[HN Gopher] Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird ... ___________________________________________________________________ Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser Author : pakyr Score : 176 points Date : 2022-11-07 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | Gajor444 wrote: | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Github.com on Ladybird, new browser with JavaScript /CSS/SVG | engines from scratch_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273785 - Oct 2022 (1 | comment) | | _Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 - Sept 2022 (473 | comments) | | _Ladybird: A truly new Web Browser comes to Linux_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014061 - July 2022 (8 | comments) | | _Ladybird Web Browser_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987506 - July 2022 (2 | comments) | | _Ladybird Web Browser - SerenityOS LibWeb Engine on Linux_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976579 - July 2022 (2 | comments) | pipeline_peak wrote: | What's the point, it's always gonna be a game of cat and mouse | where they manually tack on little fix-its to get specific sites | to work. | | It's a boast and will never be more than a toy. | jdsnape wrote: | I think it being 'cool' is entirely the point... | pipeline_peak wrote: | Being cool doesn't last | Lammy wrote: | Nor does life. Have fun building cool stuff while you can! | 6ad2F2Ui2B8Yx8 wrote: | no, the point is to have fun programming, while also learning | new things. | jdsnape wrote: | Exactly! That's what I count as cool :) | nonethewiser wrote: | It seems like it will only work on SerenityOS, which seems like | it explicitly does not support third party software. Someone | correct me if I'm wrong about that, but that seems like an | indication that it wont be much more than a toy. | | EDIT: I was wrong, this doesn't just run on SerenityOS. Guess | it's not limited to being a toy. Thank you everyone for the | correction. | senko wrote: | It already works on other systems. Quoting from [0]: | | > So far, we've seen it running on Linux, macOS, Windows | (WSL) and Android. The Linux version is definitely the most | tested. | | [0] https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross- | platform... | 6ad2F2Ui2B8Yx8 wrote: | He is running the browser natively on linux in that image | davikr wrote: | It already runs on Linux, for one, and SerenityOS does | support third-party software. | ramesh31 wrote: | *Kind of. | | More power to them, but modern browsers are one of the most | advanced and sophisticated pieces of software in the world, | probably right next to an OS. WebKit and Chromium respectively | have had billions of dollars and decades of development poured | into them. The current duopoly state of the market reflects that | fact, unfortunately. | Decabytes wrote: | I believe Andreas actually worked on WebKit for awhile so he is | well aware of how challenging implementing a browser is | anderspitman wrote: | Firefox on Linux doesn't even run a decent number of sites well | for me, I assume because they're primarily tested on Chrome. | And Chromium often chokes on Google's own voice.google.com web | app. Ladybird doesn't have to be perfect to be useful or | interesting. | hbn wrote: | From the FAQ [1] | | > Q: Why bother? You can't make a new browser engine without | billions of dollars and hundreds of staff. | | > Sure you can. Don't listen to armchair defeatists who never | worked on a browser. | | [1] https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross- | platform... | lzazz wrote: | Sure you can _start_ a new browser engine, but this one is | nowhere near usable, and it will probably never be. | Y_Y wrote: | Of course WebKit and Blink (Chromium) are both just shitty | descendants of the beautiful (and foss) KHTML from Conqueror. | djbusby wrote: | *Konqueror | | https://apps.kde.org/en-gb/konqueror/ | mananaysiempre wrote: | Link is to a Nitter instance. Even though I prefer to use it as | well, it should probably be pointed to the original Twitter | instead? For deduplication purposes if nothing else. | jacooper wrote: | Typo warning! | dang wrote: | Yes. Changed now from https://nitter.1d4.us/awesomekling/status | /158971149967250227.... It's fine to include alternate links in | comments, but for the submission URL, please follow the site | guideline: " _Please submit the original source. If a post | reports on something found on another site, submit the latter._ | " | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | pavon wrote: | To second this, many of the nitter instances and other twitter | flattening sites are blocked by corporate security scanning | proxies. For those in that situation, note that you can replace | the domain name with twitter.com to get the original URL. | UltraViolence wrote: | I'm so impressed with the LadyBird / SerenityOS browser engine! | | It took Mozilla more than 25 years to write Firefox's HTML engine | and here are a couple of geniuses who write a web browser from | scratch in just a few years!! Including Javascript (however, as | of yet lacking video and WebGL). | | And Google's Chromium is simply a convoluted mess, chockful with | vulnerabilities and memory corruption errors. | londons_explore wrote: | I'm actually pretty impressed with the Chromium source code. | For such a huge, old and complex project, I think it is rather | impressive. It's a lot better than the Linux kernel for | example, another project of similar size/age/complexity. | senkora wrote: | I think a significant factor in this is that C++ simply has | better abstractions for building large codebases than C does. | Any big enough C project is gonna turn out a bit funky. | senko wrote: | I'm a fan of Andreas and love seeing the progress here, but | let's be fair: it didn't take Mozilla 25 years to write a HTML | engine. It took Netscape 3 years to build the world's best (at | the time) browser from scratch ('94 to '97). | | Chromium's HTML engine derives from an open source KHTML | engine, written for the KDE project. | ossusermivami wrote: | Not trying to diminish this impressive work from Andrew, but I | would believe as the saying says those last (ongoing since a | browser is never finished) 20% is what take 80% of the time to | make a browser. | dingdingdang wrote: | Absolutely ace effort, do it for the love of it and great things | can happen that would otherwise require mountains of both | engineers and bureaucracy! | hopfog wrote: | I love Andreas Kling's "Browser hacking" series on YouTube where | he fixes various issues Ladybird has with specific websites. E.g: | | Fixing a CSS layout bug found by chessboard.js - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMpLiEgKC_w | | Let's make "Cookie Clicker" playable in Ladybird! - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4SxKWwFhA0 | | He's very good at articulating his thought progress and it's | always really interesting to see how he reduces the bug down into | a minimal reproducible example. | svnpenn wrote: | note, native Windows support is not planned: | | https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird/issues/113 | djha-skin wrote: | Building this for the first time on my laptop. Can I just say, | they realy thought about the build. Even though they have non- | trivial dependencies, the build for those just trying it out is | really easy, just four commands. