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This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

ladybird.org

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Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#71

Post by nicce »

senfiaj wrote: post #26

I am watching this project with interest. It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is…

> It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work.

I think it is still a bit too early to say that. The most difficult part is to ensure the security of the implementation, and not just the checkbox compliance against standards. So when this survives the swarm of pentesters, it will be a absolute titanic work. Otherwise it might be too risky to use.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#72

Post by AshleysBrain »

senfiaj wrote: post #26

I am watching this project with interest. It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is…

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I think that if all this effort went in to improving Firefox, or a fork of Firefox if the goal is to totally de-Google it, then that wouldn't be such a problem and it would overall be healthier for the web. I don't really understand the purpose of this titanic software engineering effort just to avoid... a default search engine setting?

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#73

Post by senfiaj »

culi wrote: post #48
senfiaj wrote: post #26

I am watching this project with interest. It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is…

Outside of the adoption of new standards, most of the work that goes into the big 3 browsers is more around edge cases and compat due to historical development reasons. Ladybird can afford to be a beloved hobby browser that simply hasn't solved all the edge cases but works well 97% of the time

Yes, this is what I'm saying. It's unlikely to be a replacement for the majority of average users but can be popular among people like us.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#74

Post by no_wizard »

pkasting wrote: post #14
phendrenad2 wrote: post #8

Feels like the old "browser wars" days again. Between AI productivity, and Google losing the grace to bloat the web specs, I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to take market share away from other browsers as soon as it's stable.

Sure, it could easily take 1%. Going above 5%, OTOH, I would be shocked to ever see happen, for two reasons. 1) Mass-market adoption requires working well on an enormous long tail, which is difficult without a large team. 2) The primary driver of playing at that size is mass marketing/distribution, which requires $$$. Engineering a great product is necessary, but not sufficient. My perspective on this is informed by…

Part of me wonders in a world with evergreen browsers if that long tail won’t simply shrink as time goes on.

I have yet to run into Java applets or Internet Explorer required situations in years. As far back as 2016 I’d occasionally find myself having to deal with both of these things. Still rare in 2016 but it was there.

Eventually I never saw it again.

That said, I’m not sure what gaps exist that I don’t perceive either, so I could be wrong and not know it

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#75

Post by regularfry »

senfiaj wrote: post #36
hughw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of a week ago their pre-alpha version was capable of running my extremely heavy JS+ SVG + worker thread + SSE app, a bit slowly I admit but correctly in all major exercises I tried. So, I'm optimistic. They're doing great. Separately I wonder if the compatibility job is easier now that you can just give the HTML5 spec to Fable and Bob's your uncle.

The browser might reach 95-97% compatibility eventually. But the last 3-5% gaps are the most stubborn. Many of these 3-5% are not trivial API calls. They might be some subtle legacy quirks, timing/rendering things, etc. There is a lot of poorly written historical code that might be illegal by web standards but browsers are forced to support. Established browsers have decades of patches and regression testing.

That sounds like a reasonable estimate for the gap between any pair of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, just from varied depth of implementation of more recent standards.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#76

Post by lproven »

ilvez wrote: post #53
senfiaj wrote: post #26

I am watching this project with interest. It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is…

Just a small personal touch -- my coworker is constantly pushing me to use Chrome because it "just works", but I'm stubborn as hell. Used Firefox from early 2000s. Oh how I will love to twist his nerve even more once I will switch to Ladybird. Saying this because there has been more harder days to counter these pushes. And to be honest I think we are overthinking about how much this last 3-5 % actually matter for hug…

> I'm still believing that there will be a year of desktop Linux coming. Maybe even sooner than we expect.

It started 9 years ago.

That's the year ChromeBooks first outsold Macs in the USA. And note, that is by value, not units, meaning at least 4-5x as many Chromebooks were sold as all Mac hardware put together.

By 3-4y later this was worldwide.

So desktop Linux computers are now comprehensively outselling macOS machines and have been for nearly a decade… even with Apple's migration to Arm, which means better small machines but worse big machines.

But it's the wrong sort of Linux and so the Penguin taleban don't count it and are still arguing about... oh, systemd vs SysVinit, or glibc vs musl, or Emacs vs Vim, or something.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#77

Post by Havoc »

krispyfi wrote: post #57
KingMob wrote: post #55

Ugh, this guy again. I would stop using the web forever before I used Ladybird or anything made by Kling. You praise DHH and Charlie Kirk, your moral compass is broken.

Context: https://kvibber.com/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/

TLDR: pronoun drama

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#78

Post by lproven »

ChickeNES wrote: post #29
rzzzt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never used a download manager like DownThemAll or GetBot back in the day? As far as fragmentation goes, I think both Firefox and Chrome derivatives figure out the final file size in advance, pre-allocate a temporary file that long and put data in it as it arrives. Completing the download is a rename operation or a no-op.

GetRight was a fucking lifesaver when I was stuck on a 28.8k dial up connection that loved to drop at the worst possible time.

I haven't thought of that name in decades, but you're right, it really was. :-)

GetRight, then DownThemAll, and now, Multithreaded Download Manager:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multithreaded...

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#79

Post by charcircuit »

zarzavat wrote: post #69
charcircuit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple browser engines reimplementing the same things fragments engineering resources and blink based browsers do have working as blockers. In fact ladybird uses the same adblocker as Brave, which is blink based.

It also fragments power, which makes it worth it.

Power is proportional to browser market share, not the engines the browsers use.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – August 2026

#80

Post by surajrmal »

KingMob wrote: post #55

Ugh, this guy again. I would stop using the web forever before I used Ladybird or anything made by Kling. You praise DHH and Charlie Kirk, your moral compass is broken.

People are all flawed. You can find faults in everyone. Overlooking these flaws is okay to a large number of folks as the product itself is amazing. The fact is that you're likely ignorant to the large number of products and services you use produced by folks with similar flaws.
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