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This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

ladybird.org

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Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#31

Post by JoRyGu »

NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

How common is this that they would even care about it anyways? I've run Firefox exclusively for the last 2 decades and have never once run into a site that told me I needed to switch to Chromium for compatibility.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#32

Post by MarsIronPI »

JoRyGu wrote: post #31
NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

How common is this that they would even care about it anyways? I've run Firefox exclusively for the last 2 decades and have never once run into a site that told me I needed to switch to Chromium for compatibility.

And honestly, I've only ever once encountered a website that required Widevine. And that site was a media site. So if you don't watch DRMed movies in your browser then you don't need Widevine in my experience.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#33

Post by TheCoreh »

NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

To get to the point where these artificial gates substantially matter for interop, you've already cleared 99% of the hurdles, and you can get away with just spoofing the User Agent string most of the time.

Widevine is legitimately a “gate”, but realistically it only stops 4K playback on Netflix, Disney and a few other streaming sites. And it's not super relevant considering that Zen has gathered 10M users without it.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#34

Post by ekianjo »

NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

> DRM Widevine,

we have to thank tim berners lee for allowing this kind of bs in the first place

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#35

Post by LeFantome »

NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

Quite recently, Ladybird started reporting itself as Chrome for exactly this reason.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#36

Post by cpach »

ekianjo wrote: post #34
NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

> DRM Widevine, we have to thank tim berners lee for allowing this kind of bs in the first place

?

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#37

Post by bitwize »

ekianjo wrote: post #34
NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

> DRM Widevine, we have to thank tim berners lee for allowing this kind of bs in the first place

It was either permit DRM, or cut off the web for all sorts of media.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#38

Post by radlad »

einpoklum wrote: post #10

> Human Rights Foundation ... “AI for Individual Rights” program That sounds quite dodgy. Ladybird doesn't have AI, why would such a program support its development? But even before that: "Human Rights Foundation" sounds like "The Human League" which George makes up in Seinfeld as a fake charity. And promoting AI as a "human right" is quite suspicious. If I had to, I might be that this is something backed by one of t…

If you're interested in the program, you can find more details here: https://hrf.org/program/ai-for-individual-rights/ai-for-indi...

They offer grants for "Using AI tools and platforms to more efficiently build movements and resist oppression" in addition to many other things.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#39

Post by progval »

JoRyGu wrote: post #31
NBPEL wrote: post #24

The hardest part for browser development has always been "artificial" web compatibility, as you know a lot of websites are forcefully blocking specific browser from loading, only allow Chromium to load their websites, that is the reality check for Ladybird, and seriously what stopping new web browsers from being able to compete, same with DRM Widevine, it's REALLY hard to acquire (unobtainiumware) for new browser, ev…

How common is this that they would even care about it anyways? I've run Firefox exclusively for the last 2 decades and have never once run into a site that told me I needed to switch to Chromium for compatibility.

Common enough that Mozilla has full-time engineers working on triaging compatibility issues, so they can either be fixed in Firefox or reported to webmasters. Here are the reports they get: https://webcompat.com/issues

Re: This Month in Ladybird – April 2026

#40

Post by saintfire »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #32
JoRyGu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common is this that they would even care about it anyways? I've run Firefox exclusively for the last 2 decades and have never once run into a site that told me I needed to switch to Chromium for compatibility.

And honestly, I've only ever once encountered a website that required Widevine. And that site was a media site. So if you don't watch DRMed movies in your browser then you don't need Widevine in my experience.

I've found widewine a blessing because news sites that autoplay trash seem to be the only group that uses it (other than paid media platforms like Netflix and Spotify).

The blessing is I can just reject it and it blocks all their videos from playing/downloading.

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