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Ladybird browser spreads its wings

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Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#251

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#252

Post by Dubh33 »

infotainment wrote: post #190
lawn wrote: post #149

A related question: What's the state with Servo? Do I understand it correctly that Servo is the core of a browser but not the browser itself? How much work would it be to create a browser on top of Servo? And is there such a project?

They actually have an official blog with status updates! https://servo.org/blog/ They do have an official “browser”, ServoShell, which is basically a minimalistic testbed. IIRC adding tabs to it is on their roadmap.

It looks like the repository for servoshell was archived in 2019. What’s weird is if you go to their website and download the tech demo it’s basically the same thing but may actually be updated.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#253

Post by The_Colonel »

bmacho wrote: post #212
viraptor wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the current situation because Google could spend enough money on promoting Chrome. That's it. A different, or even better browser won't change that. Google can put a chrome ad everywhere again for a few months.

I feel firefox market share is mostly because they actively enshittificate their browser, and not because of google ads, or chrome being better.

Doubt it. Things tech people complain about (like integration of Pocket) are completely irrelevant to the masses.

On the other hand, things like performance improved drastically, and it is now competitive with Chrome. Firefox the product is in the best shape it ever was.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#254

Post by bwat49 »

bmacho wrote: post #212
viraptor wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the current situation because Google could spend enough money on promoting Chrome. That's it. A different, or even better browser won't change that. Google can put a chrome ad everywhere again for a few months.

I feel firefox market share is mostly because they actively enshittificate their browser, and not because of google ads, or chrome being better.

I disagree, IMO the main reason they lost so much marketshare to chrome was because for a long time, chrome just was much faster and much more stable. Performance, stability, and compatibility is all that matters to most users.

Firefox (mostly) caught up with quantum and process isolation on the desktop, but by then I think it was too late. And the android version still has horrible performance, stability, and compatibility compared to Chromium browsers.

Mozilla just doesn't have the same engineering resources to poor into the browser that google does, so I'm not sure there's any way they can really maintain pace with google outside of becoming yet another chromium browser.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#255

Post by zamadatix »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #217
sharlos201068 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did it work in the EU? Almost the entire planet uses Chrome including the EU.

In the early 2010s a ballot appeared for new users on Windows [0], though the legal requirement expired only a few years later. It helped other browsers gain market share. Sadly it's not enough alone. Major web players can promote their own browser and sabotage others, even if only by neglecting to test them. IMO a permanent ballot law is needed alongside restrictions from major web vendors pushing their own browser'…

Do you perhaps mean to argue you think it helped other browsers lose users slower than they otherwise might have? From your link:

> Competing browsers saw their traffic increase,[16] suggesting that these smaller competing developers were gaining users. However, long-term trends show browsers such as Opera and Firefox losing market share in Europe, calling into question the usefulness of the browser choice screen.[1]

Opera is the smaller competitor referred to in both halves and it lost user share in Europe while this was in effect. About the only thing the ballot can claim is a loss in users of the 1st party browser IE but that effect was already occurring prior to the ballot anyways.

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#256

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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

What about surf?

https://surf.suckless.org/

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#257

Post by Y_Y »

yencabulator wrote: post #241
Y_Y wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I guess for that we have to thank Aesop, the original corporate raider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden...

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#258

Post by jcranmer »

branko_d wrote: post #122
AshleysBrain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> As I understand it: Spectre/Meltdown allow reading from the address space of the same process only. Sorry, this does not make much sense. Why would you need a timing attack to read memory from your own address space? Just a regular code execution exploit should do it. Here, I found the relevant info (that I was too lazy to find before I posted my first comment, apparently): https://meltdownattack.com/ > While progr…

> Sorry, this does not make much sense. Why would you need a timing attack to read memory from your own address space?

If you're making a VM such that the running code can only access a particular array, Spectre allows a timing attack that can get malicious code in the VM access to the full memory space.

You're right that it's not that scary for most use cases. What it really means is that it's hopeless to make memory inaccessible to a sandbox without putting a process isolation barrier betwixt the two, as there's no real way to close out all of the timing attack possibilities. In principle, if the only thing you needed to foreclose was memory vulnerabilities, then sufficiently good programming™ would let you have the sandbox in the same process space; as a matter of practice, though, anyone looking at product security seriously would still make you put in process isolation, because that kind of good programming just doesn't exist at scale yet.

(Note that Meltdown, but not Spectre, allows timing attacks that cross process isolation domains.)

Re: Ladybird browser spreads its wings

#260

Post by wakeupcall »

sharlos201068 wrote: post #215
wakeupcall wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Keeping up with an already built browser is too hard so we’ll create an entirely new browser that takes even more work?

The way I see it is "I'll have fun at something that feels interesting"
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