[HN Gopher] Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platf...
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Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-tests
Author : sergiotapia
Score : 628 points
Date : 2025-10-06 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| dotancohen wrote:
| The linked tweet notes that this is an important milestone in
| getting Ladybird considered as an alternative browser engine in
| iOS.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Good context for why "Apple" is in the headline
| jsheard wrote:
| ...in the EU at least, anywhere else Apple is going to say "no"
| regardless of how good your engine is.
| andrewl-hn wrote:
| How does it work for the likes of Google and Mozilla? Do they
| use their own engines for iOS versions in the EU and wrap
| WebKit for other areas?
| chrisldgk wrote:
| AFAICT, Chrome and Firefox on iOS are still just WebKit
| wrappers. I'd love for that to change though, WebKit in iOS
| sucks in quite a few ways.
| m-s-y wrote:
| such as? I consider myself a power user and I've never
| run into anything I couldn't handle or get around.
| Genuinely curious.
| akersten wrote:
| No support for uBlock Origin and other tools that make
| the web sane
| WD-42 wrote:
| Orion is doing it somehow on iOS in a way I still don't
| really understand.
| lukashahnart wrote:
| As far as I know, they just emulate the Chrome extension
| API right?
| pavon wrote:
| No they aren't?
|
| https://orionfeedback.org/d/9145-ublock-origin-not-
| existent-...
|
| https://orionfeedback.org/d/11882-ublock-origin-not-
| function...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Chrome doesn't allow the full version of uBlock Origin on
| desktop, or any version of it on mobile.
|
| How does Chrome have so much market share?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Blink supports Windows, Android and Linux better than
| WebKit or Gecko does, to name at least one one reason. If
| it weren't for uBlock I'd probably be using a Chrome fork
| right now.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Chrome on Android makes the web completely unusable
| without having access to uBlock, especially on resource
| constrained devices.
|
| Chrome on Windows doesn't allow the full version of
| uBlock Origin that still works on the YouTube website.
|
| It's just Google abusing its browser monopoly in the name
| of ad revenue.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Chrome on Android doesn't support extensions, but Blink
| does. One of the benefits to allowing modified browser
| engines.
| ezfe wrote:
| Wipr and UserScripts on Safari prove to me that that's
| not a real issue...I understand compatibility problems
| are still issues, but ads/etc. are a fully solved one for
| Safari users.
| iruoy wrote:
| uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825
| jampekka wrote:
| Web devs make huge efforts to work around WebKit's
| issues. It's the new IE6.
| Klonoar wrote:
| WebKit is not lacking in things your average dev needs
| and it's not that big of a deal to work around, much like
| it's not that big a deal to work around things in Gecko -
| or presumably Ladybird whenever it becomes usable enough.
| chrisldgk wrote:
| For me it's a lot of layout and rendering bugs that I run
| into with somewhat normal CSS transforms. Anytime I build
| a site that has any kind of animation, there's at least
| one weird rendering bug on iOS. Also that stupid
| playsInline prop that if you forget it makes any video in
| the viewport hijack the browser and go fullscreen.
| zb3 wrote:
| So was there any app with an alternative browser engine already
| approved by Apple?
| ActionHank wrote:
| IRC I think the roadblock isn't that they need to be approved,
| but that they can only distribute in the EU.
| mcny wrote:
| Is distribution the only problem? If Mozilla or Google were
| to make their code freely available on some git forge like
| GitHub and I cloned the repo and built it myself, would I be
| able to run it for seven days or something in the US?
| SSLy wrote:
| nope, one can't get the entitlement -- even just for 7 days
| dev mode -- just like that.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Unless it can be distributed it's not worth Mozilla or
| Google's time to bother developing support.
| zrm wrote:
| > If Mozilla or Google were to make their code freely
| available on some git forge like GitHub
|
| https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox
|
| https://github.com/chromium/chromium
| pizlonator wrote:
| Super impressive that an independent, non-corpo project has
| gotten this far this quickly.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Definitely... IF they keep this up, they will be a real
| contender by the end of 2027. I keep saying I'd like to see a
| similar push for Servo though... since it's probably the next
| most feature-rich engine option. It really needs a
| corresponding browser project to go along side it though, since
| FF/Mozilla isn't that interested.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I believe this would be Verso: https://github.com/versotile-
| org/verso
| latexr wrote:
| That repo is a mirror of the GitLab version.
|
| https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/
|
| Seemed to have fairly frequent commits but they abruptly
| spotted 3 months ago.
|
| https://gitlab.com/verso-
| browser/verso/-/commits/main?ref_ty...
