"Personally I would prefer to have a less complex (and hopefully more secure) engine, over a monolithic blob of code that is compatible with a lot of websites but will end up to be utterly complex (as a NoScript/RequestPolicy user I don't mind sites to break a bit)."<p>It seems to me that the author of the question never looked at any of the details of what and how is actually implemented and asks "just so, in principle." Which can be more distracting that bringing any value to the project.<p>Even if we stay on that level of "not knowing what we actually and specifically want and don't want" what's the expected use of the engine that effectively doesn't work? The "reference." Would enough web developers then really even consider it worth of the effort? What would the web developers have by producing the code for something that somebody calls the "reference" which is otherwise unusable?
Given that my comment was called out here, I should probably clarify. The vast majority of the bugs I've been fixing in Servo have been related to standards compliance, not inserting hacks to make existing Web sites work.<p>There will unavoidably be some of the latter, but the fact is that the Web standards are pretty decent nowadays.
Another issue I have with browsing in general is that it's such a complex eco-system, there is simply no real secure webbrowser around that meets standards comparable with other secure software like RedPhone [1], Dovecot, Postfix, OpenBSD etc. All JavaScript engines are huge complex beasts (yes, V8 too), the new EcmaScript spec is 566 pages long[2], WebRTC and all it's required dependencies, xml, WebGL, etc. etc.<p>Even in order to be "only" compliant with modern specs, there is no escape from creating an extremely complex piece of software. This hurts real world security for everybody to the point where it might be better not to browse at all on machines with which you can access private servers or your private mail or conversations. It would be nice if there were some smaller browsers that didn't focus so much on backwards compatibility, but on leveraging the most important features so that most of the web could be browsed, still without sacrificing end-user security by implementing each and every feature and performance tweak. In the end, the OS and the browser should be trustworthy by the user.<p>[1] "Overall code quality: After reading Moxie's RedPhone code the first time, I literally discovered a line of drool running down my face. It's really nice." <a href="http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/03/here-come-encryption-apps.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/03/here-come-en...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Ecma-262.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST...</a>
The reality is that we want everyone to be happy, so we are often forced to workaround the workarounds. The end result is everything gets slowed down and messed up gradually.<p>This happens because of many reasons but it will happen in the future again and again. This is part of software development.<p>The best thing we can do to reduce this kind of cost is to think before we do. A good design and discipline often saves much.
I would rather a realistic and functional reference for developers. Being a clean and modern charade is almost certainly part of the problem with most reference material.
Mozilla really should be as aggressive as it possibly can be about Servo and rewriting other core components in Rust. This is what will give Firefox that new "fresh look" that Firefox is in dire need of. If they do this and they do it quickly I guarantee both developers and users will start actually being <i>excited</i> about Firefox again, as opposed to content at best (mainly because it's what they were already using or have a radical anti-Google stance, despite all the security benefits of Chrome compared to Firefox right now).<p>In my opinion, Mozilla shouldn't have even tried to implement Electrolysis in Firefox and shouldn't have announced a switch to WebExtensions in it either. Instead, it should've done what Microsoft did and create a new browser in Rust from scratch, with a much cleaner, easier to maintain codebase that would also be much more secure in the long term.<p>I don't know if Mozilla's funding would even allow for that, but I think that would've been the <i>better</i> strategy. The putting lipstick on a pig usually doesn't work, and it usually pisses off those who <i>preferred</i> the way the pig looked before, too, causing said platform to lose both old and potentially new users.
Are the latest standards not full of legacy ideas though? Really we need to throw away html/css/js and create something better from everything that has been learned.<p>What about replacing clientside javascript with Rust?