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Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

servo.org

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Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#61

Post by johnny22 »

its-summertime wrote: post #45
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…

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView it is possible to pull just gecko/spidermonkey/et/al out of firefox. I do hope GeckoView gets wider support, but at the same time, the competition is already insanely entrenched. People arn't using Firefox because they prefer Gecko's rendering, after all.

even gtk uses webkit for their webview and not gecko. It'd be nice to see gecko as a possiblity there.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#62

Post by charcircuit »

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…

>pushes for bad things like EME, FLoC and Topics API

EME is better than browsers having to implement their own proprietary APIs for DRM. If EME didn't exist DRM would still be used by sites like Netflix.

>FLoC and Topics API

These are better for privacy than learning interests by tracking via third party cookies. These are moves to retain the positive uses of the web while increasing people's privacy.

>At this point what is making the web a better platform?

WebGPU released recently and provided big speedups to GPU intensive use cases.

>but I don't think it's in Google's interests to push for that at all.

What's the benefits to users or server hosters? Will it improve the user experience? Reduce latency? Save costs? If peer to peer features provide value I don't see why they wouldn't be interested. Peer to peel has its own set of drawbacks so there are many uses where it isn't a good option.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#63

Post by lelanthran »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #25
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,…

I wouldn't say this is an uncommon philosophy. I for one am very aware that Firefox is, for the most part, an objectively worse browser than Chrome; SpiderMonkey is worse than V8, Gecko is worse than Blink. I still use it in a futile attempt to avoid Google's monopoly on the web (and for tree-style tab), but I'm perpetually disappointed by Mozilla's mismanagement of Firefox. It's as if Mozilla is trying to morph Fire…

> I wouldn't say this is an uncommon philosophy. I for one am very aware that Firefox is, for the most part, an objectively worse browser than Chrome;

Maybe it is objectively inferior to chrome, but not enought to make me switch.

IOW, I'm not missing anything by staying with FF because all the sites I use work with FF.

In fact, a site that only works on one browser is probably not a site that anyone goes to anyway, objective metrics be damned.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#64

Post by Cyphase »

rektide wrote: post #22
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.

I just wrote a long post about web platform & balance of power. And this is like 3000% more the real feels of the situation. I really really hope it pans out & delivers. But it properly & rightly should be an ever shrinking piece of the puzzle. It underpins it all & flexility here would be key, better tech (parallelizable!) very empowering, put to the sword many criticisms, but yeah: it's an ever shrinking factor ver…

Towards a Modern Web Stack

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#65

Post by illiarian »

BoorishBears wrote: post #60
illiarian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the prototypical example of their stance is: their resistance was justified.

No, the prototypical example of their stance is: you can argue their resistance was justified. If you believe in a big web it was not justified, otherwise it was, as the original comment was asking for an example of.

Their stance has nothing to do with a "belief in a big web", whatever "big web" is.

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#66

Post by kbrosnan »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #56
dralley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, until a few months ago.

Who is using it at this point; or planning to use it?

Igalia is working on it. It is unclear if they are doing it speculatively or on contract.

https://www.igalia.com/technology/browsers

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#67

Post by charcircuit »

solarkraft wrote: post #38
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.

Sure, but will improving layout performance have the biggest impact for users, or was the current one good enough?

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#68

Post by Dalewyn »

MBCook wrote: post #19
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #5

None of this would be so difficult if the CSS specifications were well defined. But they’re not, so we all have to more or less guess what the intrinsic algorithms for drawing fundamental aspects of the web are supposed to be. Such a failure of the CSS specs.

Isn’t CSS, like so many things, limited by backwards compatibility? They can’t clean slate it and call it CSS 4, no one would bother. Everything they do has to work with the old stuff, or be very explicit that you’re changing the rules (like adding “display: flex”). I suspect there is also a fair amount of “this is what everyone did so try not to break it” in there too, much like HTML. I’m not sure anyone could make…

No, backwards compatibility is the responsibility of the browser, a la quirks mode[1][2] in ye olde days.

HTML6 or CSS4 could have a fresh, clean start and there's nothing preventing that.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

[2]: https://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#69

Post by madeofpalk »

Dalewyn wrote: post #68
MBCook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t CSS, like so many things, limited by backwards compatibility? They can’t clean slate it and call it CSS 4, no one would bother. Everything they do has to work with the old stuff, or be very explicit that you’re changing the rules (like adding “display: flex”). I suspect there is also a fair amount of “this is what everyone did so try not to break it” in there too, much like HTML. I’m not sure anyone could make…

No, backwards compatibility is the responsibility of the browser, a la quirks mode[1][2] in ye olde days. HTML6 or CSS4 could have a fresh, clean start and there's nothing preventing that. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode [2]: https://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html

What would be the point of that if no browser would support it?

See also, https://wiki.csswg.org/faq#versioning-css-fixing-design-mist...

Re: Layout 2013 and Layout 2020

#70

Post by 2b3a51 »

AbuAssar wrote: post #18

Servo is an independent, modular, embeddable web rendering engine written in Rust

Thanks for this.

Is there a demonstration Web browser that can be built with the layout 2020 option enabled?

I'm thinking of something like the very basic one that WebKit had when I used to try these things years ago.

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