The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components • Hacker News Board

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#21

Post by emilsedgh » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

breatheoften wrote: post #3

Wow - that must be an incredibly messy UI codebase by now ...

Honestly, how can a project of that magnitude _not_ be messy?

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#22

Post by skrebbel » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #2

Remember when a tab freezing didn't make Firefox's UI chrome unresponsive? I do, too.

I'd assume that the Firefox chrome runs in its own process. Why would the switch to web components for the chrome change that?

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#23

Post by warpech » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

BoumTAC wrote: post #20

can it cause perfomance issue ? I know for example the devtool is written in react and it's a lot slower than chrome devtools (I don't know how chrome devtool is written) and the javascript debugger is sometime not even usable because it's so slow.

Chrome DevTools use Web Components: https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/devtools-frontend

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#24

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

BoumTAC wrote: post #20

can it cause perfomance issue ? I know for example the devtool is written in react and it's a lot slower than chrome devtools (I don't know how chrome devtool is written) and the javascript debugger is sometime not even usable because it's so slow.

I believe the developer consoles for all three major desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) are written using web technologies.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#25

Post by ng12 » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #15

Poor web components. Everybody rags on them.

Because the API is really ugly. I can't see them ever taking off except maybe as an implementation of another library with a cleaner API.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#26

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #15

Poor web components. Everybody rags on them.

There's nothing inherently wrong with web components. People rag on them when they aren't used correctly, and this is apparently hard to do.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#27

Post by Touche » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

BoumTAC wrote: post #20

can it cause perfomance issue ? I know for example the devtool is written in react and it's a lot slower than chrome devtools (I don't know how chrome devtool is written) and the javascript debugger is sometime not even usable because it's so slow.

Using web components or something else is only one small part of the performance question. They could be using both web components and React for all we know. They could be using any number of JavaScript libraries that could be harming performance. They could be using raw DOM manipulation which could be either very fast or somewhat slow depending on how well it was implemented. All we can say is that using JavaScript in general is slower than using C++ but they weren't using C++ before anyways.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#28

Post by thayne » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

BoumTAC wrote: post #20

can it cause perfomance issue ? I know for example the devtool is written in react and it's a lot slower than chrome devtools (I don't know how chrome devtool is written) and the javascript debugger is sometime not even usable because it's so slow.

chrome devtools are also written in javascript (although I'm not sure which framework if any they use). You can even debug the chrome devtools with chrome devtools (I think the same applies to firefox, although I've never accidentally gotten into that state like I have in chrome).

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#29

Post by fourthark » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #15

Poor web components. Everybody rags on them.

Yeah - I do not understand the snark on this thread. This is great news.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#30

Post by jkaptur » Wed, Nov 20, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

BoumTAC wrote: post #20

can it cause perfomance issue ? I know for example the devtool is written in react and it's a lot slower than chrome devtools (I don't know how chrome devtool is written) and the javascript debugger is sometime not even usable because it's so slow.

Chrome devtools is also a JS application: https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/devtools-frontend.