Remind me in 2 years when this project becomes discontinued…
Servo already exists and is independent and written in a modern language and way ahead of this.
I mean, competition is good but they aren’t the only independent browser engine.
“Ladybird uses a brand new engine based on web standards, without borrowing any code from other browsers.” has the same energy as
Not really. They aren’t inventing new standards. They are implementing an engine that confirms to existing standards.
In this case having more browser engines not under Google’s control is probably a good thing. Although this effort might’ve been better spent working on Servo.
The project management may have some obvious problems (jOin dIsc0Rd sErVEr; w0rD “thEy” t0o p0liTicAl). But we really need an alternative to browsers funded by Google (Chrome and Firefox).
So I’ll do my best to actually build from sources and see what can I help with. Attacking the author is helping nobody.
And for the folks who are saying “wHy n0t rUst”, you can always show me the (rust) code.
And for the folks who are saying “wHy n0t rUst”, you can always show me the (rust) code.
https://github.com/servo/servo
I really wish they would publish flatpaks because I can’t be arsed to either build the thing or get a non-standard precompiled binary to run on nixos.
Well, thank you for pointing me to this project. Didn’t know about it. I’ve just built it. So, the part of I’ll do my best to see what can I help with applies here to.
Is it true that there is no truly independent web browser or are there others?
Not very many, and many are not featured complete. There’s really just fire fox and chrome. However there’s a couple of wacky ones like mothra on plan9 but it can’t do JavaScript and ignores some modern web practices. Then there are also terminal based browsers.
builds a new browser from scratch without borrowing existing code
still chooses to do it in C++
Epic fail
The language choice was because Ladybird started as a component of SerenityOS, which is also written in C++. With this separation, they are free to gradually introduce other language(s) into the codebase, and maybe eventually replace C++ entirely, piece by piece.
In Hackernews thread about this, the head maintainer mentioned that they have been evaluating several languages already, so we’ll see what the future brings.
In the meantime, let’s try to be mature about it, what do you say?
The dev has 30 years of experience with c++ and a lot of it was on browsers.
He tried to incorporate rust with the help of “JT”, one of the original rust designers/devs and according to Andreas it didn’t work that well due to the web being too objet oriented or something like that. They both worked together (well, mostly “JT”) to create a new safe programming language called “yakt” that transpile to c++, but the project is currently pretty much dead because nobody is really working on it anymore.
The web being too object oriented for rust? Assuming that made sense, who wrote the dang language? If that’s true I’m even less confident they know what they’re doing then I was before.
You’re doubting someone’s ability to create a web browser knowing that they specialize in browser development since the early 2000s?
If this isn’t enough to have confidence in them then nothing will.
Using my decades of experience in how programming and compilers works and the fact Mozilla has used it to great effect and how it is being used for parts of the Linux kernel… Yeah just a general statement it doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe they aren’t effective at designing software with the paradigms of the language or they don’t like it but the given explanation doesn’t track.
I am pretty sure it was about how it was difficult for them to do oop with rust, but I reckon it was long ago and my programming knowledge is minimal.
Found it*:
https://rl.rootdo.com/r/rust/comments/yuxb8a/serenityos_author_rust_is_a_neat_language_but
The talk about the web being relying on oop was likely in discord.
I’m not sure 10 years old are allowed on the internet. Isn’t it time for Coco and bed?
I agree that Rust would be an interesting choice for this project but there’s a reason why this particular project is done in C++
I wouldn’t go around accusing people of being 10 years old when your English skills are worse than a 10 year old’s. Glass houses and all that.
English is not my first language. I saw the mistake and left it here. You fixated on that simple mistake instead of answering the main point
Not sure if you are trying to be funny, but if not: enlighten us?
