Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

Re:Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web by reubenmorais on Sunday November 17, 2019 @06:57AM (#21557563)

I don't know the details first hand, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is what I remember from talking to engineers who explored this possibility over the years:

You can't ship a native JIT (execute native code from the heap), I think it's enforced automatically by the App Store. So shipping your own JavaScript engine is out.

You can't download and interpret third-party code, I think this is enforced by human reviews, so shipping your own Web rendering stack is out.

You can use your own network stack with WebKit on top, which would let you offer some value to users like more advanced ad/tracker blocking.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web by robin_reala on Sunday November 17, 2019 @07:27AM (#21557639)

This is exactly what Chrome on iOS did: they embedded their own networking stack, but reused WebKit and JSC.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web by thekingofh on Monday November 18, 2019 @01:03PM (#21566502)

Thanks for the information. That part about disallowing third-party code interpreting is particularly painful to hear. They shut down any possibility of another browser. Could see that they do this for security reasons because a badly implemented interpreter could open up holes, but I'd imagine the sandbox is sufficient to allow at least interpreters.

[ Parent | on HN ]