been and still is a research project. It was never intended to go into production as a fully-fledged Mozilla product. Quantum is the initiative to bring a lot of those technologies into Gecko.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#16

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

[deleted]

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#17

Post by dherman » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

I can tell you from where I sit at Mozilla, everyone is very excited about Servo. It just takes time to build things! :) It wouldn't make sense to wait for Servo to reach full web compatibility before starting to integrate it into production uses. This is really just a natural next step in the progression of adopting Servo at Mozilla.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#18

Post by pcwalton » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

Servo is still being developed with the same manpower. Quantum is not de-emphasizing Servo. It would make little sense to do so, since the lack of legacy in Servo is part of what has given us the freedom to experiment with things like parallel restyling in the first place. And Quantum helps Servo, too—by giving us real-world Web compatibility experience with portions of Servo's codebase sooner, it helps us shake out bugs faster than we can with Servo alone.

(Disclaimer: As always, I speak for myself, not for my employer.)

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#19

Post by pcwalton » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #15

bobajeff wrote: post #12

This sounds to me like Mozilla is getting impatient with Servo. Servo was more than just a parallel browser engine it was the only new web engine not based off of decade old codebase. It was a statement that it's feasible to hold off on monoculture because compatibility isn't impossible to achieve on new engines.

Servo has always been and still is a research project. It was never intended to go into production as a fully-fledged Mozilla product. Quantum is the initiative to bring a lot of those technologies into Gecko.

> Servo has always been and still is a research project. It was never intended to go into production as a fully-fledged Mozilla product.

That's not true. Servo is designed to be production-grade.

Re: A Quantum Leap for the Web

#20

Post by metajack » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

yalooze wrote: post #10

Does anyone know how this compares to the current implementations of competing browsers? ie. is Firefox still playing catch up in some respects or is this leaps ahead of the competition too?

I think performance of the style systems in Blink and Firefox are similar. Since Servo's style system is linearly scalable, we expect most users to get a ~4x speed improvement on styling.

Users's don't care specifically about style performance, though, but about things like interactivity. We think Servo's style system will improve those things, but don't have numbers for that on hand.

To give a concrete example, it takes Firefox ~1.2 seconds to restyle the single page HTML5 spec with it's current non-parallel style system. Firefox with Stylo can do this in ~300ms. That is close to a full second off of initial page load.