Sure :)
There are a lot of downsides of C++ compared to more modern languages that make it not a great choice if you’re starting a web browser from scratch
- Complexity of the language leading to increased bugs and slower development
- Manual memory management is error-prone and leads to issues like memory leaks or segmentation faults. Modern browsers need to handle large amounts of dynamic content, making memory management complicated
- C++ lacks some of the built-in safety features of more modern languages, which has led to the majority of security vulnerabilities found in major browsers. It’s so bad that Mozilla invented an entirely new programming language just to deal with this
- Compared to higher-level languages, C++ can be slower to develop in, which may impact the ability to quickly implement new web standards or features unless you have a massive team
- While C++ is cross-platform, ensuring consistent behavior across different operating systems can be more challenging than with some other languages.
- Newer languages often provide built-in support for concurrent programming, garbage collection, and other features useful for browser development, which C++ lacks.
So tl;dr: a browser but in C++ will take much longer to develop, have fewer features, more bugs, less concurrency and and more security vulnerabilities
C++ is a very old, extremely complex language. There are arguably objectively better modern alternatives, such as Rust.
I agree that Rust is the way to go, but calling something “arguably” & “objectively” in the same breath is a bit of a paradox innit?
Well, it was more to recognize that there is no inherently better programming languages in theory, they all do the same stuff. And some languages are “better” at some stuff just due to the libraries available and nothing to do with the language itself. But yea I do think Rust is an objectively better language than C++.
Rust is great, but anybody developing something should have the ability to choose whatever programming language they prefer. If you want it made with rust, make it yourself.
Not everyone with the knowledge to identify this mistake is in a position to personally correct it. Do you have the time and resources to personally build a browser from scratch? No? Why do you assume a random commenter does?
It doesn’t change the fact that Rust is similarly performant and much safer and will thus be faster to develop and less bug-prone. It’s not a difficult assessment to make. If you want to explain why they’re wrong you can talk about the issue on its merits, but you didn’t choose to, presumably because you can’t.
I just don’t think it’s fair to tell somebody with over 20 years of experience with C++ that their decision to use C++ in their next project is a ‘fail’.
Learning a new language will probably not be faster than using one you’re already deeply familiar with.
I’m not sure why you’re asking me about the merits of C++ over rust, that wasn’t my point. I was simply advocating for personal choice.
Also, my first sentence was literally praising rust, but I guess I didn’t deepthroat it enough for you to notice? Presumably because you’ve taken the thought of somebody advocating for anything other than rust as a personal attack.
Their choice of programming language isn’t a ‘mistake’. It isn’t something that is ‘corrected’. It’s a development choice, nothing more. That’s the point. And if some ‘random commenter’ doesn’t like that choice, that’s their problem to fix - not the developers who are actually making the project.
You said they “should have the ability to choose whatever programming language they prefer”. I have good news for you.
You have correctly identified that the developers are responsible for their own decisions. They are, you will be very relieved to hear, quite free to make as many poor decisions as they will. Nobody is going to force them to stop.
Other people are more than capable of identifying that those decisions are mistakes. Now, that could be argued with, you could explain how it’s not a mistake.
But you haven’t. You just said they should be allowed to do it, but nobody was arguing that they needed to be stopped, just that it was a bad decision.
Edit: this person didn’t actually say that first quote, but the line of argument proceeded from there, and they did nothing to distance themselves from that point.
Of course, but it still makes sense to think carefully about the advantages of disadvantages of the tools you use when starting any project.
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I am not the one who said “epic fail”.
Sorry, replied in the wrong comment level apparently.
Rust or bust
Then build a browser in rust…
Servo exists
That’s a web rendering engine, not a web browser application. You need a lot of stuff other than the engine to make a browser.
The engine is where like 95% of the complexity lies though. Maybe more.
you shouldn’t use this browser the devs are transphobic sexist chuds
Hmm. I just read the github thread that this is about. The devs made a mistake on this; but it seems to me that there is a bit of an over-reaction here. The people in the thread seem to be discussing it calmly and politely; and the issue (i.e. use of pronouns in the build instructions) ends up being resolved. By contrast, the reaction outside of the actual thread… is extreme.
Like I said, this seems like an overreaction to someone making a mistake of ignorance & indifference. It wasn’t an act of malice.
they must be trying to go after the brave marketshare
Appears to be fixed now: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/24648
All this because they won’t change a “he” into “they” ? Who gives a fuck about such rampant whiteknightism ? Why does a browser even need to know your gender ? In what context even is there a pronoun in the user interface ?
