Servo's modularity is already having benefits beyond the engine itself. For example, its selectors engine and CSS parser already power a whole ecosystem of HTML rewriters, sanitizers, scrapers, SVG renderers, minifiers that all benefit from having a "browser-grade" CSS support instead of some half-assed imitation. You can style buttons in a game engine using CSS thanks to Servo's component, and it's implemented directly in the engine, without bringing in a whole web view.
There's no competition, as qutebrowser is a browser, and Servo is an engine. If anything, Servo could be added to qutebrowser as an alternative to QtWebEngine (which is Chromium ultimately) and WebKit it uses.
Ladybird isn't promising for a few reasons, like the poor choice of language, and the fact that it's developed by fascists.
Also, Ladybird did not start in 2024. That's when Kling left the SerenityOS project to focus only on Ladybird. Ladybird as a browser started in 2022, but LibWeb, the actual web engine, started in 2019.
Things get funnier once you learn one of the first real (not compatibility benchmark) websites to be tested during development (as you can see on Andreas' old videos) was 4-freaking-chan.
While on the purely technical side, yes, it is really simple as far as modern websites go, it was a warning of the future I sadly took too long to understand.
There is a section titled "Is it really a new web engine" in the article itself
In any case we cannot consider it really “new”, but Servo is way younger than other web engines that started decades before.
In 2023, Igalia took over Servo project maintenance, with the main goal to bring the project back to life after a couple of years with minimal activity.
A highlight is that the project community has been totally renewed and Servo’s activity these days is growing and growing.
Servo's modularity is already having benefits beyond the engine itself. For example, its selectors engine and CSS parser already power a whole ecosystem of HTML rewriters, sanitizers, scrapers, SVG renderers, minifiers that all benefit from having a "browser-grade" CSS support instead of some half-assed imitation. You can style buttons in a game engine using CSS thanks to Servo's component, and it's implemented directly in the engine, without bringing in a whole web view.
KDE is also using Servo's
cssparsercrate as part of their upcoming Union theming engine:https://conf.kde.org/event/9/contributions/268/attachments/160/206/arjen-hiemstra-akademy2025.pdf
Is there a recording of this talk ? Would like to hear the audio to it since the slides seem to be complementary to it.
Here you go: https://youtu.be/YXxbhJ6ixkY?t=341
Thank you!
I hope one day to see competition against qutebrowser!
There's no competition, as qutebrowser is a browser, and Servo is an engine. If anything, Servo could be added to qutebrowser as an alternative to QtWebEngine (which is Chromium ultimately) and WebKit it uses.
new? hasn't this existed for a ~decade now? It was essentially the reason rust was created?
Relative to their other browser engines (e.g WebKit, chromium) you can say it’s fairly new
One of the more promising contenders for browser engines, Ladybird, started in 2024. Flow also exists and I believe was also started after Servo.
Also more importantly, unlike Servo those both pass the Web Platform Tests at 90% which makes them an Apple approved browser engine in Europe for iOS.
Ladybird isn't promising for a few reasons, like the poor choice of language, and the fact that it's developed by fascists.
Also, Ladybird did not start in 2024. That's when Kling left the SerenityOS project to focus only on Ladybird. Ladybird as a browser started in 2022, but LibWeb, the actual web engine, started in 2019.
Things get funnier once you learn one of the first real (not compatibility benchmark) websites to be tested during development (as you can see on Andreas' old videos) was 4-freaking-chan.
While on the purely technical side, yes, it is really simple as far as modern websites go, it was a warning of the future I sadly took too long to understand.
I think browser engines are interesting out of principle because we don’t have enough competition.
And no, Kling is not a fascist.
There is a section titled "Is it really a new web engine" in the article itself
Until lots of people are using it it remains new for them.