Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.
Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.
> Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time.
That's hardly a fair assessment when large parts of Servo were mainlined into Firefox years before Ladybird even existed. Stylo, their CSS engine, landed in Firefox 57 in 2017 replacing ~160k lines of C++ with ~85k lines of Rust.
I played around with it as a replacement for embedded WebKit in a desktop app. It's getting there!
It's obviously not ready yet, but it's also not "infinitely far" anymore. I'm donating to them, because I think that they're the only realistic successor to the dying Firefox.
Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.
Nobody is using it because it's not ready to be used. Compatibility with web standards is nowhere near the level of browsers people actually want to use.
Writing a new browser engine at all is irresponsible and ridiculous. Doing it in anything other than Rust just makes it slightly more irresponsible than it already is.
I don't see how it is irresponsible or ridiculous. More browser engines is a good thing. It might be irresponsible to bet your company on it at this point, but on its own I think it is a worthy endeavor. Plus it looks like a lot of fun to work on! This is hacker news after all.
Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size.
It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus.
This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
> This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.
Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.
Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.
[delayed]
> Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time.
That's hardly a fair assessment when large parts of Servo were mainlined into Firefox years before Ladybird even existed. Stylo, their CSS engine, landed in Firefox 57 in 2017 replacing ~160k lines of C++ with ~85k lines of Rust.
I played around with it as a replacement for embedded WebKit in a desktop app. It's getting there!
It's obviously not ready yet, but it's also not "infinitely far" anymore. I'm donating to them, because I think that they're the only realistic successor to the dying Firefox.
Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.
Nobody is using it because it's not ready to be used. Compatibility with web standards is nowhere near the level of browsers people actually want to use.
Writing a new browser engine at all is irresponsible and ridiculous. Doing it in anything other than Rust just makes it slightly more irresponsible than it already is.
I don't see how it is irresponsible or ridiculous. More browser engines is a good thing. It might be irresponsible to bet your company on it at this point, but on its own I think it is a worthy endeavor. Plus it looks like a lot of fun to work on! This is hacker news after all.
I believe Ladybird is being ported to Rust as we speak.
Nah, just individual components where memory haters
Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size.
It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus.
This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
> This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.
Servo has always been a purely reasearch project with no intention to be ever used in production.
I thought the original purpose was to rEwRiTe iT iN rUsT and replace gecko in Firefox?