| fabrice_d wrote:
| It looks like Amazon has people looking at Servo integration
| in GTK: https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2025/10/01/servo-gtk/
| nicce wrote:
| But how to pass tests securely, is completely different
| problem. This is conformance testing. But impressive
| regardless.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Can you elaborate? What do you mean by how to pass tests
| securely? It doesn't read like you mean security tests but
| otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about.
| nicce wrote:
| Conformance testing means that you meet certain
| specifications. It tells nothing about how you handle data
| which is different from the specs or random data; or in
| other words, the root of most security problems.
| ericmcer wrote:
| It is nuts, when you think about how much a browser does, it is
| a crazy feat.
|
| Just building a good html/css renderer and a JS engine is
| crazy, but now you are hooked into the ecosystem and at the
| mercy of whatever comes next. Chrome can push back against
| proposals but little browsers either use chromium or are
| basically in a riptide trying to make sure they keep up.
| echelon wrote:
| The government(s) need to force Google to obey web standards
| that are set by an industry consortium. One that also has
| small player participation as a requirement.
|
| If Google is strong arming or pushing ahead their own agenda,
| the standards body should have plenty enough votes to veto.
|
| And for teeth, compliance should be a requirement for Google
| to even be allowed to have its own browser. If they break it,
| no more browser for Google.
| supportengineer wrote:
| The government and most voters don't even know what a file
| is. They can't even vote in favor of their own basic needs
| like health care. Do you really think this band of
| incompetents should be empowered to strangle innovation?
| echelon wrote:
| There are plenty of experts in our industry willing to
| help the government pen regulations. I'd gladly
| volunteer.
|
| Google isn't your friend.
|
| If you're a consumer, they're limiting choice.
|
| If you're a startup or midcap, they're in your way.
|
| I expect startups to out-innovate once the giants get a
| regulatory buzz cut.
| bakkoting wrote:
| Google mostly does obey web standards that are set by an
| industry consortium (WHATWG, W3C, or in the case of
| JavaScript EMCA).
|
| Chrome has the best compliance with standards of any of the
| big three (see wpt.fyi) - which is not surprising, because
| they also have the most engineering time dedicated to their
| browser, and the most people working on standards.
|
| These bodies require buy in from multiple vendors, but
| generally not unanimity. That said, browsers can and do
| ship things which haven't been standardized (e.g. WebUSB,
| which is still only a draft because only Chrome wants to
| ship it). In a lot of cases this pretty much has to happen
| pre-standardization, because it is difficult to come up
| with a good standard from the ivory tower with no contact
| with actual use. Chrome is unusually good about working in
| public to develop specifications for such features even
| when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping
| them.
|
| I don't know what problem you think this proposal would
| solve.
| troupo wrote:
| > Chrome can push back against proposals
|
| The problem isn't Chrome pushing back proposals. The problem
| is Chrome pushing ahead with its own proposals regardless of
| anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575
| jppittma wrote:
| OTOH, are all of the browsers supposed to move in lock
| step? Is chrome supposed to wait for everyone else's
| approval before launching any kind of feature?
| troupo wrote:
| That is literally how a standard supposed to work: arrive
| at consensus and have two independent implementations
| before it can be claimed to be a standard. Or at the very
| least arrive at an API shape and hammer out obvious
| problems before shipping.
|
| Otherwise you get Internet Explorer, in reverse: https://
| www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
|
| Chrome literally doesn't even bother pretending that many
| of their proposals are more than some scribbles in spec-
| adjacent format. E.g. a spec for WebHID that other
| browsers could implement was just dumped into the repo
| _after_ Chrome shipped it.
|
| Constructable Stylesheets had both a badly named API
| _and_ a trivially triggered race condition. Shipped in
| Chrome in the middle of discussion because Google-
| developed lit "needed" it.
|
| And so on and so forth.
| edoceo wrote:
| Right. There are a number of features Chrome has that
| others don't that make it viable for a kiosk. Right now
| it's the only one.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Super impressive that an independent, non-corpo project has
| gotten this far this quickly.
|
| Well, it could be that AI actually speeds up development, who
| knows.
| Valodim wrote:
| Data so far says that it doesn't
| https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-
| shovelware...
| didibus wrote:
| Are they really non-corpo? I remember seeing some corpos
| bankrolling it?
|
| And in that sense, is it better than Gecko with firefox, which
| is non-profit?
| xaxaxa123 wrote:
| cloudflare is sponsoring. says it all.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| What does that say?
| X0nic wrote:
| I wonder how hard the last 10% will be? If its a typical software
| project its going to be 90% more effort for the last 10%.
| nicce wrote:
| Browsers have been historically the biggest and most difficult
| projects, so hard to say why it wouldn't be. When they can
| start promising 20k bounties for segfaults, they are getting
| close.
