Firefox Browser Architecture

Vision

Build the world’s best web browser

Strategy

Our top priority is to plan for where we want to go, but if we just think 5 years out, we’ll miss the dragon on the doorstep. So we need to look from both angles:

Look forward from where we are now: Move faster
Look backwards from where we want to get to: Consciously plan our architecture

Our Conclusions

This is a list of our findings that we're reasonably happy with so far.

Documenting our output looks at how we’re going to communicate with the rest of Mozilla.
Extracting Necko considers whether it's feasible or worthwhile to extract Necko — Gecko's C++ networking library — for use as a standalone component.
Problems with XUL aims to list the different kinds of problems that exist with XUL.
XBL and Web Components compares some old Mozilla technology (XBL) with modern Web Components.
Problems with XBL aims to list the different kinds of problems that exist with XBL.
Architecture Reviews are healthy and we proposed a process for healthy reviews (this document is incomplete and in-progress).
XBL Design Review packet is the packet that we prepared for the architectural design review for XBL removal.
Roadmap Review: Sync and Storage establishes that storage and syncing of user data is a pillar of the Firefox ecosystem, warranting holistic and long-term attention, and outlines where we’d like to end up and some ideas for how to get there.

Posts

We typically send our newsletters to firefox-dev.

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Explorations and Experiments

To support our conclusions we occasionally perform explorations and experiments. The first exploration is designed to support the notion that we can create a sync and storage layer in Rust that we can deploy to Desktop, Android and iOS.