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Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

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Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#121

Post by justinlaster »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #79
kweinber wrote: post #72

What do folks think of internetisms that the author uses like "Because Mor Better Ideas™."? I see a number of engineers use broken phrasing like that in posts and presentations and it comes off really badly to others not in on the "joke". Does anyone really find that sort of thing actually funny or additive or is it the equivalent of trite office humor gone online?

It's annoying and unprofessional. Stop trying to be cutesy and present the information in a way that people who are busy can consume quickly and make decisions on. Is this the tone of the whole project? I'd love to contribute, but I don't want to wade through a reddit-comment-thread-level of forced references and memes to do that. I get the reason for doing it, and I like that the internet isn't full of drab corporat…

> I'd love to contribute, but I don't want to wade through a reddit-comment-thread-level of forced references and memes to do that.

I'm going to have call you out on this. You have no wishes to contribute. Because asking this question reveals you haven't even bothered to look at the repositories, join IRC channels, or subscribe to the mailing lists.

You're here to complain and you're using hypothetical constructive motivations to masquerade that fact. State your opinion without the fussy lie, there was really nothing wrong with it.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#122

Post by phkahler »

I've seen this before:

>> At some point in mid-2017, all new CSS will be built with Quantum plane parts, not Gecko. Going forward, it will be much easier and more enjoyable to implement new CSS properties. Which makes it easier for folks in the open source community to contribute.

If you're not careful this can drag on for years with half the stuff done one way and half the new way - especially once you reach the point where "all new stuff is built the new way". There can come a point where you need to just purge the old stuff. We've seen this in places like GIMP moving to GEGL, and several project moving to GTK3 (GIMP, Inkscape, and others), the purge of java from LibreOffice, and now there's this mushy migration to Wayland. Firefox is not the only project migrating to rust either.

In all these cases I'm actually in favor of the migrations, and many of those have been completed over years. It's just that once a path has been defined I feel like there needs to be a more concerted effort to actually complete the transition sooner rather than later. Let new features take a back seat and get your internals switched over. I know it's a balance but working on a project that's straddling the fence is almost always slower in the long run.

Having said that, firefox is huge so subsystems will need to switch to rust one at a time. I'm just saying that once CSS can be done the new way they need to require it to all be done that way, not just new stuff. Perhaps that is the case and it wasn't spelled out clearly in TFA.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#123

Post by Aoyagi »

robin_reala wrote: post #62
Aoyagi wrote: post #61

Makes me wonder what's going to happen to Presto now that the Chinese bought Opera ASA...

Presto was only still being used in Opera Mini, it had been swapped out for Blink in the desktop and full-fat mobile versions.

I know, but I'm replying from a Presto-powered desktop browser :) .

People have been asking for open-sourcing of it ever since the switch happened, but I guess we'll never see that happen.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#124

Post by wruza »

grzm wrote: post #106
wruza wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that you can't even combine 'she' and 'failed' in one sentence here on HN. Looking for alternatives, since the issue still persists.

Your parent comment is nearly void of substance and dismissive. It's okay to have a criticism of the the writing style, but without some additional information about why (e.g., examples, comparisons with similar styles of writing), it adds little constructive to the conversation. That in and of itself can draw downvotes.

Reasons why were listed in our root comment, and parent posted at the time when it was not flagged. Ironically, parent comment even somewhat protected author's lameness, but you can't see that now. I blame the blind power of sjw here, not anything else.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#126

Post by TeMPOraL »

dawnerd wrote: post #125

I was honestly expecting an interesting story about a real jet engine being replaced in flight.

The story changed its title from being about Gecko and Servo to this literally in between me viewing the frontpage and clicking on the comments link.

This story here is IMO should be extempt from the "original title" rule - the original title is annoyingly misleading.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#127

Post by grzm »

wruza wrote: post #124
grzm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parent comment is nearly void of substance and dismissive. It's okay to have a criticism of the the writing style, but without some additional information about why (e.g., examples, comparisons with similar styles of writing), it adds little constructive to the conversation. That in and of itself can draw downvotes.

Reasons why were listed in our root comment, and parent posted at the time when it was not flagged. Ironically, parent comment even somewhat protected author's lameness, but you can't see that now. I blame the blind power of sjw here, not anything else.

I browse with showdead on and had read the thread prior to my comment. If the reasons are listed upthread, there's even less reason for the unsubstantive addition. Constructive discussions require adding something substantial. If the comment was intended to support the author in some way, it needs to justify that as well, or even make the case that that's the intent.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#128

Post by JD557 »

Grue3 wrote: post #115
andrewvijay wrote: post #9

I'm on this rust hype train for a long time. This move by mozilla is probably going to be the biggest success story that might give rust a lot of attention. I hope the new engine is fast as heck and uses less battery in all my devices. Please!

Not if in the process they'll make all the existing add-ons incompatible and therefore lose all their remaining market share.

I disagree. If they are able to deliver a browser that's much faster and consumes less battery, I believe that would be enough to make a lot of users change their browser.

Maybe I'm wrong and I'm not a good example, but I the only add-ons that I have installed that I really care about is 1password (which is easy to live without, as I can use the stand-alone application) and HTTPS everywhere (which just means that I have to be extra careful when browsing).

I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of internet users that do not even have add-ons in their browsers, but I doubt that there's any user who would not care about browser speed/battery life.

Re: Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo

#129

Post by dingaling »

dawnerd wrote: post #125

I was honestly expecting an interesting story about a real jet engine being replaced in flight.

Some piston-engined aicraft had crawlways in the wing to permit inflight engine servicing ( Ju-90, XB-15 and B-36 come to mind ) but sadly I'm unaware of any jet aircraft with such a clever feature. Potentially the YB-49 flying-wing but I haven't located a cutaway to confirm.
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