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

[ssokolow]

Just a note about design: Historical record shows that some "well thought / well designed" programming languages, such as Ada, have not become major mainstream languages. I am not implying that Rust is such a language, I just want to note that "good intentions" of language designers aren't by themselves a guarantee of success.

As I understand it, one of the biggest deciding factors at the time was that platforms like BSD UNIX came with a free C compiler while all of the Ada compilers (or at least all of the ones worth considering, I'm unclear on that) cost a significant amount of money.

Furthermore, some languages, such as Java, have had the "blind luck" of filling an existing gap - that gap might just as well have been filled by a different new language, or by a "reboot" of an already existing language adopting new compiler/IDE/etc technologies.

To be fair, Sun Microsystems marketed the **** out of Java to middle management (ie. pointy-haired bosses).

[ssokolow]

Each tab should be fully isolated, as it is in Chrome and Edge.

That's their plan. The current "only one shared content process" state of things is intended to allow them to work the kinks out of the multiprocess design and get all the extensions compatible before they turn their effort toward crunching down the memory overhead of running additional content processes.

(Also, I should have a third consecutive reply in moderation above this one, talking about why Ada didn't take off and Java did. Please someone let me know if it doesn't show up within the next week.)

[ssokolow]

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.

Just saw this on Planet Mozilla today: WebExtensions in Firefox 48

The addition of reliable origin information was a major requirement for existing Firefox security add-ons performing cross-origin checks such as NoScript or uBlock Origin. This feature is unique to Firefox, and is one of our first expansions beyond parity with the Chrome APIs for WebExtensions.

Although requestBody support is not in Firefox 48 at the time of publication, we hope it will be uplifted. This change to Gecko is quite significant because it will allow NoScript’s XSS filter to perform much better as a WebExtension, with huge speed gains (20 times or more) in some cases over the existing XUL and XPCOM extension for many operations (e.g. form submissions that include file uploads).