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| They are pretty far way from that. I still think it is one of
| the most exciting open source projects in recent years.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Browsers have been historically the biggest and most
| difficult projects
|
| That's just a tired thrope that keeps being repeated by
| people who don't know any better.
| al_borland wrote:
| And the last 1% will be constantly changing, and never really
| "done" as a result.
|
| 90% is Apple's standard. I wonder what the general public
| requires.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The general public probably just needs basic HTML/CSS/JS
| support along with gzip, zstd, and common image and video
| formats. Stuff like beacons, accelerometers, bluetooth,
| device memory, webusb, battery status, etc. (so basically all
| of the "platform" part of the "web platform") are either
| extremely niche or actively harmful.
| al_borland wrote:
| It really depends on what the big sites they use decide to
| use. I can see Google using more niche web features just to
| push people to Chrome.
|
| Do I need accelerometer support to watch a full screen
| video in landscape on YouTube? That's probably a big deal
| for anyone who doesn't use the app, for example.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| OT, but I really like the name Ladybird for a silly reason - it's
| the name of Hank Hill's dog. Whenever I hear it I think of her
| and smile. That's right, the thought of a cartoon dog makes me
| happy. I told you it was silly.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| In the UK a ladybird is what Americans call a ladybug.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Well and knowing Hank, the dog is surely named after Lady Bird
| Johnson.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson
| dylan604 wrote:
| You seem to totally be overlooking who Hank was paying homage
| to with that name. Thanks to Ladybird, spring time in Texas
| provides a colorful palette of wildflowers, especially the
| bluebonnet, to travelers along the highways.
| lioeters wrote:
| I heard the story of Lady Bird Johnson and the bluebonnets on
| a sunny spring day, on a passenger seat of a pickup truck
| driving through the Hill Country, among endless fields and
| hills covered in wildflowers. We were probably listening to
| Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson, one of them outlaw country
| boys. That's how I know America the Beautiful does exist,
| though it may be hard to believe from the darkness that
| covers the land today.
| scosman wrote:
| Me as engineer: it's wild a big corporation dictates a quality
| bar and limit API access for 3rd party software.
|
| Me as customer: oh man I'm sure glad stuff is reviewed to some
| quality bar and the OS limits API access.
| isodev wrote:
| Me as customer: having trouble using the likes of GitHub and
| Threads using the "OS sanctioned browser"
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| That's on nobody except Microsoft and Meta for testing
| against Chromium only.
| isodev wrote:
| Person in tech me is in conflict with customer me as to who
| is to blame. Maybe system imposed browser/agent defaults
| were a mistake after all.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So it's okay for a website builder to test in only one
| browser defaulting to an imposed browser/agent
| restriction?
| mmis1000 wrote:
| The point is they are not even compliment to their "own"
| spec. They are part of whatwg. But if you ever write web
| page. You will know it's always the safari that differs
| from the spec. Firefox in the other end never have such
| issue.
|
| Write a page on chrome, works 90% on Firefox. But will
| likely works 10% on safari. Supports safari literally
| means support another browser (by workaround all its
| bugs).
| evilduck wrote:
| Those are some exaggerated beyond belief numbers you just
| made up. Some of us also work in web development and know
| better.
| concinds wrote:
| It was a bug in WebKit that WebKit had to fix (and as you
| know, Safari takes a _long time_ getting those fixes into
| consumer 's hands).
| mmis1000 wrote:
| > takes a long time
|
| If it even does.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Both those sites existed - either in practice or in
| concept - for well over a decade now. If the giant mega
| corporation behind those products is blaming WebKit,
| maybe they should instead devote some engineering
| resources to just work around the bug.
|
| Testing in non-Chrome browsers should identify anything
| like this before stuff ships. It is legitimately not hard
| to do.
| concinds wrote:
| Me as a consumer:
|
| - browsers having to go through Apple means slower updates
| (including for bugs or security), not needed on Mac or any
| other platform
|
| - Apple forces every alternative-engine browser to use a pretty
| broken framework that Safari does not use, not needed on Mac or
| any other platform
|
| - Apple's restrictions on alternative engines in the EU are a
| vast list of malicious compliance[0], making those engines a
| theoretical academic exercise, so they're definitely still
| fucking you as a consumer.
|
| [0]: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-
| ban...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Those views are "you as a developer." Very few actual end
| users think about or care about any of these things.
