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Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

servo.org

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Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#31

Post by ksec »

linuxandrew wrote: post #7

Servo is now under the Linux Foundation umbrella. It's refreshing to finally see some more players in the browser engine space than the tri-opoly of Google (Blink), Apple (WebKit) and Gecko (Mozilla). LibWeb (Ladybird Browser) is another browser engine, but also in very early days of development. Gecko is depressingly tied to Firefox and not easily embedded. Blink has somehow become the de facto browser engine thanks…

> Even Qt (QtWebEngine) is now based on Blink instead of WebKit.

This is news to me. When did that happen ?

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#32

Post by jitl »

vlovich123 wrote: post #23
sonofhans wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl was in exactly that situation many years ago. The specification for Perl 5.x was `perl` itself; if `perl` was found to conflict with the spec, sometimes the spec would change. It was a nightmare, and part of the reason (I believe) that Perl 6 got so over-specified. It meant you couldn’t count on the spec, that you never knew if something was a bug or intended behavior. HTML4 was in a similar situation. Microsoft…

For a while while Google had a minority and everyone was still targeting IE instead of the standard, they would detect that and take a different rendering path even if it meant preserving broken behavior. At the same time they tried to fix/improve the spec and wage a publicity campaign against Microsoft for not following standards. While that’s not necessarily a capability a smaller not well funded browser might have…

tl;dr

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#33

Post by nbittich »

KingLancelot wrote: post #2

I’m amazed that Servo is actually a thing. Firefox abandoned it years ago, and now Flow and Ladybird are from-scratch new, efficient browsers.

servo is in development for years and last time I checked it was an extremely buggy web view that couldn't do much. On the other hand lady bird is already useable.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#34

Post by waboremo »

jpk wrote: post #24
rektide wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly why would anyone do anything other than Blink at this point? For one, there's so many examples to crib from about how to do it. But more generally, I just feel like every other player in the space has adopted an adversarial stance. For sure, sometimes Safari or less typically Firefox do lead, but it's rarely by much & usually the set of capabilities overall is far far less. I don't want a monoculture either,…

> There's no real debate because 2/3 players actively believe & push for a small web. It's a miserable rock & hard place situation, trying to figure out what to do when there's only one ayer who believes in a web platform at all. Not to say I don't believe you, I'm just curious. In what way(s) does Google uniquely believe in the web as a platform where Apple/Mozilla don't? Can you provide some examples of this?

Prior to app store creation, Apple and Google were the same regarding the web as a legitimate platform. After it was released, only really Google was pushing for it. Hence the creation of Progressive Web Apps, thanks to Alex Russell et al at Google.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#36

Post by charcircuit »

vlovich123 wrote: post #23
sonofhans wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl was in exactly that situation many years ago. The specification for Perl 5.x was `perl` itself; if `perl` was found to conflict with the spec, sometimes the spec would change. It was a nightmare, and part of the reason (I believe) that Perl 6 got so over-specified. It meant you couldn’t count on the spec, that you never knew if something was a bug or intended behavior. HTML4 was in a similar situation. Microsoft…

For a while while Google had a minority and everyone was still targeting IE instead of the standard, they would detect that and take a different rendering path even if it meant preserving broken behavior. At the same time they tried to fix/improve the spec and wage a publicity campaign against Microsoft for not following standards. While that’s not necessarily a capability a smaller not well funded browser might have…

>you need to start greenfield like Chrome

Chrome wasn't entirely greenfield. The rendering engine is a fork of webkit's.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#37

Post by rektide »

linuxandrew wrote: post #27
rektide wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly why would anyone do anything other than Blink at this point? For one, there's so many examples to crib from about how to do it. But more generally, I just feel like every other player in the space has adopted an adversarial stance. For sure, sometimes Safari or less typically Firefox do lead, but it's rarely by much & usually the set of capabilities overall is far far less. I don't want a monoculture either,…

Google/Blink consistently pushes for bad things like EME, FLoC and Topics API. They have a very different vision of the web where users live in a corporate playground and complex browser engines which only a few large corps can manage. At this point what is making the web a better platform? The web has feature overload, even with features like Server Push which are seldom used. FWIW I think there are some exciting po…

It's a huge company of hundreds of competing ideas.

I think most no one has any respect or appreciation for the circumstance flocs & topic Api was raised in. The dogfucker skanks at Internet Advertising Bureau were actively pushing government regulators to replace cookies with some gobshit anti user trash, far worse. I genuinely feel for Google. No one sees or knows any of the other context going down at the time, but all eyes are on the team of like 40 trying to find some way to preserve some privacy, in an org & task that is the hugest fucking lightning rod for attention & negativity, being the most visible & one of the most hated companies on the planet.

I agree that Google seems to have kind of lost the will to fight for a lot of good shit. There's still tons of great Google initiatives, but if someone can't tick it off their OKR within 8 months & call it a raring success, the effort & the team has seemingly no backing, no one with real principle intelligence or spine to keep the really really smart good shit going. That's just not a reasonable time frame for adoption. The web's early adopters take 3 years, minimum, for most interesting capabilities, and there's seemingly no one anywhere with that kind of patience for rolling out. Fuck this industry. This is why we can't have nice things.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#38

Post by solarkraft »

charcircuit wrote: post #20

And how will this layout engine help the browser gain market share over Chrome? While you are busy improving the layout engine other browsers are working on features that bring value to users.

Well, a fast and reliable browser delivers value.

However there are still quite a lot of much, mich easier wins Mozilla has either ignored for 20 years or actively walked back on.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#39

Post by jenadine »

ksec wrote: post #31
linuxandrew wrote: post #7

Servo is now under the Linux Foundation umbrella. It's refreshing to finally see some more players in the browser engine space than the tri-opoly of Google (Blink), Apple (WebKit) and Gecko (Mozilla). LibWeb (Ladybird Browser) is another browser engine, but also in very early days of development. Gecko is depressingly tied to Firefox and not easily embedded. Blink has somehow become the de facto browser engine thanks…

> Even Qt (QtWebEngine) is now based on Blink instead of WebKit. This is news to me. When did that happen ?

QtWebEngine was part of Qt 5.4 released in 2014

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#40

Post by quantumwoke »

Love that servo is still being worked on. Don’t love that the new layout engine doesn’t support floats or flexbox. We need to do more to stave off the homogenisation of the web into the chromium spyware machine. What a shame that Mozilla’s funding was so drastically cut.
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