WebRender is in beta • Hacker News Board

Re: WebRender is in beta

#41

Post by ummonk » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

tamasnet wrote: post #24

For anyone (like me) not familar with WebRender, here's a great writeup: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f... Also a great read for anyone interested in long-form technical articles that try to serve a wide range of reader types.

I'd be curious how the power usage compares between this GPU rendering and the old CPU painting / compositing rendering. I'd expect it to save power but could also see it going the other way, particularly for webpages with minimal changes from frame to frame.

Re: WebRender is in beta

#42

Post by gsnedders » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #37

chmln wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced the exact same thing on latest thunderbird betas and nightlies. Its a shame that GPU support by Mozilla products is in such abysmal state. Meanwhile Google has working hardware accelerated video decoding AND decent GPU support in Chrome.

Firefox has had hardware video decoding and GPU support for like 15 years? This is just a new graphics stack.

It doesn't on Linux (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876).

Re: WebRender is in beta

#43

Post by JoshuaAshton » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

"Bobby fixed a crash" - A crash relating to what? This changelog is awful, who approved this?

Re: WebRender is in beta

#44

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 11:56 PM UTC

Is GPU rendering going to open up new security holes? If not, then how do we know it won't?

Re: WebRender is in beta

#45

Post by chmln » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:08 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #37

chmln wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced the exact same thing on latest thunderbird betas and nightlies. Its a shame that GPU support by Mozilla products is in such abysmal state. Meanwhile Google has working hardware accelerated video decoding AND decent GPU support in Chrome.

Firefox has had hardware video decoding and GPU support for like 15 years? This is just a new graphics stack.

As the sibling comment mentions, not on Linux. Perhaps I should've been clearer, but the point still stands.

Re: WebRender is in beta

#46

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:32 AM UTC

chmln wrote: post #31

actionscripted wrote: post #27

Enabled in FF Nightly 65.0a1 (2018-10-26) (64-bit) and it felt a little sluggish especially with regards to scrolling. I understand it's in beta but I guess I was expecting things to "feel" faster. Tried resizing larger sites/pages and things felt snappy but scrolling felt jumpy and off. That said, can't wait for this to come out of beta!

I've experienced the exact same thing on latest thunderbird betas and nightlies. Its a shame that GPU support by Mozilla products is in such abysmal state. Meanwhile Google has working hardware accelerated video decoding AND decent GPU support in Chrome.

This is that "GPU support", on Linux anyway.

Hardware accelerated video decoding is barely worth it on Linux. Crashes galore. Does Chromium even enable it by default?

The problem is not writing the "GPU support", but working around the mountain of Xorg bugs that it triggers. As an example just this week, I recently ripped out OS compositing support from WebRender on X because it was simply impossible to deploy without crashing. (It will still work on X, but energy usage will be worse.)

Re: WebRender is in beta

#47

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:33 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #44

Is GPU rendering going to open up new security holes? If not, then how do we know it won't?

Can you be more specific as to which "security holes" you're thinking of? You're kind of asking to prove a negative.

Re: WebRender is in beta

#48

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:35 AM UTC

AriaMinaei wrote: post #9

Wondering if Pathfinder made it to this release? Perhaps pcwalton could chime in?

It's in the codebase as an optional code path for fonts but not enabled. The graphics team prefers to do a staged rollout where we roll out WebRender first before enabling Pathfinder. I agree with the caution.

Re: WebRender is in beta

#49

Post by mitchtbaum » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 12:35 AM UTC

Natela wrote: post #39

cztomsik wrote: post #36

I've just made very basic integration with node. It's rather PoC, but it works. It can currently show a window and render moving rect from vue.js template. There's still a lot of work to be done, webrender does too little to be just drop in replacement for electron but it might be worth watching if you're interested in anything like that (lightweight cross-platform opengl-rendered gui apps developed in react/vue/angu…

This is a nice experiment ! There are a few people starting to hack around with WebRender. There are already Limn, Azul, Stylish, etc...it would be nice if we joined forces in developing one good UI framework powered by WebRender.