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Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

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Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#111

Post by bee_rider »

hanniabu wrote: post #71

There's still zero day exploits found in chromium, wouldn't using using this put you at a huge risk of running into malware in the wild that this browser can't protect against?

I somewhat wonder—Firefox and Chrome are in a constant race to have the best JavaScript performance.

In general, the sites I want to browse use minimal JavaScript, prudently, if at all, just where it is strictly necessary to add little dynamic features. So, I don’t really care about JavaScript performance at all.

Optimization sometimes introduces additional complexity, which might open up the possibility of security holes (at least it seems to be the case to me, as a not-security-related programmer. I don’t know anything about security on a technical level, so I’m interested in other perspectives on this from people that actually work in those sorts of fields). I wonder if there’s room for a browser engine that ditches performance and just focuses on correctness and safety.

Rendering documents ought to not be computationally intensive, right? Advertisements of blazing fast JavaScript performance make me worry what corners have been cut.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#112

Post by Galanwe »

mminer237 wrote: post #77
wongarsu wrote: post #2

According to https://servo.org/about/ Servo currently passes ~60% of the web platform tests. Does anyone have experience how far that subset gets you on the open internet?

In my tests, it's pretty unusable atm. Probably half of websites render very wrong and servo crashes nonstop.

It cannot crash its written in Rust.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#113

Post by klohto »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #100
breakfastduck wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ladybird exists and is funded because the main author is an extremely skilled software developer with a background in building web browsers. He also built a totally from scratch operating system, and built a very productive and skilled community around it, which branched into building their own web browser as SerenityOS has an 'everything from scratch' policy. How is Serenity not an interesting feat of engineering? Y…

[flagged]

Enlighten us which BigCo gave Ladybird money?

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#114

Post by akira2501 »

culi wrote: post #67
tcper wrote: post #57

Have a read about Servo, it is binding with SpiderMonkey as JS engine. Is there some chance, that servo decomposed from SpiderMonkey? If it is not, I don't think anyone can tell difference between firefox and other browser use Servo.

There's a lot more to a browser than the JS engine. And in general, we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same. I think starting with an existing engine is the most logical approach

> we would want all of the browsers JS engines to be essentially the same

You say until there is a CVE found.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#115

Post by synergy20 »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #21
ksec wrote: post #5

So we will, in ~5 years time have two new browser, one in Rust and one in Swift. I hope in the process of doing it we will find new ways of doing things.

I'd like to see Swift adopted more on non-Apple operating systems, some of the recent GTK apps written in Swift are pretty cool.

sadly Gtk's support for MacOS is best efforts only

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#116

Post by IshKebab »

Galanwe wrote: post #112
mminer237 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my tests, it's pretty unusable atm. Probably half of websites render very wrong and servo crashes nonstop.

It cannot crash its written in Rust.

Rust can absolutely crash. It crashes ("panics" in Rust terminology) in a memory safe way but it's still a crash (please don't try to redefine the word "crash" to be more specific than it actually is).

And Rust can still have unsafe code so it can crash in memory unsafe ways too (though it is very unlikely unless you're doing things very wrong).

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#117

Post by fabrice_d »

swiftcoder wrote: post #107
hanniabu wrote: post #71

There's still zero day exploits found in chromium, wouldn't using using this put you at a huge risk of running into malware in the wild that this browser can't protect against?

Maybe if Chromium was written in a memory-safe language there would be fewer zero-days?

Yes, and that's why Chromium moved to allow Rust code (pretty much like they did for Android).

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#118

Post by solardev »

amelius wrote: post #42
ksec wrote: post #5

So we will, in ~5 years time have two new browser, one in Rust and one in Swift. I hope in the process of doing it we will find new ways of doing things.

The problem with these smaller webbrowsers is that you have nobody to sue if the browser turns out to leak your personal information or credentials etc. Therefore it is better to stick with browsers made by big corporations.

Sounds like a good way to get a $2 coupon off your next Google/Microsoft service after the class action resolves ten years from now.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#119

Post by afavour »

refulgentis wrote: post #102
sheeshkebab wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swift is useless outside of macOS/iOS dev… the thing doesn’t even have namespacing. I don’t know for what reason someone would use it outside for Apple environment.

You're right but this touches the hot stove. HN majority doesn't like hearing that ladybird et al might just be wandering around, even if the goal is catnip for the bleachers, and we should be skeptical this is the year of multiplatform Swift, because it wasn't last year if you actually tried it. Or the year before last. Or the year before that. Or the year before that year. Or the year before that one.

I’m slightly more ambivalent than you about it. Swift is a nice language and has better ergonomics than C++ and I imagine a Swift codebase might find more contributors than a C++ one (maybe I’m wrong about that!)

I also think it’s separate from the dream of “multiplatform Swift”. For that you need a healthy package ecosystem that all works cross platform, Swift doesn’t have that. But a lot of Ladybird is written at a low enough level that it won’t matter so much.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#120

Post by charrondev »

refulgentis wrote: post #102
sheeshkebab wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swift is useless outside of macOS/iOS dev… the thing doesn’t even have namespacing. I don’t know for what reason someone would use it outside for Apple environment.

You're right but this touches the hot stove. HN majority doesn't like hearing that ladybird et al might just be wandering around, even if the goal is catnip for the bleachers, and we should be skeptical this is the year of multiplatform Swift, because it wasn't last year if you actually tried it. Or the year before last. Or the year before that. Or the year before that year. Or the year before that one.

I mean this year we did have the porting of Arc browser to windows. I use it my gaming PC and it is starting to feel like it has a similar level of polish to the MacOS version.

https://speakinginswift.substack.com/p/swift-meet-winrt

https://speakinginswift.substack.com/p/swift-tooling-windows...

Now that’s not an engine but the UI.

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