You could find out the context by reading the title of the thread, but then you’d have less to bitch about, so I can understand why you chose ignorance.
Why don’t ya’ll contribute some meaningful code instead of finding ways to deny those who do
Please describe to me how someone who offered up changes to change “he” to “they” for them, and then the contributor getting pissy about “politics” is denying work.
… What
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Yeah, I saw this, and all my excitement for the project died. If it becomes successful, I might use it anyway though.
Wasn’t this the transphobic one?
Changing to gender neutral seems like a no brainer to me but how is this transphobia?
i like how they’re like this isnt the place for personal politics while ignoring the fact that gendered readme files are patently stupid in the first place.
Shoutout to the user pointing out that forcing “he” is just as, if not more, political ❤️
Brave?
Don’t believe they’re related
Brave is the one run by transphobes who also love crypto.
It would be nice if people read the post and the project before randomly making assumptions such as implying the project started from scratch yesterday or its run by some amateurs, this is a 4 year old project! It’s founded by a former KHTML/Webkit developer for Apple!
If only.
The website makes it sound like all of the code being bespoke and “based on standards” is some kind of huge advantage but all I see is a Herculean undertaking with too few engineers and too many standards.
W3C lists 1138 separate standards currently, so if each of their three engineers implements one discrete standard every day, with no breaks/weekends/holidays, then having an alpha available that adheres to all 2024 web standards should be possible by 2026?
This is obviously also without testing but these guys are serious, senior engineers, so their code will be perfect on the first try, right?
Love the passion though, can’t wait to see how this project plays out.
Wait, 1138? If there are any Star Wars fans in there, there won’t be more.
They’ve been at it for four years and they plan to have an alpha by 2026. Maybe wait how it actually turns out?
a Herculean undertaking with too few engineers and too many standards
Yeah, as a layperson this is my take. If mozilla is struggling to stay in the game then I just don’t really see how an unfinanced indie team has a shot.
Mozilla has loads of projects, not just the browser. I doubt more than a 30 work exclusively on the engine nowadays.
Even if that were true, and it seems unlikely, that’s still an order of magnitude more than the ladybug devs.
Let’s not forget that Mozilla (the company) is largely mismanaged, so that doesn’t help.
It might seem that way but it’s a fairly arrogant assertion. They’re a sophisticated organisation with a lot of well experienced people guiding them. As an outsider it’s easy to criticise their seemingly endless series of bad decisions, but I’m still confident that internally all of these decisions seemed like a good idea at the time.
Besides which, this would be a good reason to fork their codebase rather than starting from scratch.
Sure, but an individual website may use only a few of those standards. Ladybird devs will pick a website they like to use - Reddit, Twitter, Twinings tea, etc. and improve adherence to X or Y standards to make that one website look better. In turn, thousands of websites suddenly work perfectly, and many others work better than before.
Ladybird is largely conformant to the majority of HTML standards now. It’s about the edge cases (and where standards aren’t followed by websites) and performance. This isn’t a new project.
Lol, mentioning Twinings tea together with Reddit and Twitter sounds so random
Andreas Kling, the founder and lead dev, has a massive love for Twinings tea and spent a few Dev logs working on improving their website with the end goal being ordering his tea from them :)
That is a nice little tidbit of information :)
W3C lists 1138 separate standards currently, so if each of their three engineers implements one discrete standard every day, with no breaks/weekends/holidays, then having an alpha available that adheres to all 2024 web standards should be possible by 2026?
Yes, that is exactly the plan: “We are targeting Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version”
You are assuming that they only started now from point 0. They have probably been working on it for a bit before announcing everything.
Exactly. They have been working on Ladybird Browser for few years already, before it was announced as standalone product (It was a part of SerenityOS).
And it passes the Acid3 test, which is more than Firefox does.
They say they already use it to manage GitHub issues so it’s definitely more than “point 0” right now.
Let’s not do zomething because it’s hard pretty much sums up every new generation.