| echelon wrote:
| The consumer can't articulate policy.
|
| Consumers in a general sense don't know much of how the
| world works - safe radiation exposure, food safety, drug
| dosing thermodynamics, household electrical wiring,
| airborne particulate, airline maintenance...
|
| This is why we have a government regulatory regime to
| protect them. The government has to strong arm companies
| out of bad behavior, because consumers do not understand.
|
| Some people who have Apple and Google stock will voice
| opinion against regulation. Or people who really love their
| devices and don't understand the harms.
|
| But the fact is that this Titanic command of markets
| damages the robustness of the economy. Google and Apple are
| doing massive harm.
|
| Capitalism should be hard. It should be a treadmill. You
| shouldn't be able to coast.
|
| We like the market. We like evolutionary pressure. Giants
| this large, however, are an ecological hack that get to
| escape the same algorithm we subject every other company
| to. They created an artificial and illegal means to prevent
| themselves from facing competition. They're an invasive
| species picking on ecosystems that literally cannot fight
| back.
|
| It's a good thing that new companies can (or could)
| threaten old companies. It's a renewing forest fire, a de-
| ossification. It rewards innovation capital rather than
| institutions.
|
| Apple and Google have found a way to forever avoid this by
| wedging themselves in as "owners of mobile computing".
| These two companies own it. Period. You don't. Consumers
| don't. No other company can even enter into the arena. You
| play by their rules.
|
| Antitrust enforcement has never been more needed. We've had
| two decades of devices we really only rent and don't own.
| Devices that strangle consumer control over how we spend
| our time and money.
|
| If America doesn't do it, foreign countries seeking
| sovereignty should.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| You're right. They may be a "consumer" but they're
| _wearing_ their develop hat. Consumers don 't care about
| update cycles.
| yegle wrote:
| As a consumer I definitely want my browsers to always be
| up to date and be able to address 0day bugs as soon as
| the browser vendors are aware. Any potential delays on
| fixing security issues make me nervous.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Very few actual care about Apple controlling the apps you
| install as well. And even fewer understand what "OS API
| access" mean.
|
| Just because consumers are unaware that a problem exist
| doesn't mean they wouldn't care if they knew.
| echelon wrote:
| Me as a consumer:
|
| - Companies forking over more margin and control to Apple
| mean they have to make up for it in other ways.
|
| - Apple and Google wielding so much control removes overall
| choice and competition from the market.
|
| - I sure hope Apple and Google only ever have my interests at
| heart because they have all the keys to the kingdom and could
| really screw me over.
|
| - I wish I could do XYZ with my phone. Too bad...
|
| - I wish there were more diverse phone SKUs. It used to be
| wildly competitive and we used to have all kinds of
| innovation because it wasn't so winner-take-all. Where's my
| eink low power open source phone with gpio and thermal
| sensors, etc.
|
| - My car and phone feel like frenemies.
|
| - There's still no good alternative OS for phones. Probably
| because it'd be impossible to make money and compete against
| titans.
|
| - The company that removed manifest V2 is now forcing app
| signing? I wonder if they'll limit web browsing options and
| ad blocking soon.
|
| - Why do I have to de-Google my phone with every update? They
| have tyranny of defaults (that lay people can't adjust) and
| just reset the defaults back to themselves every time you
| upgrade. Or give you scare walls and alerts asking to be
| default again. Lay people are probably stuck with this.
|
| - "Google News" legitimately has half page ads and popups and
| that's the default experience. It is physically impossible to
| even read the news.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Me as engineer: does apple even pass the bar by their own? I
| hit shit tons of safari only bug that is 100% non web-
| compliment. Some are so stupid that as a normal person writing
| web pages must have ran into it already.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| also me as an engineer:
|
| I hope it's the correct 90%!
| SilverElfin wrote:
| It's not wild, it is anti-competitive and entirely about
| maintaining control in unfair ways
| beeflet wrote:
| You couldn't figure out by yourself not to use a dysfunctional
| browser?
| daft_pink wrote:
| I think it's just fantastic that the Ladybird browser is close to
| being usable. I was under the impression this was going to take
| many years before it became competitive.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Don't hold your breath though. Looking at the September
| progress report[0] there are many many things to iron out. It's
| great progress but there are still several years of development
| for LB to be ready.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vsjIIiODhY
| potwinkle wrote:
| I've started using it for some websites. It's surprisingly very
| capable already.
| mrweasel wrote:
| While I haven't tried it myself, I've seen a few of the monthly
| summaries videos. Passing the tests and being fast enough for
| daily usage is two very different things and right now Ladybird
| doesn't appear to be all that speedy.
