Development of VERSO Web Browser Based on Servo Engine Underway
As part of the project Verso, a new Web browser is currently being developed based on the engine Servo. The VERSO code, written in Rust like Servo, is distributed under the licenses of MIT and Apache 2.0. The browser is in early development stages and features a simple user interface. Test builds are available for Linux (Flatpak), Windows, and MacOS, and can be found here.
The development of VERSO includes a custom compositor manager using Opengl which interacts with Servo through messages provided by the framework establish. Current work is focused on implementing a multi-window interface that utilizes different drawing contexts within a single Servo engine instance. Plans for future development include supporting multiprocess mode, sandbox isolation on all platforms, and leveraging the capabilities of the multimedia framework GStreamer.
Servo Engine Overview
The Servo project, originally developed by Mozilla and now under the Linux Foundation’s protection, is known for its support of multi-threaded rendering of web pages, parallel operations with DOM, and safe programming mechanisms in Rust. Servo was designed to divide DOM and rendering code into smaller parallel tasks to optimize resource usage on multi-core CPUs. Firefox has already integrated some components of Servo, such as a multi-threaded CSS engine and the Webrender drawing system.
Collaboration with Redox Operating System
From the Servo projects, collaboration with the Redox operating system is notable. The Servo and Redox teams have applied for an NGI grant to port the JavaScript engine spidermonkey, improve cross-compilation tools, and develop Rust stacks for working with fonts. Additionally, the Redox operating system has included an http server with HTTPS support written