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Ladybird browser spreads its wings

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Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#231
post #204
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally if I were to attempt a project at this scale, I'd do so using a language I'm proficient in. There might be other reasons, but Rust & C++ really are different beasts.

It's debatable how many - if any - humans are truly proficient with C++.

Sounds like "Its hard, so it can't be done" to me. There are plenty of people making good software in C++, how else would we have what we have. Sure, things get bloated and break over time, but thats not due to programmers not knowing C++, thats just what happens as a product evolves. New coders get brought in, focus shifts, understanding of the code based erodes. Its not that language, its the process.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#232

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 p…

> the floating tabs which no easy way to revert

Very easy in userChrome.css. I put mine on GitHub but it's nothing special, there are lots and lots that are available.

https://github.com/torstenvl/userChrome.css

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is convining anyone to write a website in this. You will have like 3 sites that use only the subset. The closest example is AMP, but you must be Google to force people to use it.

> The problem is convining anyone to write a website in this Could choose a subset that lets certain sites that do not get on everybody's nerves still run fine. For the remainder, people who need it can run an extension that runs a Chromium converting what's possible to the target subset.

Do you want to support YouTube? You want to support YouTube, don't you? Any big FAANG site probably uses most of the possible features.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#234

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:

Meltdown lets a process read from kernel memory.

There are several variations of Spectre. The first variant ("Spectre V1") lets a process read its own memory; the second variant ("Spectre V2") lets a process read another process's memory.

Web browser manufacturers seem to be focused on preventing Spectre V1, although I'm unclear on whether that's because V2 is too hard to exploit from JavaScript, is mitigated in other ways (e.g., CPU updates), etc.

Further reading: https://stackoverflow.com/q/53042230/25507, https://stackoverflow.com/q/48200753/25507, https://security.googleblog.com/2018/07/mitigating-spectre-w..., https://webkit.org/blog/8048/what-spectre-and-meltdown-mean-..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "very HN" thing for me is assuming a "winning strategy" has to be mass adoption. There's room for a smaller web full of nerds and geeks, we had that before and maybe we can have it again.

Indeed, that's why we are discussing on HN, not on Reddit. Exclusion as a design choice.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is convining anyone to write a website in this Could choose a subset that lets certain sites that do not get on everybody's nerves still run fine. For the remainder, people who need it can run an extension that runs a Chromium converting what's possible to the target subset.

Do you want to support YouTube? You want to support YouTube, don't you? Any big FAANG site probably uses most of the possible features.

> You want to support YouTube, don't you?

Of course no. You can use a bloated browser for that.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#237
post #29

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.

[deleted]

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#238

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 p…

> the floating tabs which no easy way to revert Very easy in userChrome.css. I put mine on GitHub but it's nothing special, there are lots and lots that are available. https://github.com/torstenvl/userChrome.css

Not what I would consider easy, that is medium.

Easy should be install a theme/extension, or toggle an option on configurations. Yours can be broken after updates, and requires to know what it is (I do, I just cant be bothered), and redownload and apply after each time an update breaks it.

I have decided to live with the awful floating tabs rather than personalising the userChrome.css, I wish someone could convert it into an extension.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 l…

> This is true. But it only tells about the cultural dominance that France French is still very much relevant, but it took centuries to make it less relevant than before to the point where we are now. Rust in comparison is minutes old and there's no evidence it will dominate the field of system programming in the future. See: Ruby on Rails for web development. > This is indeed the choice. Make it difficult to write c…

> Rust in comparison is minutes old and there's no evidence it will dominate the field of system programming in the future.

This is true (for some values of minute). It is also why I was suggesting that C calling convention, HTTP etc, not Rust, would be the computing lingua franca. Now that I think of it, a few years ago TCP/IP would have been on the list but now with HTTP/3 it's not that certain any more.

> Rust is Haskell with a different syntax though...

This is quite bold claim, but if you have a rigorous proof beyond "all Turing complete languages are the same" I would be interested in seeing it. It's a pity you left.

> ...makes it very hard to write simple linked lists.

This is interesting in the light of the beginning of the sentence, because in Haskell linked list is the easiest data structure. Simple linked lists aren't always that simple though. There is a reason why they used to be a recurring technical interview question.

> Again: this seems to me more promoting Rust than a discussion about memory safety

Funny, to me this seems more about promoting JIT and garbage collection. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you admit that there are niches where those are a problem but memory safety is still useful. And so far there haven't been other serious language candidates for that niche.

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