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Ladybird browser spreads its wings

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Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#111

Post by flohofwoe »

nutrie wrote: post #55
lukan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every open source software has spyware and ads activated by default, while marketing itself as privacy friendly. Yes, can all be deactivated, I also use FF, but I do not trust Mozilla anymore.

Sure, there are forks such as LibreWolf. I understand the reservations regarding Mozilla Foundation, although I generally like what they've been doing. Every org has people with stupid ideas. However, the way I see it, it's unlikely that the community will be able to produce a competitive browser in a broader sense (stability, performance, security, cross-platform...), meaning that the likelihood of Firefox being sti…

The way things are going at Mozilla currently, I wouldn't be surprised if Firefox is just another Chromium wrapper in 10 years. Technology doesn't seem to count as much as the C-suite filling their pockets at this "new" Mozilla.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#112

Post by nullpilot »

lukan wrote: post #37
nutrie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what is wrong with Firefox. It is open-source, highly configurable and reasonably secure (if you have the time to configure). Yes, it has shortcomings, but what doesn't.

Not every open source software has spyware and ads activated by default, while marketing itself as privacy friendly. Yes, can all be deactivated, I also use FF, but I do not trust Mozilla anymore.

This about sums it up. Plus donating to Mozilla means your money goes to all sorts of things, but hardly if at all where you want it to.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#113

Post by wakeupcall »

miki123211 wrote: post #49
lukan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every open source software has spyware and ads activated by default, while marketing itself as privacy friendly. Yes, can all be deactivated, I also use FF, but I do not trust Mozilla anymore.

Firefox is open source, it would be far easier for the community to make a stripped down Firefox port with no telemetry, no ads and no upsells for Mozilla services. With that said, almost all of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, which might possibly influence what features they implement, their stance on various web standards etc.

As pointed out, these do exist. I've been using several over the decades. And chrome forks too.

They all tend to lag behind over time, until the fork is eventually too old and it's either abandoned, useful changes I was relying on are dropped, or becomes just too old compared to upstream to be fully compatible (and thus just annoying to use).

Just the burden to upkeep the upstream changes, in either firefox or chrome forks, seems to be significant enough that I'm quite pessimistic on the lifespan of these projects.

You might just as well do your own thing, and don't pretend to be a mainstream browser replacement altogether.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#114

Post by torstenvl »

samiv wrote: post #108
asddubs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. Your prediction might be more appropriate for a project that's in its first week of development, not having been developed for several years and already overcome many difficult hurdles. And if they switch to chromium, there is literally nothing interesting about this project. The fact that it's a novel engine is their only differentiating feature.

The age of the project or the development status of the project does not matter, what matters is the user base. If you build anything that accumulates users, business interests will be aroused at some point. Business people don't give a shit about the technology itself unless of course the technology itself really is a USP and can be converted into €$. But most people (end users) don't care much about the underlying…

> The age of the project or the development status of the project does not matter

If you have any evidence to support this, you could become quite well-known for disproving the Lindy effect's applicability to software projects.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#115

Post by AshleysBrain »

branko_d wrote: post #98

From the linked site: > In the post-Spectre world you must have site isolation. The JS for a site (roughly, eTLD+1) must have its own OS address space separate from other sites. Wasn't the whole point of Spectre/Meltdown to read the virtual address space of a different process?

As I understand it: Spectre/Meltdown allow reading from the address space of the same process only. If browsers put different origins in the same process - which they used to - then JS code can break the same-origin security barrier and read details of other origins directly from memory. By putting each origin in its own OS address space they are protected from this attack as JS can still only read data from its own origin even when using security flaws to read any part of the address space.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#116

Post by garbagewoman »

lukan wrote: post #82
lawn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as a bonus, those were added and activated as features via update, without telling. At least for me. Ouch, they were new to me and also activated.

Yep, stuff like this makes me question many things. I mean in a sane world this should be enough to sue them into oblivion. But the general bar in that regard is so low, that apparently even open source companies can do it as default.

