Servo is really great: Rust seems like a no brainer choice for a modern web engine, and its clean, performance-focused design from the ground up is wonderful.
But it seems really hard for it to get anywhere just based on occasional contributions from volunteers. I was actually quite surprised that basic functionality like <progress> and the :checked attribute were not even supported prior to this release.
Servo got 527 commits, while Chromium has over 20,000 commits.
As an on-again off-again project, I've been building an incremental game that is pretty much just hundreds of progress bars - a little bit out of the norm for the browser.
Firefox everything renders smoothly and gently.
Chrome chugs, skips paints, delays animation frames, skips some events, and batches others.
Game uses a few features that aren't in Servo yet... But maybe I can tweak it...
It's heartening to see a large group of people working (mostly) for free on a passion project. Makes me optimistic about the resilience of intrinsic human drive.
One of the things I find really helpful about servo (as a casual user) is the breadth of pre-built releases they have. It makes it much more feasible to actually use on a day-to-day basis, especially on android
The progress on Servo is impressive. UI polish is required in order to be more usable. Things like keyboard shortcuts to focus the address bar are required to make it feasible for more daily driving use
September in Servo: <progress>, rounded rectangles, and more
(servo.org)265 points by iamnothere 5 November 2026 | 76 comments
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But it seems really hard for it to get anywhere just based on occasional contributions from volunteers. I was actually quite surprised that basic functionality like <progress> and the :checked attribute were not even supported prior to this release.
Servo got 527 commits, while Chromium has over 20,000 commits.
As an on-again off-again project, I've been building an incremental game that is pretty much just hundreds of progress bars - a little bit out of the norm for the browser.
Firefox everything renders smoothly and gently.
Chrome chugs, skips paints, delays animation frames, skips some events, and batches others.
Game uses a few features that aren't in Servo yet... But maybe I can tweak it...
Do they allow vibe-coded contributions?
how sad.
Feels like a missed opportunity where we could take a giant leap forward.