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Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

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Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#331

Post by peoplefromibiza »

webprofusion wrote: post #223
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ladybird was mostly developed by one person (Andreas Kilng) with no financing whatsoever ,Servo was mostly developed by a team who was being paid with Mozilla money.

That was true at the start, but it's most definitely funded development now and that's what will probably get them over the finish line. If the development work went into debating, specifying and expressing required behavior as a written spec more exactly (beyond w3c specs and towards the more pragmatic reality of what current browsers actually do) then very long term we can probably have engines that are AI built [o…

> but it's most definitely funded development now

Mozilla spent millions, Andreas got 2 hundreds thousand dollars to pay him and 2 other devs

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#332

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Hikikomori wrote: post #278
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ladybird was mostly developed by one person (Andreas Kilng) with no financing whatsoever ,Servo was mostly developed by a team who was being paid with Mozilla money.

Andreas worked on webkit when he was at Apple.

My cousin worked at Toyota, he obviously can't build a Toyota.

Working on something is not the same thing as building the same thing from scratch on your own time and resources.

Of all the people who worked at Google, none of them rebuilt Google, right?

Also: Apple spent billions and employed several developers.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#333

Post by refulgentis »

lnrd wrote: post #329
refulgentis wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I was trying to be kinder than just leaving you downvoted and confused why. I guess I shouldn't have bothered, my apologies. Hope your week gets better!

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#334

Post by zackbrown »

niutech wrote: post #330
zackbrown wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pax's primary goal is "designability" — to enable a vector design tool to read & write the same content & behavior you may write by hand. (.pax files)

Our solution requires language constraints — a hermetic separation of concerns between the declarative description language (.pax) and a Turing-complete programming language (starting with Rust.)

These language constraints and rendering requirements[0] are so core to our solution that building anywhere other than the systems level was not tenable.

[0] Specifically, the runtime must render in "design tool coordinates," to enable a vector design tool authoring UX. This authoring experience must also be extremely fast, like Figma's. The rendering engine must be designed around this requirement and neither HTML/CSS's or Flutter's were.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#335

Post by Hikikomori »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #332
Hikikomori wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andreas worked on webkit when he was at Apple.

My cousin worked at Toyota, he obviously can't build a Toyota. Working on something is not the same thing as building the same thing from scratch on your own time and resources. Of all the people who worked at Google, none of them rebuilt Google, right? Also: Apple spent billions and employed several developers.

So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience? What counts as that kind of experience in your book?

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#336

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Hikikomori wrote: post #335
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cousin worked at Toyota, he obviously can't build a Toyota. Working on something is not the same thing as building the same thing from scratch on your own time and resources. Of all the people who worked at Google, none of them rebuilt Google, right? Also: Apple spent billions and employed several developers.

So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience? What counts as that kind of experience in your book?

> So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience?

Who said "no experience"? (except you, of course)

I've said, an I repeat myself so maybe this time it'll work, Andreas had no money whatsoever, while Servo was developed inside Mozilla that poured millions of dollars on it and created a dedicated team to build it.

It makes all the difference in the World, the actual experience on building a web browser is irrelevant, given the initial disparity of time, money and resources available.

It makes all the difference between a random guy building a working twitter clone and Meta building a working twitter clone.

The first one is an amazing accomplishment, the second one is a mehhh at best.

Ladybird is a miracle compared to Servo.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#337

Post by swiftcoder »

niutech wrote: post #327
swiftcoder wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there are a few such efforts ( such as https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.08264 ). My understanding is that all are still somewhat experimental.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#338

Post by EstanislaoStan »

Interesting but it seems like a super early stage (or maybe Windows support isn't there yet.)

Nigh unusable on Windows (11). Mostly just opens an empty window that has stopped responding. I finally tried running as admin and it works more consistently now. Webview for https://www.google.com looks like a messed up mobile view. My company's website doesn't work at all, (NextJS) so I guess they don't have a js engine yet?

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#339

Post by Hikikomori »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #336
Hikikomori wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience? What counts as that kind of experience in your book?

> So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience? Who said "no experience"? (except you, of course) I've said, an I repeat myself so maybe this time it'll work, Andreas had no money whatsoever, while Servo was developed inside Mozilla that poured millions of dollars on it and created a dedicated team to build it. It makes all the difference in the World, the actual experience on building a web…

Ok? I dont see why thats relevant to what I said and what you initially responded to.

Re: Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine

#340

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Hikikomori wrote: post #339
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So Andreas working on webkit means he has no browser engine experience? Who said "no experience"? (except you, of course) I've said, an I repeat myself so maybe this time it'll work, Andreas had no money whatsoever, while Servo was developed inside Mozilla that poured millions of dollars on it and created a dedicated team to build it. It makes all the difference in the World, the actual experience on building a web…

Ok? I dont see why thats relevant to what I said and what you initially responded to.

You replied to:

it has been underway for much longer and was built with people with actual browser engine experience

The key point is that Ladybird was developed by one person (not people) with some browser engine experience over a realtively short period, using only personal resources. While Andreas Kling worked on WebKit, his experience wasn't at the level of building an entire engine, which is evident from his videos. Experience alone isn't enough; he learned much of what he needed while developing Ladybird. While Andreas Kling is talented, many other developers on his team were equally skilled and yet he's the only WebKit developer I am aware of who built a browser on his own.

A task that not long ago was considered too hard to tackle, he proved it can be done even by people with relatively modest experience on building a browser.

It should be highlighted that Andreas main skills are his tremendous communication skills and the way he builds a mental model of the problem he's trying to solve, not his past WebKit experience (he wrote an entire OS, before building a browser for the OS he built, as a side project)

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