Hey Mark, Since you've traveled this far down the rabbit hole already, seems like I should just _casually mention_ that contributions are welcome ^_^
You can learn about Mozilla's next-gen Android browsers and browser components here, if you're interested: https://mozac.org/contributing/ https://mozac.org/blog/ https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/android-components If Android hacking isn't your thing, the contributor docs on MDN can help you explore other projects: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide Feel free to ping me, too, with any questions. Have fun! Jared On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 11:45 AM <mark.erik...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah, this kind of detail was really missing from the public statements > :) I don't expect consumer-facing PR posts to go into nitty-gritty > technical details, but it wasn't apparent that there was really anything > more going on besides "nope, we're just going to rewrite it and move all > the UI around in the process". Appreciate the info. > > On Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 1:41:44 PM UTC-4, Kris Maglione wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 10:07:28AM -0700, mark.erik...@gmail.com wrote: > > >- I am very happy with the current Fennec app and its UI, and > > >don't understand why Mozilla feels a need to drop that product > > >and create a new one from scratch. > > > > We're not creating a new one from scratch. Many of the component > > parts of Fenix already existed, and the core is basically the > > same as Fennec. That said, there are many reasons: > > > > 1) GeckoView, which is a more or less drop-in replacement for > > Android's WebView, is designed to be used by any application > > which needs to embed web content on Android, including > > potentially other web browsers. It's an important part of our > > core mission to make sure the web remains a viable living > > standard, with multiple competing implementations, to avoid the > > sort of stagnation and vendor lock-in we saw when IE6 > > essentially ruled the world. > > > > 2) We also already needed to maintain WebView-based browser > > front-ends for configurations where shipping our entire > > rendering back-end was not viable or practical. Given that we > > already need to maintain these separate, already-compatible > > front-end and back-end implementations, having to maintain an > > entirely separate browser with a completely different front-end, > > and a lot of different back-end glue, is just not a good use of > > resources. > > > > 3) GeckoView and the Fenix front-end are much more modern > > frameworks than Fennec. They were architected from the ground up > > using all of the knowledge and experience that we've gained > > developing Fennec and a number of other experimental browsers > > over the years. The result is that they are not only much easier > > to develop and maintain, but also much faster and more resource > > efficient. > > > > 4) The current Fennec browser, unlike Fenix and our desktop > > browsers, is very much single-process by design. Web content > > runs in the same process as the browser UI. The native Java UI > > allows us to use threading to work around some of the > > performance problems inherent in this sort of design, but it > > doesn't give us any of the security properties of process > > isolation, which are becoming increasingly important in the age > > of Spectre attacks. If we wanted to continue maintaining Fennec > > apart from Fenix, we would need to drastically rearchitect it to > > support process isolation for web content. And, given that > > Fenix and GeckoView were designed to handle this from the start, > > again, that would just not be a good use of resources. > > > > -- > > Kris Maglione > > > > UNIX is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. > > --Dennis Ritchie > > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