Imagine if they said that when they had to program everything in assembly…
Software nowadays is a lot more complex. You’d get nowhere using assembly. Are you also gonna call me lazy if I say making a smartphone from scratch is complicated? “But the Nokia 1234 only had 4kb of memory” Is what you will probably say.
You’d get nowhere using assembly because people wanted to keep improving technology.
The Nokia was actually build and freakin’ rock solid. Then came smartphones because people wanted to improve. It sure wasn’t easy and they didn’t go Geez, a phone from scratch? Why bother?
I want to follow updates from this project. They have a Twitter account but not Mastodon sigh
RSS is not even enabled on the Newz page on the website.
I share the disappointment.
I found they have a newsletter, that sounds like an acceptable middle ground, not good, not terrible.
Im glad to see this. Discord is a nightmare. It’s the same as a Facebook only group to me.
I agree, but (hot take) I think that Discord is even worse than Facebook.
I do not understand the urge to start from scratch instead of forking an existing, mature codebase. This is typically a rookie instinct, but they aren’t rookie so there’s perhaps an alternative motive of some sort.
Ladybird was born from SerenityOS, which is a hobbyist unix-like (or POSIX compliant?) OS that simply aimed to do things “from the ground up”. It just happened that they needed to make a browser, and the response was to make one from scratch.
From there it seemed to have brought a lot of attention organically to the point where it can stand on its own, but originally it was never intended to be a “third browser engine” from its inception.
That actually makes the most sense. So similar to how Linux was started.
Because there are only like 3 browser engines: Chrome’s Blink, Firefox’s Gecko and Apple‘s WebKit. And while they are all open source, KHTML, the last independent browser engine got discontinued last year and hasn’t been actively developed since 2016.
There’s need in the space for an unaffiliated engine. Google’s share is far too high for a healthy market (roughly 75%), WebKit never got big outside of Safari (although there are a few like Gnome Web, there’s no up to date WebKit based browser on Windows) and Gecko has its own problems (like lack of HEVC support).
So, in my book, this is exciting news. Sure it‘ll take a while to mature and it is up against software giants but it‘s something because Mozilla doesn’t seem to have a working strategy to fight against Google‘s monopoly and Apple doesn’t have to.
Mozilla doesn’t seem to have a working strategy
Guess they couldn’t replicate the “own everything that people use to get stuff on the internet and make secret breaking changes to constantly mess up other browsers” strategy.
Also Gecko’s development is led by people thinking that it being usable outside of Firefox\Thunderbird is a bad thing. There was a time when Gnome’s browser was based on Gecko, not WebKit. And in general it’s influenced by bad practices.
SerenityOS is an amazing project, of course. To do so much work for something completely disconnected from the wider FOSS ecosystem, and with such results.
So it’s cool that they’ve decided to split off the browser as its own project.
That’s always struck me as odd, but I’m also very much an outsider looking in. A “gecko electron” does sound intriguing though.
I wonder why Microsoft decided to switch from their own engine to Blink, they could’ve switched to Gecko and keep the web a little bit more free
Why would Microsoft care?
Servo is going to fill that void
I meant alternative browsers, like vimb or surf, but on Gecko and not WebKit.
webkit and blink are based of KHTML
Technically blink is based WebKit but yes. However, they were forked 23 and 11 years ago respectively, so it’s safe to assume they evolved into their own thing. But they probably do still share code, yes.
Could they not add HEVC support? Or is there some technical limitation that meant starting from zero was a good idea?
HEVC is almost entirely down the the licensing. This section of the wikipedia page details it pretty well.
The tl;dr is that the LA group wanted to hike the fees significantly, and that combined with a fear of locking in led to the mozilla group not to support HEVC.
And it’s annoying at times. Some of my security cameras are HEVC only at full resolution, which means I cannot view them in Firefox.
They could, probably. My guess is, that it’s either a limitation of resources, the issue of licensing fees or Google‘s significant financial influence on Mozilla forcing them to make a worse browser than they potentially could. Similar to how Firefox does not support HDR (although, to my knowledge, there’s no licensing involved there).
The biggest problem most people have with Mozilla is said influence by Google, making them not truly independent.
