Vox: Alpha open-source browser engine in V

[iamthirsty]

> Using Hacker News as a test (JS disabled):

    20x faster rendering than Chrome (3ms vs 60ms)
    4x less RAM usage than FireFox
    40% less CPU usage than FireFox

I would hope that the browsers tested against also had JS disabled.

Although regardless, I don't think it's an amazing comparison tool, being that most of the web uses JS.

[cornedor]

> Although regardless, I don't think it's an amazing comparison tool, being that most of the web uses JS.

Add to that that most features to render Hacker News correctly are not implemented.

[yboris]

Built in V: https://github.com/vlang/v

> [the V language is a] simple, fast, safe, compiled language for developing maintainable software. Compiles itself in <1s with zero library dependencies.

[pityJuke]

I wonder the developers' chat app from what feels like 5 years ago will ever come out [0]. (edit: it's 6 years, according to the HN thread I found it on! [1]).

By the way, you should really close that Patreon (which in fairness isn't generating much income), considering Volt is clearly never coming out or being developed on, and you have another Patreon for your language!

[0]: https://volt-app.com/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778263

[Gualdrapo]

> A settings option to have vertical tabs.

How come it's the browser engine who deals with that and not the browser itself?

[calgarymicro]

They also say things like "Efficient built-in ad blocker Based on Ublock Origin" and "Keyboard navigation Vim bindings", so I think they're developing both a new browser and a new engine for the browser to use, and kind of conflating the two when discussing features on their home page.

[jefftk]

Nice to see another browser engine project!

For all the apparent diversity in full-featured browsers, right now they're all running on one of Gecko, WebKit, or Blink. And Blink started as a WebKit fork. If this succeeds we'll be up to four!

(Possibly you could also count Flow, though I haven't heard anything from them recently.)

[calgarymicro]

There's also SerenityOS LibWeb/Ladybird[0], which is very active, though I wouldn't say they've made it to being daily drivable yet.

[0]https://ladybird.dev/

[cp9]

well, the V hello world example still leaks memory like a sieve so, that's probably bad news for a browser engine

[gumballindie]

If this browser does what it claims it will spread like fire. Congrats on the initiative!

Edit: Tried it in Proton on Linux. Renders 20x at least slower than any other browser.

[diimdeep]

Another laud marketing attempt in converting attention economy into donations.

Deliver value first, then waste everybody time as it is probably will suck anyway.

[hypeatei]

> source code releases in 2024

Can anyone from the Vox team provide a rough date?

[munificent]

Looks [1] like it's created by Alexander Medvednikov, who is also the creator of V.

I have no dog in this fight, but V and its author have a somewhat storied history because the language's documentation made very strong claims around performance, safety, and the state of the language that may or may not have reflected reality.

Some previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250990

https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html

https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35

https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23/

https://christine.website/blog/v-vvork-in-progress-2020-01-0...

Again, I'm not taking a side one way or the other, nor am I endorsing any particular interpretation, but I think it's relevant history.

[1]: https://github.com/vlang/vox-browser

[lylejantzi3rd]

I'd love it if we could have a single story that's even somewhat tangentially related to V not devolve into rehashing the past. Let it go.

[amedvednikov]

4 year old articles from a "V should die" author with claims like using system("curl") for the networking library, type checker bugs that have been fixed a long time ago, etc are not really relevant.

[thewafflelord]

Comparing Browser speed with JS disabled is like comparing car speed without tyres.

[Scaevolus]

V's main draw is absurd vaporware claims.

[ehsankia]

Not only that, but from the screenshot of Hackernews (which itself is an extremely simple website), it seems like it can't even do very basic HTML/CSS rendering either yet. It probably doesn't even pass ACID 1.

[Y_Y]

What a beautiful car analogy.

Anyway it uses V8 just like all the other Chrome-alikes, so it should have the same performance there.

[raquelmir]

So it's an another Chrome-based browser?

[ehsankia]

It's not a browser, it's a browser engine. So it would be a replacement for Chrome's engine (Blink) or Firefox's (Quantum).

[garciasn]

Not according to the link. But I didn’t look at the code.

[Frajedo]

Won’t have a lot of Spanish users (Vox is a far right Spanish political group…)

[eggy]

That would be ridiculous. Vox is Latin for "voice" and has been used widely for a lot more than your reference. I am fluent in Spanish and lived there in the late 80s, but I have been out of touch, so this is the first I've heard of it. People use the word 'trump' all the time. Context and intelligence are needed in discourse.

[smalu]

And its also the name of American news site (vox.com), Polish furniture company (vox.pl)...for every major gtld, the vox.* is taken for something...Do not event start with the fruit nammed apple.

Context is the King, like @eggy said.