Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#11

Post by adamrezich » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

right, because you expect every browser to just use webkit/chromium

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#12

Post by jacooper » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

~~I think its a browser writing by one person.~~

Edit: the point is that its an independent browser, not that its built by just one person

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#13

Post by keyle » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

You should be impressed. A browser engine from scratch displaying a mammoth like google products.

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#14

Post by lslgienxials » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

Nobody is trying to impress you. There have been no new browser engines for years, with the idea that its impossible to develop one anymore being a meme people would espouse regularly.

This is impressive as a group of random interested people have made significant progress to making a functional web browser off the back of passion, not billions of dollars. Andreas has be an incredible force for showing what bringing people together through passion and openness can do.

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#15

Post by mananaysiempre » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

The “from-scratch” part is key. (The “can display Google Docs” part is also, well, correct in a strictly technical sense, see linked screenshot. It is still a significant achievement—even GNOME Web / Epiphany, based on WebKitGTK, has some problems running Google Docs.) The browser is based on a new engine that started development in 2019. It was originally written for a hobby OS with its own toolkit and only ported to run on top of Qt as well some months ago[1]. The original author of said OS used to be employed working on WebKit, as far as I understand.

[1] See previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#16

Post by ramesh31 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

*Kind of.

More power to them, but modern browsers are one of the most advanced and sophisticated pieces of software in the world, probably right next to an OS. WebKit and Chromium respectively have had billions of dollars and decades of development poured into them. The current duopoly state of the market reflects that fact, unfortunately.

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#17

Post by dingdingdang » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

Absolutely ace effort, do it for the love of it and great things can happen that would otherwise require mountains of both engineers and bureaucracy!

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#18

Post by DashAnimal » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

It's a NEW browser in every sense of the word - a new rendering and JS engine, not built on top of Chromium's (or Firefox's) backends. It's impressive because most people have a few preconceived notions: a) It is impossible to build a NEW browser given the complexity and huge history, b) browsers need to rely on JIT and other tricks. This browser is new hobby project, from scratch, breaks away from the preconceived notions of what a browser should be, and gives a glimpse of a future where another open-source project has some influence in web standards instead of the monolith companies that we have now (this is a pipe-dream of course, but we're in a better position now than we were a year ago).

Edit: And I would say to others, please don't downvote a question because I think it was genuine and not meant with malice - and provides a good learning opportunity for EVERYONE

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#19

Post by ajanuary » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

jacooper wrote: post #12

nonethewiser wrote: post #6

Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired such lively discussion.

~~I think its a browser writing by one person.~~ Edit: the point is that its an independent browser, not that its built by just one person

It isn’t. The SerenityOS project (of which this is an offshoot) was started by one person a few years ago, but it’s had a lot of contributors since then. https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/graphs/contributors

Re: Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

#20

Post by pavon » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

mananaysiempre wrote: post #4

Link is to a Nitter instance. Even though I prefer to use it as well, it should probably be pointed to the original Twitter instead? For deduplication purposes if nothing else.

To second this, many of the nitter instances and other twitter flattening sites are blocked by corporate security scanning proxies. For those in that situation, note that you can replace the domain name with twitter.com to get the original URL.