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | "Impressive. Most impressive." | [deleted] | nonethewiser wrote: | Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser is. Why should I be | impressed? I would expect every browser to be capable of this. | | EDIT: Lots of great answers. Thanks everyone. Glad this inspired | such lively discussion. | AlphaCerium wrote: | Ladybird is the browser being developed for SerenityOS, the | "love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like | core"[0] | | [0] - https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity | Shared404 wrote: | Ladybird is a from-scratch browser on a from-scratch OS. | posnet wrote: | Because it's actually a new browser, not just a wrapper/reskin | around webkit, gecko or blink. | adamrezich wrote: | right, because you expect every browser to just use | webkit/chromium | jacooper wrote: | ~~I think its a browser writing by one person.~~ | | Edit: the point is that its an independent browser, not that | its built by just one person | bornfreddy wrote: | I don't think this is true? If nothing else, github[0] lists | 30 contributors. | | [0] https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird | ajanuary wrote: | It isn't. The SerenityOS project (of which this is an | offshoot) was started by one person a few years ago, but it's | had a lot of contributors since then. | https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/graphs/contributors | keyle wrote: | You should be impressed. A browser engine from scratch | displaying a mammoth like google products. | lslgienxials wrote: | Nobody is trying to impress you. There have been no new browser | engines for years, with the idea that its impossible to develop | one anymore being a meme people would espouse regularly. | | This is impressive as a group of random interested people have | made significant progress to making a functional web browser | off the back of passion, not billions of dollars. Andreas has | be an incredible force for showing what bringing people | together through passion and openness can do. | nonethewiser wrote: | I think you may have misinterpreted my comment. I just wanted | to know why this was news. | darig wrote: | lslgienxials wrote: | Ah, I'm sorry I misread the tone. I'm quite a big fan of | the project and didn't reply in the most sane way possible. | Sorry about that :) | nonethewiser wrote: | No worries, I can see how it sounded. The project sounds | pretty cool. I really dig the 90's UI of SerenityOS. Do | you think the OS can be more than a novelty? I read that | it doesn't support 3rd party software. Maybe I don't | fully understand what that means, but wouldn't it mean | anything that doesn't ship with the OS likely wont work? | That I couldn't make my own package that could be | installed via the package manager? Seems like that kind | of OS just couldn't satisfy people's computing needs. | mananaysiempre wrote: | The "from-scratch" part is key. (The "can _display_ Google | Docs" part is also, well, correct in a strictly technical | sense, see linked screenshot. It is still a significant | achievement--even GNOME Web / Epiphany, based on WebKitGTK, | has some problems running Google Docs.) The browser is based on | a new engine that started development in 2019. It was | originally written for a hobby OS with its own toolkit and only | ported to run on top of Qt as well some months ago[1]. The | original author of said OS used to be employed working on | WebKit, as far as I understand. | | [1] See previous discussion at | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 | throwup wrote: | Ladybird is a NEW browser. If you don't want to see NEW things, | why are you on hacker NEWs? | nonethewiser wrote: | Why are you supposing that I knew Ladybird was new, even | after I said "Clearly I have no idea what Ladybird browser | is" ? | DashAnimal wrote: | It's a NEW browser in every sense of the word - a new rendering | and JS engine, not built on top of Chromium's (or Firefox's) | backends. It's impressive because most people have a few | preconceived notions: a) It is impossible to build a NEW | browser given the complexity and huge history, b) browsers need | to rely on JIT and other tricks. This browser is new hobby | project, from scratch, breaks away from the preconceived | notions of what a browser should be, and gives a glimpse of a | future where another open-source project has some influence in | web standards instead of the monolith companies that we have | now (this is a pipe-dream of course, but we're in a better | position now than we were a year ago). | | Edit: And I would say to others, please don't downvote a | question because I think it was genuine and not meant with | malice - and provides a good learning opportunity for EVERYONE | The_Colonel wrote: | The work is impressive, but I think you're putting up some | straw men (or inaccuracies): | | > It is impossible to build a NEW browser given the | complexity and huge history | | Building _some_ browser is certainly possible. What 's | difficult/impossible is to build a browser from scratch which | runs 99% of existing websites correctly. | | > browsers need to rely on JIT and other tricks | | ... to be fast in today's JS-rich websites. I believe that as | well. | nonethewiser wrote: | Great quick overview of some of these challenges and thank | you for taking my question at face value, it was asked | honestly. Pretty cool what the dev is doing. | lucideer wrote: | great username | xnx wrote: | Is this using Google Docs new(ish) canvas-based rendering? | https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/05/Google-Docs-... | | Honestly not sure if it's harder to support canvas or DOM based | rendering. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-07 23:00 UTC)