Some Of What You Can Find On Mozilla's Servo Roadmap

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Some Of What You Can Find On Mozilla's Servo Roadmap

Besides planning for the Servo and Browser.html initial release this summer there are a lot of other exciting items on the roadmap for developers working on Mozilla's Servo next-generation engine written in Rust...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Servo-Roadmap-2016-Q2

[Anvil]

the end of Firefox an XUL Extensions are closer, BYE Firefox

[ssokolow]

the end of Firefox an XUL Extensions are closer, BYE Firefox

More "bye Gecko". Given the amount of branding that's gone into Firefox, they're more likely to wind up with a Servo+WebExtensions-based Firefox than to ditch it altogether.

(Similar to how WebKit was forked from KHTML and now there's a WebKit KPart you can use in Konqueror in place of the KHTML KPart.)

[Anvil]

More "bye Gecko". Given the amount of branding that's gone into Firefox, they're more likely to wind up with a Servo+WebExtensions-based Firefox than to ditch it altogether.

(Similar to how WebKit was forked from KHTML and now there's a WebKit KPart you can use in Konqueror in place of the KHTML KPart.)

i can see Firefox/Servo going the same Fate as Netscape . Rust is to New. more an more people will just over over to Chrome/Chromium

[emblemparade]

Rust is to New. more an more people will just over over to Chrome/Chromium

Why would people care what language the renderer is written in? Rust may save Firefox: it has the potential to allow Servo to be less prone to bugs and memory leaks, and much faster to iterate with improvements and spec support. I suspect that Server will allow Firefox to implement new web standards faster than any of the competitors, leading it to becoming the "cutting edge" browser.

[Luke]

Unless this new Firefox can fake the results in a canvas tracking (so it can render a canvas image but can't be tracked by it) like Canvasblocker, block javascript on a per-origin site basis like NoScript, and block connections to trackers like Disconnect or supports existing or new extensions for this purpose I will be unable to use it.

It would suck if "real" Firefox ever stopped gettting security updates. I wonder how long the support for the last ESR version that can use the full set of extensions will be-and if the proposed compatability layer will be fast enough for NoScript, Disconnect, and CanvasBlocker. I worry that some of those functions go too deep into the browser for the more limited WebExtensions model.

I have noticed that plans to drop the old extensions and force signatures have been delayed again and again. Mozilla should not risk their existing userbase (such as security/privacy fans) in a risky attempt to get Chrome's users. Interestingly, not even Chrome had dared to say, make it totally impossible to use the browser without an account or when not logged in. Like the makers of DRM'ed coffee makers found out, people really DO have their limits.

[johanb]

Mozilla should not risk their existing userbase (such as security/privacy fans) in a risky attempt to get Chrome's users.

For mozilla that's just a tiny part of their userbase, and as far as i know just as many security fans use chromium as firefox.

I'm honestly surprised that so many here are not excited to see this. And even though I love firefox, lets be honest here. Firefox has been slightly behind Chrome in terms of both user experience and performance for quite some time now, and personally i mostly use it because of less ram usage and some extensions whose chrome alternatives are simply not as powerful. To see mozilla striving to become the browser king for the mainstream again is something that I am very happy to see, and even though this will piss off some power users by having to break some extensions for a while, most of those extensions will sooner or later be back if the demand is there. I have yet to see enough aruments against these changes to be even remotely concerned about firefox in the long run.

[juno]

Given the amount of branding that's gone into Firefox, they're more likely to wind up with a Servo+WebExtensions-based Firefox than to ditch it altogether.

Do you really think so?
Firefox has very bad reputation, if you just read forums' posts or comments below Firefox-related news, you see complaints all over how Chrome is the leightweight, fast alternative and FF is the slow, old, huge, piece of junk. And that's here in Germany, where Firefox is still used very widespreadly and still the most used browser. And obviously that's just wrong, but reputation is gone already and the market share is falling.
However, I'd like to see servo in "Firefox", but I think they will come up with a new branding

[bug77]

Do you really think so?
Firefox has very bad reputation, if you just read forums' posts or comments below Firefox-related news, you see complaints all over how Chrome is the leightweight, fast alternative and FF is the slow, old, huge, piece of junk. And that's here in Germany, where Firefox is still used very widespreadly and still the most used browser. And obviously that's just wrong, but reputation is gone already and the market share is falling.
However, I'd like to see servo in "Firefox", but I think they will come up with a new branding

Well, you may read all that on the forums, but that doesn't mean it's not bull. Chrome may be a lot of things, but it's not lightweight. Also, of all the browsers I know, Chrome seems to be the only one without an option to reject 3rd party cookies by default. So there are areas where Firefox still holds an advantage.
Plus, I'm pretty sure part of the users that complain about Firefox's sluggishness/unresponsiveness are actually using the 32bit version (which, sadly, is what mozilla.org offers by default for Windows). The one area where Firefox falls behind is handling dozens of open tabs. But if you're not that type of user, Firefox will do just fine.

Fwiw, I have Firefox with ~30 tabs open right now and it uses less than 800MB RAM. A dozen tabs opened in Chromium are currently eating more than that.
Sure, Firefox is not hip any more and Mozilla may not have the resources to keep the project afloat for the next decade. But that only means it's future may be clouded, not that Firefox today is bad.

[uid313]

How will Browser.html integrate with the system and give a native desktop application experience on GTK and Qt based systems?

Will it blend in and look native or will it look alien?