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The Ladybird browser project

ladybird.dev

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Re: The Ladybird browser project

#121

Post by jraph »

dash2 wrote: post #118
jraph wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about Drew or "those guys", whoever they are? Let's focus on Drew. I've not seen him mention HN, which by the way doesn't require running non-free software, and he literally runs a free software competitor to GitHub. I've not seen him be rude to people using GitHub. He certainly strongly criticizes them. I assume he uses GitHub to communicate with projects hosted there. If he does, I don't think he co…

You're right, he mentioned Reddit not HN. I was speaking loosely when I said "being rude" - he criticizes them.

Now, I wouldn't be shocked to read someone consider HN as a proprietary platform.

> I was speaking loosely when I said "being rude" - he criticizes them

Ok, we are on the same page. The distinction is important to me :-)

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#122

Post by ykonstant »

kome wrote: post #108
KingOfCoders wrote: post #104

While Mozilla is re-selling privacy service (see other news on HN), others are building a better browser. Without the need of $6B.

Mozilla has definitely a management problem. But the product is good. very good even.

Unfortunately, Mozilla is not interested in providing an easily embedable web engine. It makes sense: it goes against their interests as a company whose main product is a fully featured web browser.

Google, on the other hand, provides a web engine with a nice license and reasonable ergonomics that can be used for all sorts of projects. This allows them to execute an EEE strategy:

Embed (into all kinds of projects)

Enforce (moving-target standards of your own making)

Exhaust (any potential competitor/resources that needs to chase after them)

This is why I wish we can get an alternative, OSS, easy-to-embed engine soon.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#123

Post by shiroiuma »

rjh29 wrote: post #106
jillesvangurp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of work but most of it is very doable for several reasons: - standards are really detailed at this point and a large reason why the three remaining browser engines (chromium, safari, and firefox) largely do exactly the same things. - There are a lot of open source components. It's not necessary to start from scratch on things like wasm and javascript interpreters for example. There are some nice low level…

In the case of Ladybird they build everything from scratch (intentionally) so existing open source code cannot be used. The main argument for doing it is because it is fun, just as with SerenityOS. Having alternative implementations is never a bad thing for web diversity though.

Of course, alternatives are almost never a bad thing, and devs should feel free to work on whatever floats their boat when they're volunteers, but developer resources are scarce, and there are other things in the FOSS realm that could use some attention where there really aren't great alternatives. But again, if these people prefer to work on this, that's OK. Just because the world could use a better X doesn't mean these devs have enough interest in X to be effective at building such a thing in a volunteer capacity: in my experience, having personal interest in a project makes you much more productive than working on something you really don't care about.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#124

Post by alpaca128 »

angiosperm wrote: post #32
jraph wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a lot of popular sites don't even work with Firefox Which ones? I have always exclusively used Firefox and rarely have issues.

I can't get Reddit to work in Firefox or Chromium. No idea why.

Both old and new UI? What problems are there?

I've never had issues loading/using reddit from any browser aside from their annoying "use our app" popups.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#125

Post by shiroiuma »

jll29 wrote: post #68
stephen_g wrote: post #19

It's really quite incredible that one guy basically started a project to create a whole operating system from scratch for fun and to give himself something interesting to do, and then accidentally created one of the most viable new browser engines in a decade or two... I've been watching the development videos for a year or two, and the speed that this has progressed in such a short time is unbelievable. Now they hav…

He is a world expert on Web rendering, and an extremely capable C++ developer. One of their success recipes is to code up the various specifications directly, which is - today - the best way to go about this. They are also heavily test-driven. He did not even use the C++ standard library, when he says "from scratch" it includes his own string class, for better or worse, which is fine since it's "just for fun", "to le…

>He did not even use the C++ standard library, when he says "from scratch" it includes his own string class, for better or worse

I can't imagine how it can be for worse; the standard C++ string library is awful. It makes perfect sense that a super-talented C++ dev would make something better if they have the energy and time.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#127

Post by zaebal »

dev213 wrote: post #116

This is a really cool project, but: "Where are the ISO images? There are no ISO images. This project does not cater to non-technical users." This comes off as really abrasive. Wanting an ISO image to quickly test this out is not an indicator of someones technical ability. I'm sorry I don't want to boot up a linux vm, install a lot of development packages and then build my own boot image just to try this out.

SerenityOS nightly builds: https://serenity-builds.halves.dev/

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#128

Post by mda »

jll29 wrote: post #68
stephen_g wrote: post #19

It's really quite incredible that one guy basically started a project to create a whole operating system from scratch for fun and to give himself something interesting to do, and then accidentally created one of the most viable new browser engines in a decade or two... I've been watching the development videos for a year or two, and the speed that this has progressed in such a short time is unbelievable. Now they hav…

He is a world expert on Web rendering, and an extremely capable C++ developer. One of their success recipes is to code up the various specifications directly, which is - today - the best way to go about this. They are also heavily test-driven. He did not even use the C++ standard library, when he says "from scratch" it includes his own string class, for better or worse, which is fine since it's "just for fun", "to le…

Isn't this a recipe for disaster from security perspective?

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#129

Post by awesomekling »

jug wrote: post #47

It's been so inspiring to see him and his crew of hackers build a new, independent browser from scratch. I must admit I didn't think it was possible on this small scale in terms of man hours and funding. However, the thought has also crossed my mind if we're finally seeing fruits of browsers being better standardized on "95%"+ of the popular features -- and if writing a browser today is in fact easier than both writi…

> It's been so inspiring to see him and his crew of hackers build a new, independent browser from scratch. I must admit I didn't think it was possible on this small scale in terms of man hours and funding.

Thanks jug! I'm super proud of all the folks who have worked on it with me :^)

> However, the thought has also crossed my mind if we're finally seeing fruits of browsers being better standardized on "95%"+ of the popular features -- and if writing a browser today is in fact easier than both writing AND maintaining a browser a decade back. While the web is of course still evolving, it feels more "settled in" than 10-15 years ago

This is definitely true! I've worked on browsers on and off since 2006, and it's a very different landscape today. Specs are better than ever and there's a treasure trove of tests available.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#130

Post by Klonoar »

Scarblac wrote: post #31
adontz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can have something usable instead of dreams. If you want to have completely independent code eventually, then replace modules one by one, while having a working product. Like Mozilla did with Servo. They had C++ codebase they wanted to replace with Rust codebase. They did not create entire browser from scratch, but replaced C++ with Rust gradually. While one figures what HTML and CSS layout should look li…

This is Hacker News, not just Lets Bring Yet Another Product To Market news. He is doing this for fun and to be creative, is incredibly inspiring for a lot of people, and actually gets things done on top. The epitome of a hacker, I want to be more like him.

You have a very different definition than what this site has historically been about. :)
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