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Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#111

Post by roca »

markpapadakis wrote: post #79

I think this is just too many people. No matter how you spin this it’s just too many. Do Google or Microsoft have half as many working on their browsers? I’d be very surprised if they do. It should also be interesting to look back and find out how many people Netscape employed at its peak. I would love to know the distribution of those 1.2k people ( engineers, marketing, whatever ). Of course, it’s likely that I am t…

There isn't public information on this, but in the past I have heard that Chrome had a lot more engineers than Firefox (though it's a bit difficult to make direct comparisons because of scope differences). I suspect that's still true. I also heard the same thing about Edge at one point, but I suspect that may not be true now.

Comparisons with the past are meaningless because browsers are far more complex (and performant, and secure, and versatile, etc) than they used to be.

And sorry, but your gut estimates are not likely to be that accurate if you don't work in this area.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#112

Post by jstewartmobile »

roca wrote: post #98
jstewartmobile wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is super, super simple. When 80%+ of your revenue depends on a search engine, and you still have payroll to make, you are by definition dependent upon it, regardless of which one it happens to be at the time. The article title is "Maintaining an Independent Browser is Expensive". I'm just calling it out. From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for…

I left Mozilla nearly two years ago so you can lay off the baseless speculations about my salary, thanks. Incidentally I explicitly defined "independent" in my blog post: "I mean a browser with its own implementation of HTML, CSS, JS, etc". Choosing an alternative definition and then ranting about it is irrelevant to what I wrote.

I'm sorry. That's not how this works.

    dependent *adj*
    1. free from outside control; not depending on another's authority.
    2. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.
It is not disputed that they have made their contribution to the implementation babel of web "standards". It is disputed, right here, that they are more of a spoke in the wheels of online advertising than a heroic champion of the open web.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#113

Post by captainmuon »

krapp wrote: post #85
captainmuon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would first target a subset of HTML, for example static documents instead of web apps. You would have a specification like AMP which restricts what elements you can use. If a document used the full spec, I would fallback to another engine (e.g. WebKit). You could have full documents in iframes inside limited documents (but cross-frame scripting might be hard to get right in that case). Also, I would try to make it…

The difference between static web documents and web apps isn't the set of HTML they use, it's just that the latter are designed to deeply integrate javascript (and/or, to futureproof this comment, WebAssembly) into their UI, rather than do all of the logic on the server between requests. The only way to ship a browser that doesn't render "web apps" would be to simply not support scripting of any kind. That would perm…

There is a subset of web pages that only use a subset of features - Hacker News is an example, but better examples would be Wikipedia, many news sites, documentation of all kinds, and so on. You have basically static HTML, and use JavaScript for 1) progressive enhancement and decoration (what used to be called "DHTML"), 2) ads, and 3) more and more for client side rendering. You can't do much about 3 right now, but I would offer support for 1 and 2. I would definitely offer scripting, but just not all features.

You could autodetect a "lean html" site, or you could use a marker such as "" like AMP does.

I don't think this is hostile to developers at all, unless AMP is already hostile. You would have a subset of the web platform, yes, but if you only use that you are likely to have a faster and leaner website - even without a new engine. I would view it as a guideline or a best practice, rather than a restiction.

Side note: I think the co-mingling of documents and apps is the source of a lot of problems today. Why can ads inject arbitrary javascript into my website?! On mobile, I am regularly redirected to annoying ads that proclaim my phone is infected, and make my phone vibrate and make noise. A news article shouldn't be able to do that!

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#114

Post by baddox »

captainmuon wrote: post #76
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder: who could even feasibly introduce another browser today? The task seems almost impossible.

I would first target a subset of HTML, for example static documents instead of web apps. You would have a specification like AMP which restricts what elements you can use. If a document used the full spec, I would fallback to another engine (e.g. WebKit). You could have full documents in iframes inside limited documents (but cross-frame scripting might be hard to get right in that case). Also, I would try to make it…

That sounds like a much more graspable technical goal, but you would effectively be competing not with modern browsers but rather with the web as a whole, which is a much more difficult social/political goal.

If at the same time you could encourage widespread adoption of your HTML subset, then you may be onto something. This is essentially what Google did with AMP, their incentive being their caching network and apparent favoring in search results.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#115

Post by thristian »

gsnedders wrote: post #68
chungy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back when, there were versions of IE 4, 5, and 6 for non-Windows OSes such as HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and Mac OS (Classic and X both). It is not unreasonable that they could do it again.

Note those releases were based on an entirely different codebase to the Windows version of IE.

Internet Explorer for Mac was a separate codebase from the Windows version.

