[HN Gopher] Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird ...
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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.
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