Any post or article that explains what this does better or new as compared to existing engines like Chromium or WebKit when it's feature complete?
It should be more lightweight, not being bloated with unnecessary functionalities.
Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
321–330 of 343 posts
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but majority of the code cannot Do you have a citation for "cannot"? Maybe "prefer not because of non-functional requirements" but if it's a choice between a ~~webpage~~ ad vector loading 10 seconds slower versus the goddamn plague of RCEs coming out of Chrome, I know which one I'd take
>Over the past decades, in addition to large Java and Go memory-safe codebases, Google has developed and accumulated hundreds of millions of lines of C++ code that is in active use and under active, ongoing development. This very large existing codebase results in significant challenges for a transition to memory safety: We see no realistic path for an evolution of C++ into a language with rigorous memory safety guar…
Can't they use a transpiler from C++ to Rust? E.g. https://llvm.org/devmtg/2023-05/slides/Posters/02-Preto-Auto...
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#323Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Over the past decades, in addition to large Java and Go memory-safe codebases, Google has developed and accumulated hundreds of millions of lines of C++ code that is in active use and under active, ongoing development. This very large existing codebase results in significant challenges for a transition to memory safety: We see no realistic path for an evolution of C++ into a language with rigorous memory safety guar…
Can't they use a transpiler from C++ to Rust? E.g. https://llvm.org/devmtg/2023-05/slides/Posters/02-Preto-Auto...
Eventually, maybe. In the short term, the transpilers mostly translate from other languages into unsafe Rust - which is a helpful tool during porting, but there is still a mountain of work to refactor unsafe idioms into safe before you really reap the benefits.
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#325Serious Question: With risk of being hated, this is an honest question: I've never sought out another browser than using pretty much any of the big three... Just because I have never had any sort of personal workflow/painpoint/interest in any of these other browsers/engines, that frankly I had never heard of and then another thing pops up every few years with yet another new one that I havent heard of -- but they all…
All mainstream web browsers are bloated and use a lot of resources. I am looking for a tiny lightweight web browser with good HTML5 support but without bloat for older computers. Servo, Ladybird and Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht) are promising. I even started developing Qt Ultralight Browser (https://github.com/niutech/qt-ultralight-browser).
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#326Serious Question: With risk of being hated, this is an honest question: I've never sought out another browser than using pretty much any of the big three... Just because I have never had any sort of personal workflow/painpoint/interest in any of these other browsers/engines, that frankly I had never heard of and then another thing pops up every few years with yet another new one that I havent heard of -- but they all…
Servo is written in Rust so one big aim would be to have better security. I believe it's supposed to also be much better parallelized. On my part, I'm very much looking forward to an embeddable browser engine. Neither Firefox nor Chrome are interested, and QtWebEngine exists, but takes extensive patching, and so depends on the Qt project remaining to exist and keeping up with upstream.
There are also: CEF, WebKitGTK (http://www.webkitgtk.org) or Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht).
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't they use a transpiler from C++ to Rust? E.g. https://llvm.org/devmtg/2023-05/slides/Posters/02-Preto-Auto...
Eventually, maybe. In the short term, the transpilers mostly translate from other languages into unsafe Rust - which is a helpful tool during porting, but there is still a mountain of work to refactor unsafe idioms into safe before you really reap the benefits.
The presentation I linked talks about transpiling C++ to safe Rust.
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
acid3 isn't particularly important as it doesn't even match modern standards. Modern chrome and firefox only pass 97/100 tests.
Someone reading your comment might infer that Servo is passing 97 out of 100 tests, when in fact, they are passing 86 out of 100. I don't know enough about browsers to know how vital those tests are, but it is important to note that they are still a ways off of 97.
Sorry but there is absolutely nothing in the comment you are replying to which might imply that Servo is passing 97. That’s a complete straw man.
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Problem is Swift engineer supply is low, there's not a viable business case to learn Swift because it's not actually viable cross-platform for development The Swift business case is that in many situations native is strongly preferable than cross-platform. Excluding some startups that wants to go to market super fast and consulting companies that have to sell the cheapest software possible, usually the benefits of…
Right -- no one read my comment and thought I meant Swift was unnecessary or businesses don't use it. Contextually, we're discussing Swift for cross-platform dev.
I'm glad you know what everyone thinks while reading your comments.
Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
We already had Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX and now Flutter (with Wasm). How is Pax better than them?
I won't claim Pax is better than any of these, but that we seek to solve different goals. Unlike Flash: driven by a markup language, fully open source, no plugin required, solves a11y, compiles to native apps incl. mobile Unlike Silverlight: fully open source, no plugin required, no heavy VM Unlike JavaFX: no plugin required, no heavy VM, visual builder is a vector design tool Unlike Flutter: designed for web (small…
Thanks for explanations. However, instead of making yet another framework, wouldn't it be better to contribute to Flutter (e.g. optimize its wasm target, add a vector visual builder), so there is one strong open cross-platform alternative to HTML/CSS/JS?