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.<p>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.<p>There's also the factor that past developers didn't have the more complete roadmap set when they initially planned browser design, but now we have huge amounts of web standards already there AND also know how popular they got over time i.e. what to prioritize to support a modern web. One might superficially think there's simply more of everything, but I also think ideas that can be discarded. Just imagine that Internet Explorer had XSLT support, and FTP was common once upon a time!<p>It would be interesting to hear more about their own thoughts on these topics!<p>Edit: My bad; XSLT is still commonly supported and by all major browsers but a rarely used feature and stuck in limbo in XSLT 1.0. So it's probably among those things that can be safely omitted for quite some time.
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...<p>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 have multiple volunteers and enough sponsorship to pay more than one developer, it's pretty exciting what could happen here!
I have hopes it will become a daily usable browser. A new Web engine is great. I hope Servo succeeds at this too.<p>I would consider contributing but development is coordinated on Discord and I avoid proprietary software… [1]. It's a shame. Can't blame them though, they are doing it for fun.<p>[1] <a href="https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infrastructure.html" rel="nofollow">https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infras...</a>
From the FAQ:<p>"
Q: Why bother? You can’t make a new browser engine without billions of dollars and hundreds of staff.<p>Sure you can. Don’t listen to armchair defeatists who never worked on a browser.
"<p>Nice take.
Great to see some competition still alive in browser engine development. See also Servo (previously part of Mozilla) <a href="https://servo.org/" rel="nofollow">https://servo.org/</a> - that and Ladybird are still very underdeveloped compared to every day browsers.<p>It's a huge shame that there are no nightly builds of ladybird to try out but I assume that's because they just don't want the bug reports (if everything doesn't work it's pointless getting random bugs filed).
i love these progress screenshots: <a href="https://serenityos.org/happy/1st/" rel="nofollow">https://serenityos.org/happy/1st/</a>
A thought experiment. What about a new kind of browser for a new kind of web? Much of CSS is obsolete. So doing a "modern" version (I'm thinking css grid and flex in particular) would provide the same functionality without the cruft. All that old stuff about the holy grail three columns layout.<p>And for me there is the question of canvas, threejs, react-three-fiber and react-drei. Is it possible that - especially with mobile - that canvas could be used to provide a better user experience? Who writes games for mobile with a HTML and CSS? Not saying it can't be done, but I wonder how many web sites require HTML & CSS instead of canvas?<p>A big barrier to browser competition is needing to implement obsolete and outdated technology. Why not just a minimum set of html and canvas.<p>Just thinking. Your thoughts?
Related ongoing thread:<p><i>Interview with Andreas Kling of Serenity OS (2022)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39286638">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39286638</a> - Feb 2024 (134 comments)<p>Related to OP:<p><i>Ladybird browser update (July 2023) [video]</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36939402">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36939402</a> - July 2023 (1 comment)<p><i>Chat with Andreas Kling about Ladybird and developing a browser engine</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450</a> - July 2023 (65 comments)<p><i>Shopify Sponsored Ladybird Browser</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36502583">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36502583</a> - June 2023 (1 comment)<p><i>I have received a $100k sponsorship for Ladybird browser</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377805">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377805</a> - June 2023 (166 comments)<p><i>Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33511831">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33511831</a> - Nov 2022 (84 comments)<p><i>Github.com on Ladybird, new browser with JavaScript/CSS/SVG engines from scratch</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273785">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273785</a> - Oct 2022 (1 comment)<p><i>Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126</a> - Sept 2022 (473 comments)<p><i>Ladybird: A truly new Web Browser comes to Linux</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014061">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014061</a> - July 2022 (8 comments)<p><i>Ladybird Web Browser</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987506">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987506</a> - July 2022 (2 comments)<p><i>Ladybird Web Browser – SerenityOS LibWeb Engine on Linux</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976579">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976579</a> - July 2022 (2 comments)
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).
I am fascinated by this project.<p>What are the chances that this could become a real world usable replacement for chrome or Firefox witching the next couple of years?
I would love to use this as my daily driver, but a lot of popular sites don't even work with Firefox.<p>I hate what a small group of lazy front-end people have done to our world...
Is there collaboration between Serenity/LB and Igalia?<p>Seems like they're involved in many browser technologies, and other technologies.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4</a>
I want to feel excited for Ladybird, but it's an incredible shame that such a promising and potentially very important project has settled on a pushover licence and Discord for their communication platform. The latter especially is an antithesis of freedom and openness, which I feel ought to be valued by people celebrating Ladybird's progress.
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
> 2023-08-13: New sponsor: ohne-makler.net<p>> 2023-06-28: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor<p>Hmm, no new sponsor since august 2023. Not a good sign. I cheer for them to succeed though!
Is there a way to create a binary to use this browser in a normal-ish way. Looks like the docks recommend using a script to run it, but I’d like to be able to package it for my personal package repository.
This is a really cool project, but:<p>"Where are the ISO images?<p>There are no ISO images. This project does not cater to non-technical users."<p>This comes off as really abrasive. Wanting an ISO image to quickly test this out is not an indicator of someones technical ability.<p>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.
Is it just for fun or not? I think it's important to face this question, because users should not trust a just-for-fun browser with their security, and we should not look to Ladybird as a meaningful contribution towards competition in the browser space if it's just for fun.<p>If it's just for fun, we need to temper our expectations accordingly.
It seems there is zero c++ in their web engine (cannot clone their repo right now and github is spitting raw json while browsing their source code with noscript/basic (x)html browsers).<p>Is this true?