Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who uses WebKit on Windows?
I bet iTunes does for the storefront.
Yeah, also the iCloud client
Engineering code quality in Firefox
61–70 of 155 posts
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The WebKit team is smaller than the corresponding team at Mozilla, even if you look at the subset of of identical roles across both organizations (and e.g. ignore those working on the Firefox network stack). That said, it's worthwhile remembering that WebKit does very much maintain all the abstractions to be cross-platform (and Apple do still maintain a Windows port), even if it does try and leverage plenty of OS lib…
Who uses WebKit on Windows?
Microsoft. (Well, I guess it's blink now.)
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#63I just wanted to say that, despite a few mishaps, firefox is what _everybody_ on hn should be using. I can give my browser-time credentials, but really. Firefox is amazing. Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox!
> Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox!
And remember: Chrome is the new IE.
(Since a number of people have misunderstood this quote in the past I'll explain it up front: 1. IE was in some ways technically superior to competition until they became dominant. 2. At the same time devs stopped caring about other browsers, and then 3. Microsoft lost interest in it. We are repeating this it seems, currently at step 2 for a few years already, waiting for Chrome to completely outcompete other browsers and for Google to abondon it like so many other of their projects :-)
Edit: I took the time to write down a slightly expanded version of the explanation above: https://erik.itland.no/chrome-is-the-new-internet-explorer-4...
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Presto wouldn't be so memory efficient on today's web; I disagree. (I continued to use the last version of Opera Presto for a few year even after it was abandoned, and it continued to outperform other browsers on both platforms - Windows and macOS, though the macOS version was a bit more buggy). Let's not forget that Presto already supported a lot of HTML5 features(1) before it was abandoned. (Even today, it works…
> The source code of Opera Presto is out there on the net I don't suppose it's been open-sourced, has it? It would be great to have an alternative browser engine out there, instead of just three (or two and a half, depending on how you count Blink and Webkit).
No, but there is an effort to recreate it with the Otter Browser: https://otter-browser.org/
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#65> Our next major challenge: We are dealing with 21 million lines of code. I think I just fail to understand the true complexity of a browser, but how is Firefox 21 million lines of code? How can a browser be 21 million lines of code? That just seems so large for what a browser does.
A browser lays out text and graphics (for any script in any locale), does GPU accelerated 3D rendering, handles network communication, plays video, plays audio, provides accessibility, parses a bunch of languages, compiles a couple of languages to machine code run in a security sandbox (and has a separate optimizing compiler), provides database storage, implements a plugin system, provides support for 25 years of leg…
It also reimplements all of those things itself from scratch because their priority is on cross-platform parity, not efficiency.
Every time I see someone working on a FF bug I’m cc’d on, I marvel at how many files they have to touch to get anything done. One key binding missing, because they’re not using the system text field? Hundreds of lines of diffs, spread across a dozen source files.
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#66We had an "open-ended" project in an undergraduate Computer Security course to discover a 0-day in Firefox. The professor (a researcher, not lecturer, by trade) didn't really have a curriculum, and said this artifact accounted for 70-80% of our grade. Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. IIRC, Firefox is built on some esoteric architecture / design pattern that's def…
> Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour.
At first glance, this sounds terrible. But when compared to software projects of comparable size, Firefox is hardly unique. Compare to compiling Chromium for example, or even the Linux kernel.
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't suppose it's been open-sourced, has it? No, it was leaked illegally. Opera filed a lot of DMCA complaints with many online Git repository services to get the code removed from them. But you can still find it if you Google hard. I also recall reading that some Russian developers were working on the leaked code and had also released a "newer" version with some patches (Opera presto was really popular in Russi…
Servo maybe?
No, it was NetSurf - https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ ...
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Presto wouldn't be so memory efficient on today's web; I disagree. (I continued to use the last version of Opera Presto for a few year even after it was abandoned, and it continued to outperform other browsers on both platforms - Windows and macOS, though the macOS version was a bit more buggy). Let's not forget that Presto already supported a lot of HTML5 features(1) before it was abandoned. (Even today, it works…
> The source code of Opera Presto is out there on the net I don't suppose it's been open-sourced, has it? It would be great to have an alternative browser engine out there, instead of just three (or two and a half, depending on how you count Blink and Webkit).
I remembered - the relatively unknown browser called NetSurf - https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ ...
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#69We had an "open-ended" project in an undergraduate Computer Security course to discover a 0-day in Firefox. The professor (a researcher, not lecturer, by trade) didn't really have a curriculum, and said this artifact accounted for 70-80% of our grade. Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. IIRC, Firefox is built on some esoteric architecture / design pattern that's def…
> Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. At first glance, this sounds terrible. But when compared to software projects of comparable size, Firefox is hardly unique. Compare to compiling Chromium for example, or even the Linux kernel.
Right. I did not mean this as knock against Firefox.
At one of the FAANG I previously worked at, it took an hour to compile JavaScript.
Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox
#70We had an "open-ended" project in an undergraduate Computer Security course to discover a 0-day in Firefox. The professor (a researcher, not lecturer, by trade) didn't really have a curriculum, and said this artifact accounted for 70-80% of our grade. Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. IIRC, Firefox is built on some esoteric architecture / design pattern that's def…
He is neither a researcher nor teacher - typical academic parasite.
Makes a bet on trendy advanced task and, if it works, lets you be a coauthor. If it does not - no big deal some naive student spent 1/2 year on something virtually impossible w/o deep industry experience.