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Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine. Driven by a web standards first approach, Ladybird aims to render the modern web with good performance, stability and security.
From the non-profit announcement:
The world needs a browser that puts people first, contributes to open standards using a brand new engine, and is free from advertising's influence.
This is why I='ve co-founded the Ladybird Browser Initiative with Andreas and my family has pledged $1M to support Ladybird's development. I believe in Ladybird and I believe in Andreas' vision, and I hope you'll help us support an open, independent browser that supports you.
Chris Wanstrath
GitHub Founder & former CEO
Lots of big promises. Will they be able to deliver? I sure hope so.
Jul 02 · 6 days ago · 👍 mozz, tenno-seremel, allknowingfrog · 🎉 2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791
For any foreseeable future, using a boutique browser makes you unique to anyone surveiling... The golden age of fingerprinting privacy was when Firefox held 75 percent of the market.
No legacy support == Don't care. I can run Falkon on a decade-old laptop with Haiku. And for everything else there's lynx/w3m.
Anyone supporting Javascript and not targeting ancient hardware is going to end up delivering more bloat.
🛰️ lufte [OP] · Jul 03 at 00:28:
What would prevent this from running in old hardware? Genuine question.
And I agree on the surveiling point, but we still need alternatives to the current Blink monopoly.
They said specifically they are targeting the hardware that will be common in however many years off they see their release date.
That's not to say it is guaranteed to not run on old hardware. But it is saying the average computer they expect to have running Ladybird will be 64-bit with 32GB of RAM.
🐦 wasolili [...] · Jul 03 at 01:50:
I've loosely followed SerenityOS updates and as such I've watched many of the Ladybird update videos. it'll be cool to see how/if those updates ramp up following this news.
They've got a ways to go (they're currently in the "it wouldn't be an update video without Ladybird crashing during filming" stage) but it's heartening to see it get some financial backing and goals beyond "fun toy for fun os"
I wouldn't consider using it to be related to privacy yet, though, given fingerprinting concerns and (as of yet) no major privacy-preserving features.
The full web standard is unimplementable. I think the best they can manage is to unbreak a few complex sites. From what I can see privacy will be an after thought for ladybird. In any case, mad respect for having the gut to start a browser project from scratch!
Just do HTML3/4/5 and CSS. Ignore JavaScript and it’s very doable and can run on very old hardware. Everything wrong with the web from tracking to advertising to complexity to poor performance is all the fault of JavaScript.
It isn’t needed, and developers who can’t live without it aren’t doing anything good for society.
🚀 blah_blah_blah · Jul 03 at 16:30:
I'm not going to speak on Ladybird, but to those who say we can run browsers without Javascript.
(Full disclosure: I hate JS in the browser.)
The problem is if you don't run JS in the browser, half the websites break. Especially the big ones. YT, for instance, is completely useless. You'd have to go to third party programs like yt-dlp to get access. Lots of normal sites are broken without JS, too. And even with JS turned on, browsers can't save JS "enhanced" pages properly. It's a major problem if you care about ownership of your web experience, and archiving things for research.
And if you do any banking, bill paying or even just checking if your credit card was jacked while paying for dinner... Not only must you enable JS, but also turn off most privacy oriented add-ons.
I use Tor for casual browsing and a completely unprotected browser for banking. The world has gone insane.
🚀 fluffygoatboy · Jul 03 at 18:22:
eh. the original dev (before he left) made his own thoughts on inclusive language known, so they've got a ways to prove they're not ran by terrible people. that said, for now I'll stick with LibreWolf.
@blah_blah_blah Let them fail. None of those were essential parts of hypertext.
The World Wide Web was hypertext documents distributed over hypertext transport protocol. Maybe with some CSS to suggest some display preferences.
That it has been raped into a permanent government tracking system powered by JavaScript state machines piggybacking on hypertext while negating the whole purpose of hypertext documents is irrelevant.
Much like overseas call centers full of people who can’t speak the language they are offering tech support in, this is something that we can make go away if we refuse to participate and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Other than spending the million donated and whatever other stupid money donated, there is absolutely no reason for this project.
😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 18:47:
Instead of dismissing newly adaptable software via anecdotal analysis influenced by preferential biased hasty speculation, which I'm SURE tech giants prefer to foster against anything threatening the market dominance of their products which we should be encouraging to act on rather than discrediting, I find it admirable there's some effort being made to cut into the usership dominated by Blink and Webkit. I'll be cloning the repo in order to get it together to run, will be testing it for some time, I'll post back here periodically with my thoughts on using it so I can make a clearer assessment of whether or not It achieves what it means to approach or if it falls flat continuing to pander to broken standards.
The probability of this browser becoming good enough to be a general-purpose browser is extremely low, and according to the maintainer, it's a toy and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Given the history (tired of Serentity, doing this), probability of getting tired of this as well is high (not meant as an insult, I have many projects I got tired of). Of course after the million is spent.
Is it a good thing? Is writing another Lisp implementation a good thing when there are several excellent ones already? Some people say -- the more, the better; others say you are wasting time and talent.
I say it's pointless, but that is just an opinion.
P.S. I've written a Lisp and dozens of Forth compilers, and enjoy doing pointless things for fun. No one gave me a million dollars yet, but it doesn't stop me from making pointless things. I recognize others' pointless things, and generally avoid them.
😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 19:18:
Is having only TWO options in the ecosystem of browsers that used to be many TRULY beneficial for open software? Does belittling the statements of a maintainer and their project's goals as "a toy" really conducive to helping developers find a better solution? It's easy to continue to dismiss something based, again, off a static perspective. It's harder to continue to remain complacent to EEE-influenced gameplans straight from M