|
| Still an amazing feat of development from the entire team.
| bangaladore wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing.
|
| Why are the tests so disconnected from the usability? My
| assumption is the tests are closer to a unit test, while
| browsing a page is essentially an E2E test, and if anything
| in the pipeline goes wrong (especially given that we use
| complex JS everywhere) the result is essentially useless.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There's not a linear relationship between the tests and
| usability. There are many tests for various character
| encodings, but viewing a web page means you're only "using"
| one of them, for example.
|
| As such, 90% test pass rate but low usability simply means
| that 10% of the tests cover a lot of very visible usability
| features that ladybird hasn't addressed yet.
| troupo wrote:
| web platform tests are closer to unit tests than to
| integration tests or to smoke tests. Many of those are also
| very hard to write and check for correctly, since there are
| tens of thousands of lines of specs, and thousands of web
| APIs.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| Three years ago I was very skeptical of Ladybird. But two
| things have changed. First, they have funding for 8 full time
| engineers, which I definitely wasn't expecting. Second, it's
| been three years. So given that, I am more optimistic.
|
| There's still a very long way before they can compete with
| Chrome, of course. And I'm not sure I ever understood the value
| proposition compared to forking an existing engine.
| rhdunn wrote:
| The value proposition is not having vendor lockin and having
| WebKit/Blink be the defacto behaviour. For example the
| Ladybird team have found and raised spec issues in the
| different specs.
|
| Another example is around ad blockers -- if Blink is the only
| option, they can make it hard for ad blockers to function
| whereas having other engines allows different choices to be
| made.
| materielle wrote:
| That's certainly an advantage, but I'm not sure that's the
| value proposition.
|
| It's that Chrome and V8's implementation has grown to match
| resourcing. You probably can't maintain a fork of their
| engine long-term without Google level funding.
| _flux wrote:
| I do wonder if it's the case of "90% of completeness takes 90%
| of time; the remaining 10% takes another 90%".
|
| Though, I suppose even if true, it would still be a pretty good
| timeframe.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I'll guess that the remaining 10% will take more than another
| 90%, and also that it will keep growing as time goes on. Web
| standards are becoming more complex every day.
| _heimdall wrote:
| This is one huge blindspot in the web spec process in my
| opinion. Any new spec is considered on the context of
| existing browsers and very little consideration seems to be
| given to the scope of the web standards as a whole.
| GalaxyNova wrote:
| It really goes to show what a dedicated team can accomplish.
| Before Ladybird it was taken for granted that building an
| entirely new browser engine would take decades and people would
| laugh at you for even bringing it up.
| typpilol wrote:
| To be fair. They have a really long way to go.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Well, it is going to take decades...
|
| It's a valuable, ambitious project, but it is going to take a
| while before it can be used for anything real.
| flakiness wrote:
| There is a big jump in the graph! I wonder what contributed to
| that big improvement.
| apetresc wrote:
| Someone asked Andreas on that Twitter thread - it was the
| merging of the CSS Typed Object Model API spec.
| cupofjoakim wrote:
| This PR added ~6400 passes for some css stuff. That's not
| enough to warrant the spike I think, but surely helped:
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/6370
| jerf wrote:
| Thank you for the belly-laugh. It's Goodhart's Law in graph form.
|
| "Oh, is this metric _important_? Let me get right on that. "
|
| No shade intended towards the Ladybird team. You were given the
| terms and you're behaving rationally in response to them. More
| power to you. It's just a fantastic demonstration of what it
| looks like to very suddenly be developing against a very specific
| metric.
| xmprt wrote:
| Have you tried using Ladybird recently? Admittedly I haven't
| but I've seen the rapid progress they've made over the last
| year. They might just be targeting this arbitrary metric but
| I'm inclined to believe that they've made real progress towards
| building a usable browser.
| pizlonator wrote:
| I think that this metric correlates well with the browser being
| usable on real websites
|
| Also, I don't think that the Ladybird folks are just doing the
| bare minimum to only increase their score on WPT. They're
| implementing each feature in such a way that basic browsing
| seems to work better _and_ that their WPT score improves.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| The wpt score is not that well balanced. Look at https://stag
| ing.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladyb... : out of
| about 2 million tests, more than half are for the "encoding"
| category. Good encoding support is needed for sure, but
| likely not at that level of prevalence.
| jerf wrote:
| It seems my communication did not adequately convey the
| fact that I have no problem with the Ladybird team doing
| this. It makes perfect sense and is the right thing to do.