Why don’t you think it’s a sane enough world to “sue them into oblivion”?

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#117

Post by hippich »

nutrie wrote: post #29
manuelmoreale wrote: post #10

I’m irrationally excited for this project. The idea of a community built browser is incredibly appealing considering the current landscape where all browsers are either Chrome, Chrome in a trench coat, or Firefox

I don't understand what is wrong with Firefox. It is open-source, highly configurable and reasonably secure (if you have the time to configure). Yes, it has shortcomings, but what doesn't.

I think the problem is that chrome and firefox are developed for general usage, and as a result, have to deal with general usage constraints. For example, spectre and process isolation mentioned in another blog post here in the comments. I had a project in the past where I needed a browser with good JS support, but that does not make any http requests to any resources not in address bar or in the page rendered at that address. I did not find single browser based on firefox/chrome that fulfilled that requirement. Even the most privacy-focused projects still made continious requests to some mozilla resources (if i remember correctly, it was something about tls or maybe something else). So seeing someone creating an engine from scratch gives me hope that such browser might exist one day if I ever will need one again.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#118

Post by almostgotcaught »

jraph wrote: post #74
voidwtf wrote: post #35

I don't want to discourage the developers working on this project, but I'm curious why we're still writing applications that will almost certainly execute or process hostile content in languages that don't maintain strict memory safe contract? Have we not learned our lesson yet, or am I misunderstanding the situation? I believe it was a Microsoft study that linked unsafe memory access to ~70% of exploit chains.

I'll take an alternative browser engine, even if it's written in C++. > I'm curious Is it really curiosity though? Because the answer is straightforward, the project started as a hobby, the developer picked whatever language they were proficient in. Andreas is open with the fact that he started Serenity OS and LadyBird as a rehab project. Put too much barrier in this setting (like learning a new language and all the…

> Is it really curiosity though?

it's not - it's a stock standard way to ask a question in bad faith.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#119

Post by getcrunk »

oskarkk wrote: post #32

One commenter who worked on Firefox made a nice blog post in response, about what it takes to make a web browser: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2024/06/browser-engine.html

For a new project I wonder how much simpler (or secure) a browser could be made if you only allowed a subset of js and browser apis.

I’d wildly guesstimate for 70% of use cases you wouldn’t even need 50% of stuff with some slight modifications. The web is just so bloated.

Edit: might as well prune down the css a little too and maybe dump wasm, webgl and canvas

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#120

Post by oriolid »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #110
oriolid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try to explain. - French itself does not add much value to diplomacy. The reason to use is that everyone else who does diplomacy is expected to know French (and probably isn't a native speaker which makes things a bit more equal). English is probably taking over there, like it has done in other domains. - The recent C++ versions are not actively promoting shooting yourself in the foot like older variants, bu…

> - French itself does not add much value to diplomacy. Funny, given that the word diplomacy is a French word, together with embassy, treaty, alliance, passport and protocol :) > Rust is going out of its way to prevent writing memory unsafe code But if someone is not proficient in Rust it will only slow them down and they'll end up fighting the language and the compiler instead of using the language. It's a common co…

> Funny, given that the word diplomacy is a French word

This is true. But it only tells about the cultural dominance that France had at the time the convention started. If history had happened differently, Chinese, Hindi or something else could be in similar position.

> But if someone is not proficient in Rust it will only slow them down and they'll end up fighting the language and the compiler instead of using the language.

This is indeed the choice. Make it difficult to write code but more likely that the result is correct, easy to achieve high performance but risky (C++ and similar) or just accept the overhead of checking everything over at run time (JVM and CLR languages, etc). I would say there is a niche for the first.

> Why nobody ever recommend Haskell or Smalltalk?

I think at this point it's well known that the pure functional lazy evaluation model rules out too many useful data structures and makes it easy to introduce accidental complexity. As for Smalltalk, it seems (I've never actually used it) to me that most of its once unique ideas have been copied to current mainstream languages. It also seems to have a huge number of fragmented implementations and most of them seem to have a heavy runtime virtual machine.

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