The Unix workstation versions (HP-UX, AIX, etc.) were built with a commercial equivalent to Winelib: a library that implemented Win32 APIs on top of Unix and X11.

I have no idea how they managed to build the IE code on a compiler that wasn't MSVC.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#116

Post by esrauch »

hennsen wrote: post #107
Sylos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because there's so much competition for experienced people in Silicon Valley. If Mozilla wouldn't pay her that much, another company would.

Has anyone ever tried to hire someone requiring less than or up to max say 20k for such a job? I wonder which qualifications that are that you find only in people asking for >50 or even 100k/month. I am from Europe so i might miss something that’s different in US. But 20k USD would make for a very good living here. Ok you only can afford one house with that an no 1000sqm villa and no Ferrari... but i state you don’t…

20k USD/month is in the range that Google/FB/Microsoft pays for direct managers of ~10 person teams: basically that would be the level of credentials that you would be competing for in that pay area.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#117

Post by markpapadakis »

roca wrote: post #111
markpapadakis wrote: post #79

I think this is just too many people. No matter how you spin this it’s just too many. Do Google or Microsoft have half as many working on their browsers? I’d be very surprised if they do. It should also be interesting to look back and find out how many people Netscape employed at its peak. I would love to know the distribution of those 1.2k people ( engineers, marketing, whatever ). Of course, it’s likely that I am t…

There isn't public information on this, but in the past I have heard that Chrome had a lot more engineers than Firefox (though it's a bit difficult to make direct comparisons because of scope differences). I suspect that's still true. I also heard the same thing about Edge at one point, but I suspect that may not be true now. Comparisons with the past are meaningless because browsers are far more complex (and perform…

I never worked on a browser, though I did implement the HTML5 spec, twice, and I wrote a JS engine(compiler, runtime). I know that it was a lot easier because I could count on infromation and other advances that were available to me, and anyone else really, at the time, the kind of resources and information I probably wouildn't have had access to it("whats javascript?") 20+ years earlier.

Browsers have evolved - because standards did, and expections along with them, but in the past they too were quite complex(see also Netscape's play: browsers, email, usenet client etc, suit) and again, it was harder then that it is nowadays to build such systems.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#118

Post by icebraining »

yorwba wrote: post #82
linopolus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple mandates that all alternative browsers use the system-bundled WebKit for user experience reasons Not entirely true: Every browser developer is free to use whatever engine they like on iOS. Mozilla could use Gecko, Google could use Blink. They just don’t do it, because what’s not allowed is JITs (because security), thus 3rd-party JS-engines would always be slow. So the reason everybody uses WebKit on iOS is no…

Would it be possible to use WebKit for JavaScript execution, but still do rendering in a different engine?

I don't think you could plug directly into the JS engine to allow it to interact with your DOM.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#119

Post by scrollaway »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #61
roca wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you claiming now? Are you claiming Mozilla was the tool of Google, switched to being the tool of Microsoft or Yahoo, and then back to being the tool of Google? Or are you claiming that Mozilla is the tool of the "search industry" which is some amorphous group containing all of the above? Google (and other companies in some countries) pay Mozilla to be the default search in Firefox. It's a business transactio…

It is super, super simple. When 80%+ of your revenue depends on a search engine, and you still have payroll to make, you are by definition dependent upon it, regardless of which one it happens to be at the time. The article title is "Maintaining an Independent Browser is Expensive". I'm just calling it out. From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for…

> From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for a comment, Upton Sinclair is screaming from the grave

Good lord, get a hold of yourself. I work in the gaming industry (easy mistake to make, right?) and you seem to have read "hints" as "hits" and made up a whole scenario from that... I didn't Google you (nor would I care to), I just called out a completely bullshit comment when I saw one.

The foundation of your entire argument is loose accusations, outdated information cobbled together in a web of random words and quotes you found appropriate. You have incorrectly profiled everyone who replied to you. It is hard for anyone here to have an argument with you, or even take you seriously.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#120

Post by Sylos »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #81
pcwalton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are exactly four major engines, each of which has a flagship browser: Blink/Chrome, WebKit/Safari, Gecko/Firefox, and EdgeHTML/Edge.

Wouldn't introduction of Servo make it five? Gecko is not going away yet, IIRC it's used in some browsers, like Pale Moon. https://www.palemoon.org/

Servo is not a major browser engine. It's a small research project.

And Firefox continues to use Gecko. It has some bits and pieces from Servo in it and the Mozilla marketing team has dubbed everything "Quantum" for the Firefox 57 release to communicate that lots has changed, but it is still Gecko.

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