|
| However, a jump like that means precisely and exactly what
| I said it means; very suddenly, that metric became much
| more important to the team. It is written straight into the
| graph.
|
| A large number of encoding-related tests that were probably
| relatively easy to fix in bulk is certainly a plausible
| explanation.
|
| A lot of people are imputing to me assumptions that they
| are bringing to my post, such as assuming that such
| improvements must be fake or bad or somehow otherwise
| cheating. Nope. Moreover, if you are thinking that, don't
| take it up with me, go take it up with the graph directly.
| It's not my graph. I'm just amused at the spectacular
| demonstration of Goodhart's Law.
|
| Are the commentators who think I'm being critical of the
| Ladybird project going to defend their implicit proposition
| that the browser got twice as good in whatever period that
| graph is in, a week or a month or whatever? Of course
| that's not the case.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| fwiw, I'm not imputing you any assumptions. I'm just
| pointing out that using wpt score as a criteria is not
| necessarily a good proxy for browser readiness. So I'm
| not sure why Apple uses that, other than... there's no
| other objective measure? Of course it's fair game for
| browser engines to improve their score!
| tolerance wrote:
| Dude at this point just raise your knickers up and
| _criticize_ the thing. You've got the most valuable
| observation about this topic on your side. The graph is
| jarring and for someone only recently made familiar with
| Goodhart's Law this _is_ a great example of it in
| practice. You must be further well-informed enough to
| defend any issues you actually have with the project
| outright instead of this small war of attrition playing
| out waaay down here.
|
| Too much useful insight is withheld or misappropriated
| these days.
| trflynn89 wrote:
| > However, a jump like that means precisely and exactly
| what I said it means; very suddenly, that metric became
| much more important to the team. It is written straight
| into the graph.
|
| Not really, though. The latest jump was from implementing
| some CSS Typed OM features, which has been in-progress
| work for a while now. The 6k increase in the test score
| was a bit of a happy surprise. It's also not that much of
| a jump when you zoom out and see it's "just" a
| continuation of a steady increase in score over a long
| period.
| fragmede wrote:
| I mean, sure, but can you point to any work that you think they
| should be doing that they're not doing because they're chasing
| this benchmark instead of doing whatever it is you think they
| should be doing?
| dzaima wrote:
| While it is kinda unfortunate to have one unbalanced test suite
| as the major external progress indicator, there are.. like no
| other good options that don't involve someone manually going
| through like the top 1000 sites or something and checking
| whether they look good. That leaves having no progress
| indication whatsoever, which is also pretty bad.
|
| And, in any case, implementing more of the standards is just
| simply good, and would need to be done at some point anyway.
| XCSme wrote:
| What JS engine does it run on?
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| It's own, LibJS
|
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Libr...
| XCSme wrote:
| Wow, how does it compare to V8 ? They spent many years
| optimising it.
| mouse_ wrote:
| It doesn't.
| gkbrk wrote:
| LibJS from Ladybird has more spec-compliance than V8
| (Chrome) and JavaScriptCore (Safari) in many categories.
|
| https://test262.fyi/
| barkingcat wrote:
| doesn't this just mean the spec is overwritten? (and
| covering things that are not in use by the dominant
| engines)
|
| It's useless to get a higher score on compliance than the
| leading engines because ... no one else can use them.
| trflynn89 wrote:
| The specs and the test suite are both moving targets.
| There are regularly new proposals to the specs, and new
| tests that cover them as they progress towards
| acceptance. The main engines implement these proposals
| behind feature flags, and only enable them once the
| proposal has been fully accepted.
|
| Ladybird does not hide implementations behind feature
| flags (yet) because there's no need when you don't have
| users. So its score on test262.fyi includes all proposals
| it has implemented thus far.
|
| The other engines on that site have an "experimental
| options" variant to include these proposals, which is a
| bit more of an honest comparison. As of right now, that
| shows: Spidermonkey (Firefox) at 98.3%, V8 (Chrome) at
| 97.9%, LibJS (Ladybird) at 96.9%, and JavaScriptCore
| (Safari) at 93.2%.
|
| Here's a link with those options selected:
| https://test262.fyi/#|v8_exp,jsc_exp,sm_exp,libjs
| potwinkle wrote:
| It's not as fast or as feature-complete. That's OK for now,
| though.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It is all original code.
| XCSme wrote:
| That's really impressive
| liquid_thyme wrote:
| I wish them well, but browsers are very much pay-to-play. Google
| had to pay their way to their current dominant position.
