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A new browser engine may be on the horizon...
(github.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Always appreciate any work spent on any FOSS stuff out there but currently I'm a bit afraid that Gecko disappears into unimportance. So I'd prefer more contributions towards that one project rather than opening new ones.
The issue with browser engines is that it always requires work from two directions. The browser engine must be optimized to render websites as good as possible. And websites must be optimized to be rendered by all the different browser engines.
And (almost) no one is willing to do the latter for engines with a <1% market share. Already now, more and more commercial and non-commercial websites are only working properly with Chrome or its derivates.
Personally I hope firefox dies as fast as possible so we see some focus on good alternatives.
Gecko is not a good platform, there is a reason why people who use geckoview eventually all migrate away from it, the most recent example I can think of is wolvic, which hasn't replaced geckoview yet, but does have the version 1.0 of a chromium release now.
The sooner we get real alternatives to chromium and stop pretending that gecko is one the better. Currently servo is progressing really fast, has good APIs and usability for both a full desktop browser and embedded usecases (but still very immature).
Careful what you wish for, if Firefox dies now (before alternatives are viable) then Google owns the web and no new browser engines will be able to even get a sniff of a foot in the door!
I don't think it would be that bad. Users have proven willing to eat whatever trash chrome shoves down their throat. Firefox has also proven that they don't really do a great job at preventing chrome from controlling the web market as shown with JXL. They completely dropped the ball here and only recently after safari has proven to successfully adopt it, choosen to follow suite.
Apple has turned out to "prevent the chrome monopoly" far more effectively then firefox has.
Turns out that owning the platform (Android, iOS) counts for a lot. I like having an independent option.
It probably helps that WebKit was forked from KDE's Konqueror/KHTML and that Blink was a fork of WebKit.
Compared to Gecko, I'm sure they behave the same as far as webdevs were concerned - hindering it's adoption - webdevs don't want to support esoteric engines for obvious reasons.
webkit and blink are two massively different beasts, webkit and blink is just an engine in the end, the stuff on top matters too. If it was as simple as engines, it would be like comparing gnome web to chromium.
Chrome and firefox on android use their own image decoders.