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Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

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Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#11

Post by lamacase »

Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

> What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?

I don't think the search-box and tabs are rendering it.

The firefox interface is already described in an XML format (XUL) and rendered from that. Instead of having two markups and two renderers, this allows you to simplify and consolidate to a single one.

I would hardly construe that as having "gone too far".

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#12

Post by Igglyboo »

Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

>What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?

The browser is rendering it's own UI.

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#13

Post by icefox »

of wrote: post #4
icefox wrote: post #2

The browser shipped with Blackberry 10 was written in HTML and was a real joy to develop. Edit: some more public details The default browser on the BlackBerry 10 platform was a completely new browser application. The chrome was written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Being able to develop the chrome on your desktop browser or being able to run inspector remotely and using your desktop was very handy. The core was a comm…

What is that browser called?

Hmm didn't really have a name as it was the browser that was included and just called "Browser" if I recall.

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#14

Post by towelguy »

Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

Dogfooding?

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#15

Post by michielvoo »

Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

> What is rendering that HTML if not a browser?

The rendering engine (Gecko). I guess for it to make sense you must separate the drawing engine from the browser, which adds things like tabs, bookmarks, themes and add-ons.

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#16

Post by paulrouget »

Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

A browser is 2 things: a HTML engine and a UI (tabs, urlbar, back button, …). Usually, the UI is built in C++/ObjectiveC/XUL. Here, I'm proposing to use the HTML engine to render the UI as well. It's already the case with Firefox, the engine also renders the UI. But it doesn't use html, but another markup language (XUL).

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#17

Post by kibwen »

michielvoo wrote: post #15
Morgawr wrote: post #7

Color me surprised, but when we get to the point where we run HTML to build a browser that is supposed to be the tool used to render and display such HTML... haven't we gone too far? Is a browser necessary? What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? I mean, I get it, a browser is used to browse (duh) the internet, not necessarily to render HTML, but at this point we really need to ask ourselves "why are we doing t…

> What is rendering that HTML if not a browser? The rendering engine (Gecko). I guess for it to make sense you must separate the drawing engine from the browser, which adds things like tabs, bookmarks, themes and add-ons.

This can be seen today in Servo, which can browse the internet but has no GUI of to speak of (e.g. to visit a URL you must pass it as a command-line parameter to the executable).

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#18

Post by bkeroack »

I realize this is a personal project, but this is deeply amusing considering that:

1. Way back when (circa 1998-2001?), the Mozilla project started as a radical redesign of the next gen Netscape browser. One of the core principles of the architecture was that the browser itself would render the UI elements (using an HTML-like tech call XUL).

2. The Firefox browser (then called "Phoenix") was a reaction against the above, which was thought to make the browser too heavyweight and slow. Originally Phoenix was the Gecko engine in a native UI window without all the XUL overhead (and without all the other components of the Mozilla Suite like the email client).

Now we're seeing the reverse trend, 15 odd years later.

EDIT: It turns out I misremembered about Phoenix dropping XUL completely--rather they dropped XPFE for a "new light-weight XUL toolkit", along with dropping all the non-browser components of the Mozilla suite.

Re: Firefox.html: Rebuilding Firefox UI in HTML

#19

Post by nevir »

bkeroack wrote: post #18

I realize this is a personal project, but this is deeply amusing considering that: 1. Way back when (circa 1998-2001?), the Mozilla project started as a radical redesign of the next gen Netscape browser. One of the core principles of the architecture was that the browser itself would render the UI elements (using an HTML-like tech call XUL). 2. The Firefox browser (then called "Phoenix") was a reaction against the ab…

Rendering perf is catching up
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