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Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

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Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#31

Post by dale_glass »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

> However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser.

I'm longing for a free web browser *engine*.

Neither Firefox nor Chrome like being used as a component of something else. Chrome is used by Qt, but only by force through a pile of hacks.

I'm really hoping a new project drops that nonsense and just allows rendering HTML to a texture without needing a big corporation to maintain a patch set to make it actually possible.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#32

Post by jcul »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

That's strange, I sometimes (once every few months) use teams with Firefox on Linux and it seems to work fine.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#33

Post by jcul »

apex_sloth wrote: post #4
ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

Side note: Teams works for me in firefox on linux if I change the UserAgent with this add-on: https://mybrowseraddon.com/custom-useragent-string.html For these urls https://teams.microsoft.com/ https://statics.teams.cdn.office.net/ To Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.102 Safari/537.36 Edg/85.0.564.51

It seems to work for me on FF / linux out of the box, without any user agent change.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#34

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #28
wheybags wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware and I hate it. I have zero interest in most of the crap the foundation gets up to, but I keep sending them money because it's the only way to "support Firefox". I want to support Firefox but I resent every cent I send them because I know they're wasting it on irrelevant crap. I would really love to see a mass resignation of Firefox engineers, who then set up a new nonprofit + ff fork, and I could just switc…

You can't fight for an open web just by making a browser. As dire as the Firefox market share is today, it'd be so much worse if the Foundation didn't spend its time and effort making sure the folks who don't give a shit, but should (e.g. politicians, law makers, lobbyists, news outlets, etc. etc.) learn why they should give a shit about the open web. It sucks that you can't donate to Firefox directly, but calling wh…

Yes, but sometimes, just sometimes, I. Want. To. Support. The. Freaking. Browser.

I realize that there's some creative bookkeeping and bureaucratic barriers set up so that the only entity that can meaningfully support Firefox financially is Google in the end, but I hate the fact.

I'll probably donate to Andreas instead.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#35

Post by kerrie »

andrewstuart wrote: post #23

I put it to you that the web browser and the operating system are the two most sophisticated applications ever built. No doubt it’s possible to build a simple web browser that gets some 50% of the job done and could serviceabley display some websites. However there would a very very long tail of detail and nuance and edge cases that would be very very hard to catch up. This is why you should use Firefox and we should…

But is it really necesary to use the such a bloated piece of software as a web browser? i think it would be better to discard the whole web and replace it with the gemini protocol.

It can do 99.99% of what you use the web for with less resource usage. you can implement your own gemini client in 100 lines of code.

For the remainder 0.01% of stuff, use a dedicated application. Dont trust it? Use it with docker or similar.

As far as Im concerned all the browser bloat is worse than useless. Much of it is just to spy on you. Im sure these dedicated spying apps, you call web browsers, are deliberately full of security holes so they can upload your data to their servers

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#36

Post by AlienRobot »

robador wrote: post #30

> As an example, the recently launched website for Dialogic requires about 700 JavaScript-modules, and has about 19.000 lines of code of its own. There is however a staggering amount of complexity hiding beneath: just this website alone depends on (potentially) another 1.3 million (!) lines of code in modules it uses. This is fine. Seriously though, that's insane.

The irony is that I clicked on the website and it looks like you could make it with wordpress...

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#37

Post by NoboruWataya »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #17
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to not explain the connection between these organizations. You're making it sound like they both happen to be named "Mozilla", when the reality is much more nuanced and interdependent, but in terms of their current funding and leadership, as well as their history.

No, it's not. Having worked at the foundation for a decade: to the vast majority of folks, the difference that matters is that "one makes Firefox, the other does campaigning/advocacy/outreach". The history behind why there are two different entities is fascinating, but also doesn't change the fact that they are two completely different companies with completely different org charts and completely different focuses, u…

But the Corporation is wholly owned by the Foundation, isn't it? In that context, I don't see how it makes sense to see them as completely separate. The Corporation is answerable to the Foundation, the Corporation's profits go to the Foundation and I imagine it is similarly possible for the Foundation to fund the Corporation (unless its charter prohibits it or something).

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#38

Post by andrewstuart »

kerrie wrote: post #35
andrewstuart wrote: post #23

I put it to you that the web browser and the operating system are the two most sophisticated applications ever built. No doubt it’s possible to build a simple web browser that gets some 50% of the job done and could serviceabley display some websites. However there would a very very long tail of detail and nuance and edge cases that would be very very hard to catch up. This is why you should use Firefox and we should…

But is it really necesary to use the such a bloated piece of software as a web browser? i think it would be better to discard the whole web and replace it with the gemini protocol. It can do 99.99% of what you use the web for with less resource usage. you can implement your own gemini client in 100 lines of code. For the remainder 0.01% of stuff, use a dedicated application. Dont trust it? Use it with docker or simil…

The web browser is one of humanities greatest achievements and I don't mean that ironically.

The more you understand about the modern web browser and how stunningly powerful it is, the more you should be amazed.

And far from bloated, the modern web browser is trim and fast given the unbelievable feature range.

And if you don't trust something you're free not to use it.

When I see Chrome or Firefox and I deeply gladdened.

Go back 25 years and any time you wanted to do something at the user interface in any context it was hard and glitchy and maybe couldn't be done at all. Want to do something in a user interface today? Chances are the browser can do it.

Truly breathtakingly beautiful and powerful software and I love it.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#39

Post by misterdata »

robador wrote: post #30

> As an example, the recently launched website for Dialogic requires about 700 JavaScript-modules, and has about 19.000 lines of code of its own. There is however a staggering amount of complexity hiding beneath: just this website alone depends on (potentially) another 1.3 million (!) lines of code in modules it uses. This is fine. Seriously though, that's insane.

Author here - this figure is insane but also a bit of an exaggeration. I calculated it by running 'cloc' on the source code directory, not excluding node_modules. Many modules in there are actually unused or only used at build time. The built output (from Nuxt) that is actually run is much more compact (though partly minified so line counts are not that interesting). Also, Nuxt specifically is a bit overkill here, but greatly improved my productivity developing this website (and was chosen because it aligns with our other web applications, so less 'innovation tokens' [1]).

[1] https://boringtechnology.club

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#40

Post by misterdata »

epgui wrote: post #10

Very cool project, but this article isn’t really about complexity, and complexity makes a background appearance at best.

Author here, I guess I could have chosen a better title. This article is about diving into complexity that seems insurmountable at first, with an engineer's mindset.
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