| mouse_ wrote:
| Don't forget, Firefox didn't succeed because Firefox was good,
| it succeeded because IE was bad. People don't like having to
| choose between Google Chrome and Google Firefox.
| npteljes wrote:
| Ad blockers were another huge draw, in my experience.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| I'm not sure about it - there were other contestants: Opera,
| Netscape, even the big Mozilla Suite.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Those other browsers are footnotes in the browser wars era
| of 2000s IE6 territory.
|
| Yes, even Opera - it never hit the heights that Firefox did
| outside of niche markets, even though they were great about
| a lot of other things.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "pay-to-play".
|
| Google's business model was to take FLOSS software, ostensibly
| make it work without them being involved, but make it obvious
| that if you wanted things to be as simple as possible, you
| needed to use their version of it. Can you use Chromium as your
| daily driver? Sure, but it's not as simple as just using
| Chrome. Android is even more like this. And of course, the
| simplest way to use this software also just happens to give
| Google a ton of your data, which enabled them as an ad-serving
| company.
|
| They wouldn't have given the browser away for free if they
| weren't making at least the cost of the browser development
| back in the take from ad revenues.
|
| I guess you could argue that the moves to buy services like
| YouTube and other big pillars of the web and have that
| reflected in Chrome development cost money.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Pay? You mean putting the "you are using X, why not try chrome"
| adtext everywhere for every search result?
| gkbrk wrote:
| And paying money to software vendors to bundle Chrome with
| "Set Chrome as default browser" ticked by default. This is
| exactly the same thing all the malware browsers and toolbars
| did in the time period too.
| dmix wrote:
| That plus making the best browser on the market for 15yrs
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If nothing else, having an alternative engine with any amount of
| viability _at all_ that isn 't Blink is great news. I'll be
| interested to see how this progresses.
| bbminner wrote:
| Now that 90% of the work is done, it is only 90% of the work that
| remains :)
| londons_explore wrote:
| If you have a spec and a test suite, shouldn't you really be
| passing _all_ the tests before shipping this stuff to a user?
|
| To do otherwise seems like pissing in the swimming pool of the
| web ecosystem. Web developers are going to have to be special
| casing this browser for years to come, and then the browser will
| need a 'quirks mode' for all the webpages that come to rely on
| the bugs.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _If you have a spec and a test suite, shouldn 't you really be
| passing all the tests before shipping this stuff to a user?_
|
| Have you seen the state of the tech industry?
|
| "Ship it, then fix it" is considered normal now, for some
| reason.
| ramon156 wrote:
| If you take a browser for example, you shouldn't be using
| _any_ current browser. This is the best example of why this
| isn 't always the way to go
| kermatt wrote:
| It is an open source project in development, that requires you
| build it from source to use.
|
| Are you suggesting they reach 100% code completion and test
| coverage before making it available to anyone?
| zodiac wrote:
| No browser passes 100% of WPT, the leader is chrome which has
| about 1000 failing tests
| jm4 wrote:
| It's still early in development. You are free to build it and
| run it, but there have been no actual releases to end users.
| It's very much alpha quality, if even that. It's still slow and
| full of bugs. However, the code quality is generally very good
| and there's great potential for this browser to eventually go
| somewhere.
|
| I don't think Andreas is suggesting that it will be offered on
| iOS any time soon so much as he is pointing out that they
| achieved this arbitrary milestone.
| hahayup wrote:
| One would think, but ironically Apple's own browser fails the
| most out of the big three. I've also seen examples of web-
| developers who already have to do special cases for Chrome,
| Firefox, and Safari due to their own unique quirks and
| differences. Web development is hell. https://wpt.fyi/results/
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It doesn't have anything other than a pre-alpha release and
| it's got a clear warning that it's only for use by developers.
| That will keep adoption far away from people special casing the
| browser. Further, it's open source so incomplete public
| development is the only way to go for this type of project.
| its-summertime wrote:
| Following the specification perfectly is not possible, even for
| major players, https://whatwg.org/faq#living-standard
| guywithahat wrote:
| It's always struct me as interesting that ladybird is built with
| C++. I like C++, and prefer it to languages like Rust, but it's
| not uncommon to see new OSS projects using weird languages and
| the newest tools. Lots of languages offer improvements in regards
| to threading models, development speed, or cross-platform support
| which we don't get in C++.
|
| I suppose their success is likely directly related to the fact
| they made reasonable, practical development choices, but still.
| zrm wrote:
| It's the same language most of the code in Chrome and Firefox
| is written in.