Google probably is putting pressure on Mozilla, but if the options are licensed HECV or open royalty-free AV1, the choice is pretty clear for a FOSS project.
Yes but: HEVC is the standard for UHD content for now, until AV1 gets much broader adoption. And judging from how long HEVC took to be as broadly available as h.264, it’ll still take a while for AV1 to be viable for most applications.
The good news is no streaming service even supports UHD in browers (except Netflix on Edge?) because of DRM. So I don’t see the value.
My Jellyfin server does and on Firefox it needs to transcode to h.264
Mozilla had the same problem with h.264 until Cisco allowed them to use openh264 and ate any associated licensing costs. Just from a cursory glance, HEVC licensing seems much more of a clusterfuck.
If 50% of firefox users donated 2 dollars per year mozilla could work for people instead of Google or at least people AND google
The problem is, most user don’t want to pay. And every time mozilla tries to monetise differently they get community backlash…
Yeah I’m curious as to whether there’s not merit in taking the imperfect codebase and improving it.
I suppose Mozilla is already doing that as best as they can.
Webkit and blink have the same base
Yea, but Webkit was forked from KHTML 23 years ago and Blink was forked from WebKit 11 years ago. In the mean time they all definitely evolved to become their own thing, even though in the beginning they were the same.
No webkit browser on Android either. If there was gnome web for Android id switch in a heartbeat
Does anyone know why there are barely any WebKit based browsers? WebKit is open source and at least Safari works really well. Is it hard to work with? Do people just hate Apple that much? Is there some limitation?
Also, WebKit was based on KHTML, which was open source and platform independent itself.
WDYM “independent” ?
Isn’t mozilla / gecko more or less independent?
They get most of their money from google for the “default search engine deal” make of that what you want. For me personally it doesn’t sound fully independent.
Seems a little idealistic.
If ladybird actually achieves any sort of userbase they would take the same deal in an instant.
Based on the community being quite succsessful so far despite being made by volunteers, I don’t think they will.
Making a web browser that’s fully compatible with modern standards is not easy nor cheap (and worse it’s a moving target because the standards keep evolving). I’m rooting for these folks but eventually money will be an issue.
Oh my sweet summer child.
There is currently no implementation of web standards that is under a more permissive license than LGPL or MPL. I think that is a gap worth filling and if I recall that is what Ladybird is doing.
i’d argue its better for software to max foss license like AGPL, not bsd that can be taken out by companies
I guess Chromium isn’t fully BSD. This could be the reason. Although I’d think reimplementing the non-BSD bits in Chromium would be less work than reimplementing all the bits, including the BSD ones.
Chromium and WebKit both still have bits from KHTML in them which is LGPL
Why is that a gap worth filling? There is no benefit to users as long as its free of a EULA they don’t have to care either way. For those wanting to produce open source software based on same they already have all the rights they could need. The only party clamoring for permissively licensed software are companies intending to close off the source and sell other people’s work.
I understand why they would want to do that I don’t understand why anyone would feel the need to work for free for something someone else closes off.
Because software monocultures are bad. The vast majority of browsers are Chromium based. Since Google de-facto decides what gets in Chromium, sooner or later the downstream forks are forced to adopt their changes. Manifest V3 is a great example of this. You can only backport for so long, especially when upstream is being adversarial to your changes. We need an unaffiliated engine that corrects the mistakes we made with KHTML/Webkit.
Why are open source software monocultures bad? The vast majority of non-Windows OSes are Linux based. Teams who don’t like certain decisions of the mainline Linux team maintain their forks with the needed changes.
Manifest V3 is a great example of this. You can only backport for so long, especially when upstream is being adversarial to your changes. We need an unaffiliated engine that corrects the mistakes we made with KHTML/Webkit.
And we could get a functional one today by forking Chromium and never accepting a single upstream patch thereafter. I find it really hard to believe that starting a browser engine from scratch would require less labor. This is why I’m looking for an alternative motive. Someone mentioned licensing.
Perhaps some folks just want to do more work to write a new browser engine. After all Linus did just that, instead of forking the BSD kernel.
