Tofino project - future Firefox?

[joby_toss]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/11 ... is_chrome/

The head of Mozilla's Firefox browser is looking to the future. And, for the moment at least, it seems to lie in rival Chrome.

Senior VP Mark Mayo caused a storm by revealing that the Firefox team is working on a next-generation browser that will run on the same technology as Google's Chrome browser.

"Let's jump right in and say yes, the rumors are true, we're working on browser prototypes that look and feel almost nothing like the current Firefox,"...

I'm not sure exactly how serious they are about this project or about the engine switch, but I hope Firefox will continue to be ... Firefox, not another Chrome clone.

[webfork]

I found The Register article somewhat abrupt so here's a bit more background.

Assuming a switch to Chromium/Blink goes through, I'm obviously worried about a web mono-culture that would be engendered by a single browser engine (all borne from webkit/KHTML) and it's various blurry incarnations.

[JohnTHaller]

Assuming a switch to Chromium/Blink goes through, I'm obviously worried about a web mono-culture that would be engendered by a single browser engine (all borne from webkit/KHTML) and it's various blurry incarnations.

Unfortunately, you can thank Apple for that. iPhones and iPads are only allowed to use their implementation of webkit and every "browser" on the iOS platform is a UI atop that browser engine. So, that's already a monoculture. Firefox on iOS is a UI atop iOS webkit (as is Chrome, Opera, etc). Webkit is baked into Android in the form of Blink or Chrome (depending on version and OEM). So mobile is completely dominated by webkit. Firefox on Android still uses Gecko and works OK, but not as well as Chrome does. Basically, we're in for a webkit-only future and the writing has been on the wall for a while. The last holdout will be Microsoft, but a future version of Edge will likely use webkit within about 2 years.

[joby_toss]

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/04/13/firefox-chrome-clone/

No, Firefox won’t become a Chrome clone

[SYSTEM]

Assuming a switch to Chromium/Blink goes through, I'm obviously worried about a web mono-culture that would be engendered by a single browser engine (all borne from webkit/KHTML) and it's various blurry incarnations.

At least WebKit and Blink are modern engines which have good support for web standards. The situation isn't as bad as the years in which Internet Explorer 6 dominated and held the web back.