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What you suggest is in fact being done. Servo is the project to rewrite Firefox's engine in Rust, a modern language focusing on provable thread safety through abstractions with zero runtime cost. Quantum is the project to replace parts of Firefox's engine written in C++ with the parts of Servo that are completed.

https://servo.org/ Browsers engines are hugely complicated, and forking then will always be hard, very hard.
Mozilla Firefox is and will remain the best option... with the work being put into servo and features being ported over to firefox we're seeing dramatic performance improvements coming up...

Extensions breaking is always sad, but there is finally a WebExtensions spec, so breakage can be prevented in the future. The reason extensions are breaking is because they historically have been tied to semi-internal APIs; and have been holding back development... In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous.

This just goes to show how Chrome is really driving the web forward.

While Chrome is implementing new technologies, we see Firefox basically just copying Chrome. Firefox only just got multi-process support, many years after Chrome offered it. Firefox is now moving to an extension model that's nearly identical to Chrome's. And we can't forget how Firefox's UI imitates Chrome's in so many ways.

Really, I can't think of the last innovative thing that Firefox has added. It's like they're constantly playing catch-up to Chrome now.

Even worse is Mozilla's Servo project. For those who don't know, it's Mozilla's attempt at a new browser engine, written in Rust (which itself has been quite a debacle, I think). It has had enough trouble even getting to where browsers were 15 years ago. Now each release of Chrome leaves Servo further and further behind.

With Mozilla bungling things so badly, and with Firefox's market share dropping into the low single digit percentages, it's like Google has become the only browser vendor deciding the future of the web. Sure, Apple, Microsoft and others probably have some input, but a web technology doesn't really exist until Google implements it.

In case you missed it, they've created a new systems programming language from scratch only to be able to do what they couldn't do with C++, i.e. developing a new rendering engine with no memory leaks.

Why didn't you mention the name of this programming language that they've created? I'm sure you do know that its name is Rust. But I'm sure you also realize that if you had given its name, you would have been rightfully modded down.

Slashdot isn't Hacker News, or Reddit, or Stack Overflow. We aren't naive. We see through the Rust hype. We know it's nothing special. We know it gives no advantages over modern C++, and actually has a lot of drawbacks.

Shit, Rust has only one implementation! C++ has two mature, independent open source implementations, several other less-mature open source implementations, and multiple independent commercial implementations. We can't take Rust seriously until there is more than one implementation.

It's also trivial to avoid memory leaks when using modern C++. Efficient, safe, well-tested, open source smart pointer implementations have been readily available for many years now. If the Firefox devs can't figure out how to use them, then switching to a totally new language they've crapped out themselves sure as hell won't help them! Rust makes C++ look simple and comprehensible.

You also didn't mention the name of their new rendering engine. As I'm sure you're aware, its name is Servo.

I encourage people to try Servo. It can be downloaded from here. Try the nightly. Their latest and greatest. And witness for yourself how terrible it is. If your experience is anything like mine, and I'm pretty sure it will be, you'll quickly be greeted with terribly broken page layouts, assuming Servo doesn't crash out first!

Despite being described as "modern" on the Servo home page, I can generally get a better browsing experience from IE 3, which is probably about 20 years old now.

Firefox's future is looking bleak enough as it is. If Rust and Servo are supposed to help Firefox, then I think we might as well start writing its obituary.

Is Firefox developed in Rust?

It's just now starting to be. Mozilla's research browser, Servo, is written in Rust and they have started to integrate Servo components into Firefox. Components like Servo's WebRender significantly outperform other browsers.

I'm kind of astounded that everyone here is so cynical while at the same time being so ill-informed about the stuff Mozilla is/has been doing the past few years. In addition to "Quantum Flow", they wrote a C++ replacement (Rust) that's concurrency-minded and memory-safe for better performance and fewer bugs, as well as a completely new HTML/CSS rendering engine (Servo) written in said programming language, that's faster than any other rendering engine in existence at this point. All this is coming to Firefox soon. (Although IMHO they might as well just rebrand/rewrite a whole new browser at this point, seeing as Firefox extensions are disappearing and the Firefox's market share has already dwindled). Relevant links: https://www.rust-lang.org/ https://servo.org/ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quant...

