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Ladybird browser spreads its wings

lwn.net

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131–140 of 319 posts

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#131

Post by HeckFeck »

PrayagS wrote: post #77
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.

Ikr. They're up to some questionable decisions since long. - Acquire companies like Pocket, Anonym in multi-million dollar deals and also the millions in bonuses that the CEO likes to enjoy. - At the same time, no significant expenditure towards developing its core software. Firefox is still ridden with bugs. They even went as far as firing the people that used to work on Servo, Rust, WASM, etc. I think it's clear to…

Servo had so much potential as the flagship Rust project, a fast and memory safe browser engine.

Such a loss to see it jettisoned and abandoned. Myopic decisions like these are filling the cloud of pessimism that now shrouds Mozilla.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#132

Post by jsheard »

getcrunk wrote: post #119
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

The problem with targeting a subset is there's a ratchet effect with web APIs, once support reaches critical mass in the major browsers sites will start unconditionally relying on those features and there's no going back from there, any new browser has to also support those features or be considered broken.

I suppose anything that's gated behind a permission prompt in Chrome/Firefox/Safari could be culled without too much trouble at least.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#133

Post by erremerre »

Although I dont like quite a few Firefox decisions. Like the floating tabs which no easy way to revert. I still think Firefox as a browser is fairly decent. And I also think that ladybird is going to have all the problems that Opera Presto had (and now Firefox has) which is going to be ignored by any small developers, and targeted to generate errors by the big companies (google/microsoft...)

I definitely would have preferred the momentum to go to SerinityOS, and perhaps, importing firefox/librewolf into Serinity OS.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#134

Post by nindalf »

account42 wrote: post #104
red_trumpet wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like seeing a beautiful painting being painted and arguing about the kind of paintbrush the painter has used. It's like seeing a beautiful painting and realizing the painter didn't use lightfast colors. In ten years the painting will not be beautiful anymore. Yes, the painter / author put in a lot of work, and this deserves acknowledgement. But ones decision to use it or not is not only based on the amount of…

It's more like seeing a beautiful painting and complaining that the painter didn't use your favorite brand of paint which promises to be much better looking than the other paints in ten years but hasn't even been around that long.

This analogy has been tortured beyond usefulness.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#135

Post by segfaltnh »

voidwtf wrote: post #124
jraph wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s curiosity because I’m involved in software security for the company I work for and I’m a software developer that primarily works with managed languages. I unfortunately lack the technical expertise to make an assessment on interpreters and virtual machines. I am, however, aware that many of the CVEs that I review involve reading/writing memory outside the intended bounds. Many of these while processing user gene…

What you're describing is not curiosity.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#136

Post by account42 »

danpalmer wrote: post #47
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox breaks the monoculture Not really as long as it is funded by Google.

But it’s a completely separate codebase right, and that’s the monoculture we’re aiming to prevent here. If it’s not about tech but rather about funding, then should we be concerned of the monoculture of American browser vendors, or English speaking browser vendors? I don’t think we need to be, but I also think the tech side is the important place to prevent a monoculture for the open development of web technologies.

> But it’s a completely separate codebase right

Not entirely separate anymore as both make use of shared external libraries.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#137

Post by account42 »

blowski wrote: post #48
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox breaks the monoculture Not really as long as it is funded by Google.

I might argue that being funded by Google gives Firefox stability, and allows it to deliver to a broad audience. If it were funded exclusively by, say, HN readers then it would probably end up being used exclusively by HN users.

Have you looked at Firefox's market share lately?

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#138

Post by fransje26 »

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

> Use a programming language that lets you write clean, fast, memory-safe, parallel data-race-free code — probably Rust.

But from the lwn article:

    It is written in C++ [..].
Oops! :-)

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#139

Post by kouteiheika »

blowski wrote: post #6

I hear so much about Ladybird on HN, that I’m equally excited and cynical. What is the value proposition? Is it to be another general purpose browser, so there’s more competition with Chrome / WebKit? Or to be a niche browser, that could be an alternative to Electron? How close is it to achieving that?

It's a fun project, but there's no practical value proposition besides showing that it can be done.

People are cheering on it because they love the author and want a new web browser written from scratch, but practically speaking it is a web browser that is 1) written in a memory unsafe language, 2) doesn't really have any sandboxing, and 3) is highly incomplete.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#140

Post by hypeatei »

getcrunk wrote: post #119
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

This is so wildly wrong it hurts. As soon as that one important website (to your user) breaks, they will switch browsers.

Just deciding that you don't want to implement >50% of web specs "for simplicity" and expecting that to be a winning strategy is very HN.

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