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Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser

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

#51

Post by nonethewiser »

DashAnimal wrote: post #18
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 n…

Great quick overview of some of these challenges and thank you for taking my question at face value, it was asked honestly. Pretty cool what the dev is doing.

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

#52

Post by nonethewiser »

lslgienxials wrote: post #36
nonethewiser wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have misinterpreted my comment. I just wanted to know why this was news.

Ah, I'm sorry I misread the tone. I'm quite a big fan of the project and didn't reply in the most sane way possible. Sorry about that :)

No worries, I can see how it sounded. The project sounds pretty cool. I really dig the 90's UI of SerenityOS. Do you think the OS can be more than a novelty? I read that it doesn't support 3rd party software. Maybe I don't fully understand what that means, but wouldn't it mean anything that doesn't ship with the OS likely wont work? That I couldn't make my own package that could be installed via the package manager? Seems like that kind of OS just couldn't satisfy people's computing needs.

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

#54

Post by londons_explore »

UltraViolence wrote: post #31

I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as of yet lacking video and WebGL). And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

I'm actually pretty impressed with the Chromium source code. For such a huge, old and complex project, I think it is rather impressive. It's a lot better than the Linux kernel for example, another project of similar size/age/complexity.

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

#56

Post by senkora »

londons_explore wrote: post #54
UltraViolence wrote: post #31

I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as of yet lacking video and WebGL). And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

I'm actually pretty impressed with the Chromium source code. For such a huge, old and complex project, I think it is rather impressive. It's a lot better than the Linux kernel for example, another project of similar size/age/complexity.

I think a significant factor in this is that C++ simply has better abstractions for building large codebases than C does. Any big enough C project is gonna turn out a bit funky.

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

#57

Post by lzazz »

hbn wrote: post #25
ramesh31 wrote: post #16

*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.

From the FAQ [1] > Q: Why bother? You can’t make a new browser engine without billions of dollars and hundreds of staff. > Sure you can. Don’t listen to armchair defeatists who never worked on a browser. [1] https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

Sure you can start a new browser engine, but this one is nowhere near usable, and it will probably never be.

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

#58

Post by asadotzler »

UltraViolence wrote: post #31

I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as of yet lacking video and WebGL). And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

Mozilla wrote Gecko, with enough web compat to effectively take on IE6, in about 4 years. We made a couple of significant changes in years 4-6 right before Firefox launched, but Gecko was basically "there" about 4 years after Mozilla transitioned from the old Communicator engine to Gecko/NGLayout/Raptor/Magellen.

Having said that, Gecko wasn't a Netscape start from scratch effort. They acquired and built on a very simple and modular cross platform rendering engine that was used for the preview function in an HTML authoring product called WebSuite by Digital Style out of San Diego. (This is where Netscape got engineers Rick Gessner, Peter Linss, and manager Jim Hammerly.)

So, maybe if you count the WebSuite and the Netscape efforts both, you get something like 5-6 years of effort to get Gecko up to sufficient capability to compete in the market. That's a far cry from "it took Mozilla 25 years" though.

And yes, the Web is much more capable today, which makes building a rendering engine more difficult for sure, but the 25 year comment seemed wrong enough to me that I thought I'd share some of what I know as a Mozilla participant for the last 25 years (and a full-time Netscape/Mozilla employee for the last 22.5 years.)

This is not in any way meant to take away from the efforts of any new engine devs or teams. I'm amazed that anyone is even trying given how large the platform has become and have great respect for those trying and succeeding.

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

#59

Post by Wowfunhappy »

asadotzler wrote: post #58
UltraViolence wrote: post #31

I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as of yet lacking video and WebGL). And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

Mozilla wrote Gecko, with enough web compat to effectively take on IE6, in about 4 years. We made a couple of significant changes in years 4-6 right before Firefox launched, but Gecko was basically "there" about 4 years after Mozilla transitioned from the old Communicator engine to Gecko/NGLayout/Raptor/Magellen. Having said that, Gecko wasn't a Netscape start from scratch effort. They acquired and built on a very si…

> Mozilla wrote Gecko, with enough web compat to effectively take on IE6, in about 4 years.

Yes, but web standards were at least an order of magnitude simpler back then.

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

#60

Post by als0 »

UltraViolence wrote: post #31

I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as of yet lacking video and WebGL). And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

> And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

I'm sorry, but Ladybird is written in C++. Therefore, it's inevitable that it will have vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors.

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