I agree mostly, but forks don’t need to keep the upstream. They can go their own way.
I can’t understand how people can continue relying on chrome and derivatives like electron, CEF etc. and not see it as a problem.
It’s easy to understand when you think most comments are similar to yours and don’t provide any insight as to why this might be a problem.
Maybe you could update your post and share your knowledge and experience with others, so that there are less people in the world who don’t see the problem.
When trying to render a relatively simple page consisting few thousands of text lines in a table, any current browser will cause mouse cursor to lag for some time, then you’ll discover it consumes at least 2 GB ~ 4 GB of RAM. YouTube lags like I have 2 cores instead of 16. Any electron app is either clunky or too clunky, also either hungry or too hungry.
I’m sorry but I don’t have time to look up other cases.
Any intuition on why we’d expect opening the same page on a newly implemented browser engine that implements all equivalent standards and functions will consume less resources?
That’s not an expectation. The experience is that this became a reality thanks to google, and that it will only get worse in the future. More competition within browsers is the expectation. Better chance for better frameworks to emerge. Eventually it may cause google code to shift into a better overall state too.
Love the idea! Shopify as the highest tier sponsor? Not so much.
I mean if they’re gonna give money without demanding anything I’m sure no complaints from the devs.
Shopify or an exec there might find some value in avoiding Google owning the web, could maybe bring goodwill for the company, or they could just be looking for a write off.
I’m curious what issue you see with that? It seems like the project is only accepting unrestricted donations, but is there something suspicious about shopify that makes it’s involvement concerning (I don’t know much about them)?
My best guess would be that Shopify either care about the open Web or had some disagreements with Google.
I can’t find anything shady on them, but maybe I’m looking the wrong places.
They fired a lot of people and replaced them with AI: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/04/how-shopify-bungled-its-latest-layoffs-and-made-employees-feel-like-npcs/
My guess is they just want a high value backlink for their SEO performance 😉
While controversial, I think it’s more a product of how insane US “politics” are.
They could be good guys even so.
Why? Shopify has been sponsoring stuff like community gaming events for a few years now.
C++
If they’re starting a browser from scratch, why would they not have chosen Rust? Seems very short sighted to not have learned from Firefox.
They used c++ initially since it was spawned from SerenityOS, which was designed to be a mashup of win2000 and unix.
now that Ladybird is its own project, it’s not constrained to that goal, and they have said they will incorporate modern languages.
Glad to hear that!
@asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world There’s Servo ( @servo@floss.social ), it’s a browser engine written in rust
@Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
I know about servo. It was pretty much a dead project until they joined the Linux fondation last year and started getting some sponsorship. Since then, they being doing pretty good on there own with personal donations rising by around 20% each month, reaching more than 2000$ monthly. Wish them all the best!
Yes, that’s what I’m referring to. They could build on that, or they could write something their own in Rust. But I’d think building on Servo would be fantastic.
Must be planning on actually shipping something
/s
Ship what, segfaults / invalid memory access? Lol
CVEs lol
Funny how in the video the guy say that all other browsers are based on Google’s code. But Firefox is also independent right?
He says “powered by or funded by Google”. Firefox depends on Google financially, most of the income of Mozilla comes from Google paying for being the default search engine.
They try to diversify their income (Firefox VPN, email alias service, etc.), but anything they try gets a huge backlash from the community, and still small compared to the the money from google.
Is this their way of asking Google for money?
I think google need firefox exist to avoid anti trust, and Mozilla need google to keep the the six figures payroll for the CEO. So yes.
Firefox gets tons of funding from Google, and their code is quite frankly humongous. From what I understand, it’s extremely hard to get the gecko web view engine to work. In another browser, unless it’s a fork of Firefox, unlike Chromium where you can just redesign an entire browser around it.
It doesn’t help that there’s basically no documentation for how to use the Gecko engine either.
Neither Chromium nor Gecko have a stable public API. Companies are just willing to spend money rebasing every Chromium update.
Google is Mozilla’s biggest source of income, and google developers have actively contributed code to the Firefox engine.
So you decide for yourself what level of independence you assign to it.
