Post #4051441

2026-07-24 00:50 UTC

Thank you everyone for all your interesting thoughts and pointers re: the crisis that is web browsers. A few general followups collected in one place: 1. "Servo is the future, we/you should target effort there" - I'm finding this argument more and more convincing as the line count of the amount of code I'm tallying that I'd like to be removed from FF keeps going up. I am somewhat amazed/shocked by the rapid introduction (and the code size) of recent "features"

Replies (3)

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social 2026-07-24 01:04

A subtractive approach to browser dev (whether soft or hard fork) can only go so far. Ultimately the root problem, as many noted: 2. "web standards have become obscenely complicated - for various reasons - and developing a browser necessitates larger team efforts which perpetuates more complication." There are two ways to respond to that: attempt to turn the tide (and try to avoid getting swept up in it) or abandon the modern web in favour of something that allows smaller browser to blossom.

Open ##4051459
@yoasif@mastodon.social 2026-07-24 00:52

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social I think focusing on Servo is a mistake, unless you think you can get together a full time staff of engineers over a long period - that is what Mozilla and Google have, as does Microsoft (and they got out of the engine game). Otherwise, we just have a toy browser and have to go use the mainstream Firefox based browser anyway, and you keep the same duplication of effort that you were trying to initially solve.

Open ##4146004
@QuarkMaker@mastodon.social 2026-07-24 01:28

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social I'll start with the disclaimer “I'm an end user, not a developer. The closest thing to source code I've ever written was the most basic of GW-BASIC stuff in high school, and before many or most of you were born.” That said, I'm very happy with Firefox. I've been running it alone on both desktop and my Android phones for the last ca. 12 years. I've been a part of discussions, most recently in TuxDigital's Discord community, and the takeaway I have is basically: ↓

Open ##4146009