Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ladybird browser project

ladybird.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 293 posts

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#181

Post by adontz »

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.

Have you ever wondered what ycombinator.com is in news.yconbinator.com?

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#182

Post by JimDabell »

legacynl wrote: post #152
pygy_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where Apple'grip on the iOS browser engine choice paradoxically comes in clutch. It is conceptually despicable, especially for devs, but it prevents Google from completely running the show. Now the European Union is coming after Apple without trying to rein in Google's influence... This seems short-sighted.

> European Union is coming after apple.... seems short sighted I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the goals of the EU in this matter. The objective is not to keep both companies on even keel, but it is merely about enforcing existing anti-monopoly laws. If this results in Google gaining a de-facto browser monopoly then those same laws can be used to break up that monopoly when we get to it. What would…

> What would be the alternative in your opinion?

Force Apple to allow alternative rendering engines, but only the ones with People already mistake Blink-only APIs like Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web MIDI, etc. for web standards. The market is already dangerously close to where it was 20 years ago, where a vast number of web developers treat the most popular rendering engine as if it’s synonymous with the web. Handing more opportunities for market share to Blink is playing with fire.

You want Apple to allow Gecko or Ladybird? Sounds great! But the monopoly that threatens the web at the moment is Blink.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#183

Post by timw4mail »

benrutter wrote: post #88
the_third_wave wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, that is not how it works. Blink undoubtedly has an oversize influence on 'web standards' (which are more and more defined as 'whatever Blink does') but that would not be that much of a problem if web developers built and tested their sites against more than just Chrome and Edge (Blink) and Safari (Webkit). History is repeating itself since the same thing happened when Microsoft's Internet Explo[rd]er was th…

I'm not particularly experienced with web browsers, but whenever I hear people who know what they're talking about, I always leave convinced that this is exactly the problem. If there are sites that work on Chrome but not Firefox, it just seems to me that either: - Chrome or Firefox must be breaking web standards - Web standards must be unspecified for that use case I have no idea the fix though, the web is so massiv…

Most web standards are codifying existing functionality, not the other way around.

Chrome/Blink has exclusive APIs, that often are not on track to be a standard.

This makes Safari (Webkit) and Firefox (Gecko) look bad, because they end up having to implement the same APIs, and then, maybe, it's standardized. Browser extension APIs come to mind.

I wish the situation was more neat and tidy, but it's not.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#184

Post by userbinator »

sph wrote: post #70
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 is not any easier, because we still have a monopoly running the show, only it's not called Microsoft anymore. If anyone threatens Google position, they can literally throw money at the problem, invent some overcomplicated standard, implement it in Blink, and have the competition chase them. It doesn't need to go through W3C either, if it works in Chrome, all web developers will adopt it and any smaller engine will…

The problem ultimately isn't Google pushing new "standards", since plain HTML and other existing ways of doing things that work in many more browsers still works; it's the trendchasing web developers who somehow feel the need to make sites that only work in Chrome, and the propaganda that Google to encourage that behaviour.

It's almost as if backwards-compatibility is seen as something to be avoided in certain web dev communities. Lots of "drop support" and "moving forward", zero consideration for simplicity and interoperability.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#186

Post by badpun »

jraph wrote: post #172
Thorrez wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think HN is proprietary.

Indeed. I'm fine with HN though. I'm not the one running the non free code. One can browse it and participate to it without running any proprietary software. It works without JS, and the JS code is trivially small anyway. There are open source clients too. That's a pass for me. The day this changes, you won't see me here anymore. That would correspond to the NonFreeNet antifeature in F-Droid [1]. They could update th…

So you'd be against running a modern commercial video game on your machine, but you'd play it if it was running in a Google datacenter, and transmited the rendered pixels to you via Google Stadia?

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#187

Post by gosub100 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #148
TheCoreh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you open sites on other "new" browser engines you typically get a really butchered visual result, with layouts completely broken, elements missing, wrong colors, etc. For example, Servo didn't support floats until recently, and IIRC even simple sites like Hacker News look "wrong". Ladybird's approach has been to start with a somewhat naive implementation of features, then choose popular websites and apps and jus…

I can't relate / do not recognise these claims of incorrect rendering; is there a resource out there that shows images of how it's supposed to be vs what it looks like? I thought this was a problem of the past, IE compatibility with web standards kind of thing.

just download a no-name browser and see for yourself

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#188

Post by grishka »

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…

IMO most of the complexity of modern browsers is in all those strictly optional, app-like features. PWAs, service workers, JS JIT and all that stuff. If you want to build just a hypertext viewer, not a full-fledged OS/application environment, just leave them out and nothing of value will break. Things also become substantially simpler if you aren't looking to make your JS execution as performant as theoretically possible (and you don't really need to with how most websites actually use JS).

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#189

Post by Scarblac »

adontz wrote: post #181
Scarblac wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you ever wondered what ycombinator.com is in news.yconbinator.com?

Yeah yeah, I know. They could have chosen to call it Startup News but didn't.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#190

Post by ptx »

Are there any plans to rewrite the browser implementation in the Jakt language once that gets a bit more stable? Memory safety would be a unique advantage over other browsers (aside from Servo).
Post reply on HN