Just look at Servo to see what can be done with Rust.

Rust allows a long-time browser developer to spend years creating a half-arsed browser that barely works and that's only about as capable as Netscape Navigator 4 was 20 years ago.

Or look at the Rust compiler and standard library.

Rust allows the creation of a compiler that depends heavily on LLVM (which is mainly written in C++), yet somehow manages to feel so much slower than Clang, which is a C++ compiler that also uses LLVM.

If you need another example, you can look at the thousands of Rust libraries scattered around GitHub.

Most of these libraries are woefully incomplete, don't see anything resembling proper releases, and probably won't even compile because they use last week's (or last month's, or last year's) dialect of Rust instead of whatever the Rust compiler understands today.

Why aren't the Rust programming language and the Nim programming language included?

Both of those are hot languages that are being used to accomplish some really great things. Like Rust is being used to work on the way-cool Servo web browser engine, which some day may even replace Firefox's Gecko engine!

Rust and Nim are leading the way. They are like where Java was in late 1995. They're new, they're gaining traction, and soon they'll be used everywhere.

Will Servo, Mozilla's new web engine written in the Rust programming language, be getting support for this, too?

Mozilla Servo

It's fast as hell

Any more empty complaints?

You need to try Servo. It's the next-generation browser engine from Mozilla and it's fantastic. It's written in Rust so it's beyond secure, because Rust is the most secure programming language ever created. Rust is also native compiled like C so it's fast. Some people have even found Rust to be faster than C! Rust is the next-generation programming language from Mozilla in case you aren't aware. Rust and Servo are the future. They're taking the current state of the art and bumping it up not just one notch, and not just two notches, but at least five or six notches. They've elevated the game and now it's time for the other browser vendors to start playing catch-up with Rust and Servo.

Obviously Firefox wasn't shamed last year, or they would have tried to improve security.

It is a bit premature to say this. Mozilla has been working on some major security enhancements, it is just not done yet.

Rust is a language with heavy emphasis on security, among other things it guarantees memory safety, and threads without data races, which are 2 of the most common sources of security vulnerabilities in every software. Mozilla is building a new rendering engine called servo in Rust, with an explicit goal of enhancing security.

Rust is important for several reasons:

1. Rust is the project that some prominent Ruby hypesters leaped to after it became clear that the Ruby on Rails ship was sinking fast. There's no point hyping a dying web framework that everybody sensible has come to hate.

2. Rust is very compatible with social justice. Its community is obsessed with diversity, tolerance, and all of that stuff, despite this community mainly consisting of young white males. I think they might have put more effort into their Code of Conduct than they put into Rust's standard library.

3. Rust is the programming language that will likely result in Mozilla's downfall. They're using Rust for their Servo browser engine, which is supposed to replace Gecko (the engine used in Firefox, and written in C++) at some point. Resources that could have been used to salvage Gecko and Firefox, like by speeding them up, fixing years-old bugs, and reverting Firefox's UI back to the 3.x UI, have instead been wasted on Rust and Servo. By the time Servo is ready for use in Firefox, Firefox will have been almost completely abandoned by its few remaining users.

4. Rust's approach to managing memory and other resources is so complex and impractical that it makes C++ seem like a easy language to learn and use.

A generation of experts will have to work to ensure computer math, science and games can often be spread over the many cores.

I think that Mozilla will take care of that problem.

They're working on Rust, which according to its home page is "a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents nearly all segfaults, and guarantees thread safety."

They're also working on Servo, which according to its home page is "a modern, performant browser engine designed to be appropriate for applications including embedded use. Written in Mozilla's new systems programming language, Rust, the Servo project aims to achieve better parallelism, security, modularity, and performance."

Wait, who the fuck am I kidding?! After witnessing the destruction of Firefox over the last few years, I have my doubts about the eventual success of both Rust and Servo. My only experience with Rust so far has been horrible. It's like C++, but done wrong, and C++ isn't done all that right, either! I tried Servo, too. Browsing modern web sites using Servo was like browsing them using Netscape Navigator 3: more seemed broken than was working!