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June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

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Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#31

Post by Klonoar »

esprehn wrote: post #20
ChrisSD wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.

Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.

It’s been around for 14 years but it wasn’t always developed during those 14 years.

It’s also no longer a Mozilla project.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#32

Post by sieabahlpark »

dabinat wrote: post #30
esprehn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.

Ladybird has far more funding. The original blog post said Servo brought in $7k last month. Compare that to Ladybird and the first donation on this list already exceeds Servo’s total: https://ladybird.org/newsletter/2026-06-30/

[dead]

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#33

Post by minraws »

bobajeff wrote: post #15

The last few times I've tried to build Servo it's failed for me. (It's also one the very few rust projects that have ever failed to build for me).

On a Linux system or something else? Iirc a proper build uses spider money which is hell to build/embed.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#34

Post by bobajeff »

minraws wrote: post #33
bobajeff wrote: post #15

The last few times I've tried to build Servo it's failed for me. (It's also one the very few rust projects that have ever failed to build for me).

On a Linux system or something else? Iirc a proper build uses spider money which is hell to build/embed.

Yeah, it's a Linux system. I can't remember if it was spidermonkey that it failed on or not. Though it sounds like maybe they should consider using another JavaScript engine if it's causing problems.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#35

Post by nicoburns »

cyberax wrote: post #28
nicoburns wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been building for the fast/embeddable browser engine niche: Source: https://github.com/dioxuslabs/blitz Status: https://blitz.is/status/css Typical binary sizes are around 10-20mb, although you can go smaller by doing things like excluding features or compiling with `Os`/`Oz`. There's no JavaScript yet (which can also be a benefit of course!), but people have recently started experimenting, and we may well start…

This is awesome! Do you think you can host something like React Native if you add a JS engine?

Yes! There are a few experiments with JS engines going on (all very early stage atm (and many vibe coded) but looking promising enough to justify doing a proper implementation in future).

With this you can actually run regular React DOM (so fully compatible with deploying the same codebase to web). There is then the potential to mix in native components, although that's not fully built-out today.

Finally, as part of this project we develop Dioxus Native (see https://github.com/DioxusLabs/dioxus and https://dioxuslabs.com). This allows you to write your app in a React-like framework in Rust, which also allows you to write a single codebase and compile to both native (desktop/mobile) using Blitz and to web (compiles to WASM, renders using real DOM nodes).

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#36

Post by Rohansi »

cyberax wrote: post #24
Rohansi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome. I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.

Yes, that's why Servo is so exciting. It doesn't have to implement _all_ the standards, just a subset that is compatible with the full set. So that if you can develop an app within that subset and have it working in other browsers. But not necessarily vice versa.

If you're going by binary size then Servo is already as big as other browsers. 106 MB excluding dependencies, or 274 MB including dependencies.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#37

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

steveklabnik wrote: post #23
stackghost wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the original purpose was to rEwRiTe iT iN rUsT and replace gecko in Firefox?

From the presentation announcing Rust inside of Mozilla: https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf > We are not “rewriting the browser”. That's impossible. Put down the gun.

Impossible in 2010, maybe

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#38

Post by NetOpWibby »

ChrisSD wrote: post #10
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #2

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.

> Maybe give them a second?

It's been a decade plus and new browsers have come out in that time.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#39

Post by acephal »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #38
ChrisSD wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.

> Maybe give them a second? It's been a decade plus and new browsers have come out in that time.

New browser engines have not

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#40

Post by rpdillon »

akiselev wrote: post #26
rpdillon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

> And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019. I guess you could call that a "pretty niche browser" even then but that's a stretch. No one's rushing to pick it up because Servo was originally an experimental Rust project meant to incrementally replace parts of Firefox. Then Mozilla stopped fund…

> Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019.

Well sure, but Firefox is still primarily powered by Gecko and SpiderMonkey. And they laid off the entire Servo team.

I wanted this to succeed as much as the next guy, but the momentum just isn't there. I was stunned to hear they are getting close to $8k a month in donations though, so it's certainly not dead (obviously, since this is a realease announcement).

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