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Ladybird browser spreads its wings

lwn.net

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Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#241

Post by yencabulator »

Y_Y wrote: post #220
PrayagS wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I see some nice parallels with Wikipedia. Makes me wonder if anyone's yet developed a theory of "foundation capture" where you find some marvellous free thing that is made for and by humanity at large and extract/redirect money from its market share/good will.

I think the pump-and-dump extraction of value from any brand works pretty similarly, whether a non-profit or regular business.

Lots of companies with centuries-long record of manufacturing previously durable goods have in the last decade or two switched to using e.g. inferior quality steel to increase profits. That'll destroy the brand, but in the meanwhile there's great profits to be had!

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#242

Post by specialist »

voytec wrote: post #164
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.

> I don't understand what is wrong with Firefox. It's developed by Mozilla, Google's controlled opposition. I submitted a link[0] on ads coming to Firefox but HN shadowed it almost immediately (present on /newest when logged in, nowhere to be found when logged out). [0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-c...

What now? I love a good JWZ rant.

Introducing Anonym: Raising the bar for privacy-preserving digital advertising https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...

Oh.

How Brave of them.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#243

Post by hello_kitty2 »

kosolam wrote: post #19

Why build another browser, from scratch, in C++?

From GitHub.

> Ladybird is a truly independent web browser, using a novel engine based on web standards.

So I assume they want to build a truly independent web browser instead of leaving the Browser market to Google, Apple, and Firefox (relies heavily on Google ad revenue.) and executives that run them who are primarily motivated by money.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#244

Post by yencabulator »

HeckFeck wrote: post #131
PrayagS wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW Servo is seeing work as e.g. an Electron replacement. There is hope, even if one wishes the Mozilla Foundation CEO had used some $6M on developer salaries instead of pocketing it.

Full browser feature set is hard, but an app that bundles its own webview can choose to not trigger the edge cases, so that's a realistic path forward.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#245

Post by yencabulator »

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.

FYI https://librewolf.net/

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#246

Post by coliveira »

bilekas wrote: post #154

Andreas Kling is a great role model in the world of development I feel. The decision to step away from the Serenity OS makes a lot of sense. There are plenty of them, nice projects to do, but they'll never have an immediate impact if any at all. But the browser space, Ladybird is viable as a daily driver for people. I'm still today astounded the work that has been produced just on this. > Somewhat ironically, it was…

I wish rust people spent their time writing software instead of going around telling other people to do the job for them. They only manage to get others annoyed with this attitude.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#247

Post by bobajeff »

astrobe_ wrote: post #206
getcrunk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Given that a browser is not practically a virtual machine and/or an OS, it is not too surprising that an OS developer is not scared by the task. At the same time, it seems to me that multimedia is a whole different beast. > 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 IMHO the only viable subset is the empty set. There are some sur…

>IMHO the only viable subset is the empty set. There are some surviving HTML-only browsers that are still usable for e.g. viewing documentation or browsing simple-minded websites (like HN, but they are fewer and fewer every year, unfortunately).

I'm curious if throwing out DOM/js would make the task more approachable. My intuition says yes. But I'm thinking CSS would still make it super difficult. Also I've heard that HTML has some rough areas that make it hard.

That being said I find Netsurf is pretty capable even if I don't really use it very often. Yeah some pages don't render right but it's really fast. So who knows maybe we can get away with a reduced set of features or better yet go back to using separate clients instead of web apps for things like chat, email and forums.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#248

Post by djbusby »

astrobe_ wrote: post #206
getcrunk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Given that a browser is not practically a virtual machine and/or an OS, it is not too surprising that an OS developer is not scared by the task. At the same time, it seems to me that multimedia is a whole different beast. > 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 IMHO the only viable subset is the empty set. There are some sur…

I've been wanting something like that, like a wrapper that hosts three or four engine, so I can use normal for every-day, upscale to FF for some or Chrome for others - all in one UI.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#249

Post by diggan »

bilekas wrote: post #154

Andreas Kling is a great role model in the world of development I feel. The decision to step away from the Serenity OS makes a lot of sense. There are plenty of them, nice projects to do, but they'll never have an immediate impact if any at all. But the browser space, Ladybird is viable as a daily driver for people. I'm still today astounded the work that has been produced just on this. > Somewhat ironically, it was…

> But the browser space, Ladybird is viable as a daily driver for people.

From the LWM article:

> Users will need GCC 13+ or Clang 17, and Qt6 development packages to play along at home. Ladybird compiles and runs on, for example, Fedora 40 without a problem, *but it is a long way from being suitable for regular use.*

Seems distributed binaries are missing, but that's easy to "fix"/"workaround". Is there something else that makes you say it is suitable as a daily driver while LWM author does not?

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