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Experimental browser built in HTML

github.com

189 pointsreddotX41 comments

See also servo-shell, a stripped-down related project that runs in Servo today: https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell

The goal is to eventually grow Servo's functionality to be able to run all of browser.html.

I believe that part of the idea here is that Mozilla is more-or-less fed up with XUL (the foundation of Firefox's UI), and rather than reimplementing it to serve as the basis for Servo's UI would rather just leverage the stock web technologies that Servo already supports.

I think it's more like this: The Web platform (HTML, JS, CSS, the DOM, and friends) has evolved most of capabilities that Mozilla pioneered with XUL so we can now attempt a "stock web technologies" approach to front end development.

I think they already threw away XUL for Firefox on Android.

Not so much because we're fed up with it as simply the performance characteristics of low end Android phones and the user expectations regarding mobile browsers not being compatible.

Startup time is just so darn important.

Not being able to rely on Gecko for stuff that must be accessible immediately means that Firefox for Android has to re-implement a load of things. That's not a choice that was made voluntarily.

On the plus side, Firefox for Android loads up quite a lot faster relative to the built-in Browser and Chrome today than it used to in the XUL days.

Doesn't it still use Gecko though?

Yes, for web content, but not to render all of the UI as well.

Keep in mind that on the desktop, firefox renders the user interface using XUL and CSS. In this case, (I assume) it's just using a native android ui instead.

Yes, Firefox for Android still uses Gecko.

On the contrary, if I'm not mistaken Firefox for Android threw out most of the "webbiness" in the UI and uses native UI heavily. That's why it's not portable to let's say Sailfish / Nemo and other mobile Linuxes, unlike the old XUL Fennec.

Not sure why it doesn't use IPC embedlite though when it's already went the native UI route. It's used successfully for the Sailfish browser (which uses Gecko embedding): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI

Because this code never landed on the upstream repository.

I think Mozilla never accepted it, it was proposed to land it.

Fortunately, a good embedding story is one of Servo's top-line goals.

That's good.

A similar effort: http://breach.cc/

it uses nodeJS's webkit binding. You can open an inspector on any element of the UI

FWIW In Chrome you can already inspect the inspector.

Whaattt? Sure enough, I just hit `CTRL + Shift + I` a few times and ended up with an inspector of an inspector of an inspector. Inspectorception?

Any idea what happened to breach? It looked very promising when it was first announced, but I can see there hasn't been any contribution for more than 6 months.

This was updated less than a day ago: https://github.com/breach/thrust

It is align with the main developer's 'ExoBrowser' arquitecture: http://breach.cc/2014/07/15/next-steps-for-breach.html

still waiting for the windows version

Video posted in the reddit thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fgWWQLWa8

Commit: less offensive message in index.html (14 days ago)

https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/commit/b45df0941e2dd...

Too bad about the line right above, though.

What? That's called "documentation". Its the "why" to complement code whose purpose is non-obvious.

How on earth do you find technical and accurate documentation to be offensive?

I'm not giving any opinion here. I don't find it offensive -- I find it funny. They just missed the line right above where the same remark is made sans the "wtf".

good on them for not just replacing it with "wtf m*c os"

I'm offended

Can't trust anything on April 1.

This has been around for a while; it was previously called Firefox.html and was discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8730903

It's March 31 at Mozilla (San Francisco)

Tired of these april fool's jokes: building an app using a document markup language? Who is going to believe that!

Does anybody have prebuilt Servo for Windows 8.1 x64? I want to run this but I can't be bothered to build Servo just to test this.

We don't yet support Windows, though some awesome community members are slowly Windowsifying the deps. Any help would be much appreciated :)

Vivaldi, a browser made by ex-Opera employees, does this too: base the browser-UI on web technologies.

And honestly, it does make sense: any improvement you make to any part of your browser engine translates into improvements in the browser itself. It's the ultimate dogfooding.

https://www.vivaldi.com/

It's too bad Vivaldi tracks all of its users with no opt out possibility, could have been interesting.

source?

A browser running inside a browser!!!

Actually, a browser running in a web runtime ;)

Well, we already have Chrome OS and Firefox OS, so it's not inconceivable that one day, everything you see on a screen will just be a bunch of iframes nested inside one another.

It's browsers all the way down.

Inside a browser.

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