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Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

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Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#61

Post by chriswarbo »

pquki4 wrote: post #56
jojobas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's an awesome idea to waste few hundred megabytes of RAM to run your app. This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death.

And you won't get Skype, Slack, Teams and many other applications people use on a daily basis on Linux, at all. Features on Mac will be limited compared to Windows version, because the team prioritizes work on the platform with the largest userbase. There will be more inconsistencies in feature and UI for "desktop" version vs web version, if companies still bother to maintain two versions. That's the future you want…

Seems a bit weird to use Skype as your example, since (a) it already had a native application for Linux, (b) AFAIK it was the same (Qt) codebase as Windows and Mac, so no feature discrepancy, and (c) Skype also developed clients for other operating systems like Symbian, Android, Blackberry, etc. as well as a Java-based client for other mobiles.

If anything, it's easier to develop cross-platform native applications these days, since the mobile space has mostly collapsed to just Android + iOS.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#62

Post by smt88 »

sgift wrote: post #25
germandiago wrote: post #15

Was not Servo a super nice thing it would allow better multithreading through Rust's power as compared to old, ancient C++ that everyone and her neighbour says it is so bad? What happened exactly to Servo? Why it was discontinued?

Servo was always intended as a way to proof certain technologies without the restrictions of a full browser engine like Gecko, so they could integrate them into Firefox/Gecko later if they panned out. They did and things got integrated into Firefox with https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum . Then Mozilla had a sustainability crisis and - imho unwisely - decided that one of the things that they could do without in the fut…

This isn't true. Servo was originally intended to become the rendering engine in FF.

As it became clearer that a full engine wouldn't be complete any time soon (if ever), they pivoted to using Servo to gradually upgrade the existing engine.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#63

Post by lenkite »

lakpan wrote: post #14
rollcat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I was particularly disappointed when Mozilla laid off the Servo team, I feel they let go of the most important thing they had. Gotta pay out those CEO bonuses somehow. In a sick plot twist Mozilla gets shocked back to its senses, re-hires the team, restarts the effort to replace Gecko with Servo, and Firefox finally lives up to its potential. (I wish.)

[flagged]

Sorry, I don't want ad topics as a native feature in my browser.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#64

Post by moritzwarhier »

jojobas wrote: post #30
thinkingemote wrote: post #13

I would like to see Positron rebooted. Positron is to Firefox what electron is to chromium. https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/

Yeah, it's an awesome idea to waste few hundred megabytes of RAM to run your app. This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death.

Isn't Tauri already capable to run several apps in their own sandboxes with a single host process, just like browser tabs?

I can see complaining about being forced to run multiple browsers at once, the hate Web as a UI stack in general, I don't really understand.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#65

Post by chris_wot »

yoavm wrote: post #46
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then Mozilla had a sustainability crisis and One way to word it... CEO had a 400% pay increase since 2018 All while Firefox browser market share dropped from 11.87% to 7.58% during the same period. World would be a better place without the Mozilla Foundation

Because without the Mozilla Foundation the Firefox market share would raise?

Sadly, this might well be the case.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#68

Post by steve_rambo »

LunaSea wrote: post #59
jojobas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native UI has been there for decades before. Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort. Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution.

> Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort. Aaand you lost most companies. > Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution. I'm sure that customers will be willing to install and run Wine.

Wine requires no more installation than Electron. There are lots of "pirated" releases for macOS/Linux with a bundled copy of Wine (sometimes with third party patches or some libraries swapped out).

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#69

Post by EasyMark »

coldacid wrote: post #41
diath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there's a viable solution for desktop native GUI, this trend will continue.

Qt?

too many gotchas with LGPL to become a universal solutions. I wish that gtk was more stable across all platforms. I have a few on macos and some are less than ... stable... compared to on linux.

Re: Mozilla's abandoned web engine 'Servo' project is getting a reboot

#70

Post by steve_rambo »

pquki4 wrote: post #56
jojobas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's an awesome idea to waste few hundred megabytes of RAM to run your app. This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death.

And you won't get Skype, Slack, Teams and many other applications people use on a daily basis on Linux, at all. Features on Mac will be limited compared to Windows version, because the team prioritizes work on the platform with the largest userbase. There will be more inconsistencies in feature and UI for "desktop" version vs web version, if companies still bother to maintain two versions. That's the future you want…

Telegram manages just fine, and looks the same on all platforms. I even ran it on FreeBSD for a few weeks with no issues. Their desktop client is developed pretty much by one person in C++ with Qt. It's really feature rich these days and actually works, unlike some of the things you've listed.
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