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There's Interest Again In Embeddable Gecko To Better Compete With Chromium CEF

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  • There's Interest Again In Embeddable Gecko To Better Compete With Chromium CEF

    Phoronix: There's Interest Again In Embeddable Gecko To Better Compete With Chromium CEF

    Mozilla platform engineer Chris Lord is trying to make the case for developers to put greater focus on making Mozilla's Gecko layout engine more embed-able friendly so that it can be more easily deployed for new use-cases...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    A year ago, I would have been all over this. However, Servo is already set to surpass Gecko in probably a year, and it's already built to be embedded using CEF of all things. I'd rather the Gecko devs focus on tight integration with Firefox/Thunderbird to make those products as good as possible while Servo becomes more mature.

    Gecko has too many problems as it is without splitting dev time to work on something stupid that'll be replaced in a year or two.

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    • #3
      I agree with Daktyl198. I don't really see the point here.

      Rather spend time on Servo/Spidermonkey and or get web components to work natively.

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      • #4
        There will be long before Servo is considered for Firefox. While it's promising there are a lot more work to left get it feature complete with today's engines.
        However if Gecko starts supporting CEF, Firefox could start moving to that to make it easier to switch to Servo in the future.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Pajn View Post
          There will be long before Servo is considered for Firefox. While it's promising there are a lot more work to left get it feature complete with today's engines.
          However if Gecko starts supporting CEF, Firefox could start moving to that to make it easier to switch to Servo in the future.
          Yes, but going by the history of Gecko embedding, it's clear that Gecko is not well suited to that purpose - Mozilla has half-heartedly encouraged developers to build apps on top of Gecko, but there's never been much interest in embedding Gecko into other apps. And I suspect that the effort to make Gecko more easily embeddable would be sufficiently large that you'd be better off putting that effort into Servo anyway.

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          • #6
            Focus on Servo, why wasting resources on a dead horse?
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            • #7
              Does someone remember how Firefox born? Netscape focused on Gecko rendering engine and stopped developing the old rendering engine, the one used in Netscape Navigator. During that time it didn't release new versions of Navigator, and that helped Internet Explorer to surpass it... Netscape disappeared, and until Firefox was launched and started gaining traction, Microsoft kept the crown and web rot.

              Do you want to repeat the history?

              Servo is a good idea, but until it is production-ready, Gecko must be maintained, updated and enhanced in parallel.
              Last edited by rastersoft; 25 February 2016, 07:33 AM.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by rastersoft View Post
                Does someone remember how Firefox born? Netscape focused on Gecko rendering engine and stopped developing the old rendering engine, the one used in Netscape Navigator. During that time it didn't release new versions of Navigator, and that helped Internet Explorer to surpass it... Netscape disappeared, and until Firefox was launched and started gaining traction, Microsoft kept the crown and web rot.

                Do you want to repeat the history?

                Servo is a good idea, but until it is production-ready, Gecko must be maintained, updated and enhanced in parallel.

                This, exactly. You don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially the unproven, untested, bleeding edge basket. And you don't stop developing existing real world applications just because you have something shiny coming down the assembly line, in a year.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by wodencafe View Post


                  This, exactly. You don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially the unproven, untested, bleeding edge basket. And you don't stop developing existing real world applications just because you have something shiny coming down the assembly line, in a year.
                  Despite what you say, that's exactly how normal (i.e. for profit) businesses operate: when building the new hotness, they'll support the old and busted; but they will NOT add new features to it, generally speaking. It's just a waste of time, effort, and the opportunity to be the First To Market with new feature X.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rastersoft View Post
                    Does someone remember how Firefox born? Netscape focused on Gecko rendering engine and stopped developing the old rendering engine, the one used in Netscape Navigator. During that time it didn't release new versions of Navigator, and that helped Internet Explorer to surpass it... Netscape disappeared, and until Firefox was launched and started gaining traction, Microsoft kept the crown and web rot.

                    Do you want to repeat the history?

                    Servo is a good idea, but until it is production-ready, Gecko must be maintained, updated and enhanced in parallel.
                    While I would normally agree with your logic, my experience with Linux has been that Firefox is so far behind Chrome that the race is already lost. I say that as a fanboy for Firefox that still runs Firefox. But I run Firefox for ideological reasons, not practical ones - because in day to day usage Firefox for Linux just doesn't hold up to Chrome. I get pauses and hangs and even complete crashes in Firefox, and Chrome just trucks along.

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