|
| It's also not clear what you're looking for in terms of cross-
| platform support. Some languages provide better standard
| library support for UI elements, but that's the part a browser
| will be implementing for itself regardless.
| miloignis wrote:
| I believe they are or will be transitioning to Swift:
| https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031
| hamandcheese wrote:
| This is often cited, but it seems like there has been very
| little movement toward swift since this tweet.
| tredre3 wrote:
| They were/are waiting for better cross-platform support.
| When they decided on Swift, using it on Linux had just
| recently become workable but it still didn't have feature-
| parity with apple land.
|
| To me that all sounds like wishful thinking on their part.
| But I have a lot of faith in Andreas and the team, so I'm
| willing to take their opinion over my knee-jerk reaction
| _shrugs_.
| BirAdam wrote:
| LadyBird grew out of the SerenityOS project which was
| originally written in C++ (they've since moved to Jakt). All
| software for Serenity had to be written natively for the OS,
| and C++ was the language originally supported there. Andreas
| had worked on browsers previously (notable Safari), and was
| already a seasoned C/C++/ObjC developer. While one can cite
| many valid reasons for using a C language for a browser (and
| OS), I think his experience and preferences were likely a large
| part of it.
| jgraham wrote:
| As someone who's been quite heavily involved with web-platform-
| tests, I'd caution against any use of the test pass rate as a
| metric for anything.
|
| That's not to belittle the considerable achievements of Ladybird;
| their progress is really impressive, and if web-platform-tests
| are helping their engineering efforts I consider that a win. New
| implementations of the web platform, including Ladybird, Servo,
| and Flow, are exciting to see.
|
| However, web-platform-tests specifically decided to optimise for
| being a useful engineering tool rather than being a good metric.
| That means there's no real attempt to balance the testsuite
| across the platform; for example a surprising fraction of the
| overall test count is encoding tests because they're easy to
| generate, not because it's an especially hard problem in browser
| development.
|
| We've also consciously wanted to ensure that contributing tests
| is low friction, both technically and socially, in order that
| people don't feel inclined to withhold useful tests. Again that's
| not the tradeoff you make for a good metric, but is the right one
| for a good engineering resource.
|
| The Interop Project is designed with different tradeoffs in mind,
| and overcomes some of these problems by selecting a subsets of
| tests which are broadly agreed to represent a useful level of
| coverage of an important feature. But unfortunately the current
| setup is designed for engines that are already implementing
| enough feature to be usable as general purpose web-browsers.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Then talk to apple. They are the ones who put this bar in
| place.
| manmal wrote:
| Why are you bringing this up, when it's not been implemented as
| a metric here, but because Apple requires it for iOS.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > but because Apple requires it for iOS
|
| Therefore it is a metric used by Apple.
| fmajid wrote:
| In the spirit of malicious compliance, thus being a bad
| metric would probably be a feature in their book.
| troupo wrote:
| There are literally no other metrics.
|
| Web Platform Tests were literally a project to align
| browsers on compatible implementations of a bunch of web
| APIs. Started by Opera and w3c and maintained by w3c
| https://www.bocoup.com/blog/wpt-an-overview-and-history
| Klonoar wrote:
| This is a headline that is very easy to misread and or
| misunderstand. I don't find their comment to be that out of
| place at all.
| tssva wrote:
| The tweet mentions that this is an arbitrary metric thrust upon
| them by Apple, so I don't think they would necessarily disagree
| with you. During the monthly updates they do also show the
| passing number of tests without including the encoding tests
| because of how much they skew things.
| troupo wrote:
| The problem is, there's no other good metric. We used to have
| Acid tests for CSS, but in absence of that, it's as good
| metric as any.
| munchlax wrote:
| Ladybird will be faster than anything with an arbitrary
| metric _thrust_
| lossolo wrote:
| What's the security story in Ladybird? Do they use sandboxes etc?
| I'm a bit concerned that hundreds of thousands of lines of C++
| browser code written in just three years could be a minefield,
| but I hope I'm wrong.
| d33 wrote:
| I just tried building and running it. Surprisingly many websites
| already load fine, though Youtube doesn't and Vimeo/Reddit
| comment section crashed it. Still, the results are quite
| encouraging! It takes ~6GB of HDD to build it.
| everyone wrote:
| Oh yes cus Apple _really_ care about the web.
| logicallee wrote:
| Along the same lines, the State of Utopia will be building a free
| web browser for everyone, once AI is strong enough to do so.
| Please feel free to vote on feature ideas here:
| https://pollunit.com/polls/ahysed74t8gaktvqno100g
| sn0n wrote:
| How's the ladybird gtk stuff coming along?
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