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The Ladybird browser project

ladybird.dev

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Re: The Ladybird browser project

#221

Post by carlosjobim »

bigfudge wrote: post #206
carlosjobim wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or not? I remember when banks required you to have IE long after nobody was using IE. I remember when banks showed an alert against using Safari long after it became the most common mobile browser. Banks also have their own apps and are not dependent on Chrome.

That was in a time when expectations were low and all the banks were pretty equally crap. There are better choices now, and even my mum would be pissed off of her bank website didn’t work in her current browser.

Would she be pissed off at A) The bank? B) The browser? C) The computer? D) Her internet provider?

People can change browser more easily than changing banks. They can even have multiple different browsers on their machine, and one for only doing banking.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#222

Post by jorvi »

Misdicorl wrote: post #216
jorvi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how many of the past big exploit chains on iPhones, Chromium etc involved media decoding at some point in that chain. It’s like crypto, you have to be very deliberate with your choices, and it’s generally ill-advised to roll your own.

That advice has context. Do not roll your own if the feature is not your core product offering . So don't roll crypto if you're not selling crypto. If it is your core offering (and media decoding is absolutely a core offering of a web browser), you should choose carefully whether to get it off the shelf or roll your own. Otherwise how would new/better stuff ever get built?!

If Apple and Google can’t even find all the vulnerabilities in their libs, how on earth would a scrappy team of a few devs, especially since media decode isn’t the sole thing they’re focused on?

> Otherwise how would new/better stuff ever get built?!

The problem here is that people are salivating to use this as their daily driver. When WireGuard was still in development, everyone got told in very strong terms to not use it in any setting that required actual security.

Browsing the web at large is sort-of hostile by default.

Ladybird is a great project, and I hope it keeps developing, but any user that thinks their media decode libraries will be bulletproof libs free of vulnerabilities are nuts.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#223

Post by OkayPhysicist »

kramerger wrote: post #15

I would love to use this as my daily driver, but a lot of popular sites don't even work with Firefox. I hate what a small group of lazy front-end people have done to our world...

I exclusively use Firefox, and I probably browse more websites than most. I very rarely run into websites that don't work on Firefox, and I can't recall the last time I ran into a page that didn't work on Firefox when serving a Chrome UserAgent (btw, if you're a web developer and you're accessing your user's UA, you're doing something horribly wrong. Stop).

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#224

Post by matheusmoreira »

grey_earthling wrote: post #117
sph wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> if it works in Chrome, all web developers will adopt it This is why we, tech nerds who understand the problem, must resist monopolies: object to using such APIs. Chrome wouldn't be in quite this position if, instead of embracing the monopolist, more techies had warned their non-techy friends and family away from it, like they did with IE.

> object to using such APIs

Doesn't work since the corporation can just fire you and replace you with someone who has no such objections.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#225

Post by lern_too_spel »

bigfudge wrote: post #202
lern_too_spel wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every app may negatively impact system performance and battery life. A better webview could positively impact system performance and battery life. This statement from Apple was made in bad faith, and it didn't fool the regulators. It definitely shouldn't fool technologists.

It could improve performance, but let’s not kid ourselves that there are many companies that care about the minutiae of battery life as much as Apple. I mean, have you used a windows laptop recently. It’s -so- much worse than a MacBook that I refuse to believe it’s all about the m* magic chips. Sleep, power cycling, prioritisation just all seem to be better implemented.

I haven't, but I have used a Linux system recently, and the experience is far better than a Mac. Even the regulators can see that Apple doesn't care about battery life and performance so much as it cares about the billions it extracts from Google for the search engine deal. Allowing better browsers means that fewer people will be stuck on Apple's inferior browser, and Google will pay correspondingly less to access them.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#226

Post by throw7 »

jraph wrote: post #30
kramerger wrote: post #15

I would love to use this as my daily driver, but a lot of popular sites don't even work with Firefox. I hate what a small group of lazy front-end people have done to our world...

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

My goto example is roll20.net. During a gaming session some feature or thing didn't render. Switch to chrome... worked perfectly.

The real problem is that firefox is tier 2 support or not even. It's a small percent of users so it's a cost/benefit for these businesses.

A recent issue I had was buying tickets from air india. You can't with firefox... it'll hang at a certain point. Switch to chrome... works perfectly.

The web is dead. It's basically client/server nowadays. Firefox is still my main browser, but I keep chrome/chromium around when I need it.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#227

Post by zerd »

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…

I learned about the project from the co-recursive podcast episode. Fascinating story. https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#228

Post by yarekt »

It sounds cool, and it’s nice that someone is disproving the myth. I use Qutebrowser daily, these projects are great, but not without their pain points: once you start using them in anger you’ll quickly realise lots of basic features are missing. It would be really nice if the more common oss libs had more work done on them to unbloat them

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#229

Post by bobajeff »

SkiFire13 wrote: post #215
jll29 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> then Jakt, their own novel programming language, because neither C++ nor Rust is what makes him perfectly happy. TBH Jakt defaults to reference counting, which makes it compete more with Swift and Go rather than C/C++/Rust.

As far as I can tell Jakt's reference counting is not optional. So it may be closer to Swift.

That being said I've seen a few people here suggest it's easier to use rust's Rc and Box for everything and treat it like Haskell or Scala. So it might not be so different in practice.

Re: The Ladybird browser project

#230

Post by zamadatix »

hosteur wrote: post #185

I am fascinated by this project. What are the chances that this could become a real world usable replacement for chrome or Firefox witching the next couple of years?

"Usable" as a term is a bit of a wash in the browser world. Some people will argue Firefox or Chrome are unusable due to some minor annoyance and others will say filling is still usable. Trying to give an answer though I'd say most will say it works with most sites in a few years time but most would also not recommend it due to security concerns. It's not that they haven't thought about security, sometimes they even try newer more segmented approaches than current major browsers use, just that everything has been done from scratch and the work to make the code safe and battle tested as other browsers would be more than the work to make the browser to that point.
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