A browser is born
July 1, 2024 11:10 PM Subscribe
Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project - "The Ladybird browser came to life on July 4th [2022]"* and now today Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative via Simon Willison: "Andreas Kling's Ladybird is a really exciting project: a from-scratch implementation of a web browser, initially built as part of the Serenity OS project, which aims to provide a completely independent, open source and fully standards compliant browser." (previously)
As a Firefox user it seems that browsers are like mobile operating systems - there's only room for two big alternatives and the rest will sadly forever be niche.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:25 AM on July 2
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:25 AM on July 2
Not sure that's true GallonOfAlan, that seems to be more the result of the way the market has shaken out. Opera hung around for quite some time, and other browsers, using WebKit, proliferate, usably, even now: my go-to example of Vivaldi.
I just found out about Ladybird a couple of weeks ago, and I consider that the best way to think of it is not as an alternative browser, because we actually do have a lot of those. In addition to Vivaldi there's Safari and Edge (and Brave for cryptobros). The problem is that they all use WebKit, in one form or another, for their engine. But the only alternative to Webkit among full-featured web browsers at the moment is Firefox's Gecko. This aims to change that.
Mind you, part of the issue with all these browsers is features being added to WebKit. Just yesterday there was a post about a browser-based After Effects workalike that only works on Chrome-family browsers because they implement AudioData, showSaveFilePicker and VideoEncoder, and Firefox doesn't. It starts to feel like the old days when Microsoft would put things into IE so everyone would prefer it to Navigator. I wonder if Ladybird will eventually chase after feature parity there?
posted by JHarris at 3:47 AM on July 2 [1 favorite]
I just found out about Ladybird a couple of weeks ago, and I consider that the best way to think of it is not as an alternative browser, because we actually do have a lot of those. In addition to Vivaldi there's Safari and Edge (and Brave for cryptobros). The problem is that they all use WebKit, in one form or another, for their engine. But the only alternative to Webkit among full-featured web browsers at the moment is Firefox's Gecko. This aims to change that.
Mind you, part of the issue with all these browsers is features being added to WebKit. Just yesterday there was a post about a browser-based After Effects workalike that only works on Chrome-family browsers because they implement AudioData, showSaveFilePicker and VideoEncoder, and Firefox doesn't. It starts to feel like the old days when Microsoft would put things into IE so everyone would prefer it to Navigator. I wonder if Ladybird will eventually chase after feature parity there?
posted by JHarris at 3:47 AM on July 2 [1 favorite]
Worth noting at this point, developer Andreas Kling is maybe not the most thoughtful person when it comes to gender...
posted by bigendian at 4:29 AM on July 2
posted by bigendian at 4:29 AM on July 2
In the list of operating systems they have "Windows (WSL) ". So, not really *Windows* but kinda-sorta Windows, if you have Windows Subsystem Linux installed (and presumably up-to-date).
Also saw no mention of running browser extensions, which for people like me are essential.
I wish them luck, and perhaps in time it will be more widely usable, but I think bootstrapping into that position is hard without real Windows support.
posted by Ayn Marx at 4:52 AM on July 2
Also saw no mention of running browser extensions, which for people like me are essential.
I wish them luck, and perhaps in time it will be more widely usable, but I think bootstrapping into that position is hard without real Windows support.
posted by Ayn Marx at 4:52 AM on July 2
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Had a go and managed to build Ladybird from source a couple of weeks ago. Did great loading the wikipedia home page but was unusable crashy as I tried various other sites.
Interesting to see that Shopify are the biggest sponsor. Perhaps they see the value in not letting Google/Alphabet totally control the platform that is the only conduit to Shopify.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:54 AM on July 2 [2 favorites]