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Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative
(ladybird.org)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I've had more than a handful of people bitching at me that it's impossible to make a new, open web browser in this day.
I think it's less that it's "impossible" but rather that it's expensive.
Honestly we've in general shoved too much shit into the browser that's not strictly related to just browsing web sites.
And you "have to" support all the layers and layers and layers of added stuff, or you can't "compete".
But, at the same time, the goals of making a good-enough browser that mostly works and isn't completely enshittified and captured by corpo big tech interests is a very worthy project and 100% support what they're doing.
JavaScript was a mistake.
And it went downhill from there.
It was fine when it was contained to an actual web site instead of infecting desktop software too. To me, using JS for that purpose feels like using PHP to write a 3D video game.
Somewhere, someone just had a really bad idea.
It’s a general language (though primarily adopted by web as backend engine), so you can basically expect people already have had this idea.
Eh, scriptable content was probably fine.
Techbros going 'holy shit, we should make EVERYTHING a website!' was the curse that doomed us.
Pushing for bloated web apps instead of having optimized and perfectly functional websites was what killed it for me.
I feel like the internet is such a lost cause at this point that it would be better to invest in other efforts like the Gemini protocol.
IDK, but I don't think that the problem is that any particular application protocol is bad so much as it is capitalists going to capitalist, and they've shit all over everything in the Quest to Make a Buck.
It's not like a new protocol, if it becomes as widely adopted, won't see the same vultures swoop in and strip mine any value they can find there, too.
A more lightweight protocol limits the attack surface for capitalism. The web sucks because basically anything can be wrapped in http, including ads, tracking cookies, data collection JavaScript, etc.
Gemini protocol only carries markdown
That's a fair assessment. I'll admit to having a severe case of doomerism when it comes to tech lately, and the levels of shit tech bros will go to to monetize shit has me skeptical there's any sort of protocol or technology that could be made bro-resistant for more than a short period of time.
EEE is pretty prevalent and has been a very standard practice with these tech companies for a long time. See: Meta and Threads for a recent example.
How would you drive the adoption of such a protocol in an environment that is largely hostile towards attempts at demonetising things?
No, I'd have accepted too expensive as an answer. They were ready to die on the hill that no one could possibly create a new browser from specs.
Hilarious, I suppose, given the origins of Chrome and that it was a team of people sitting down to make a new browser from the specs.
My thoughts exactly.
Also nothing is stopping someone from forking an open browser and throwing money/bodies at keeping it up.
It's be a shame to lose free updates, but certainly not undoable.
Agreed. As much as I understand the urge to build your own shiny new thing, I'd pay real actual human money for someone to take Blink, and put it in a non-lobotomized, non-enshittified, non-garbage UI that has things like a self-hosted sync server, built-in adblock/noscript/etc, and the ability to use extensions for things like password managers.
But no crypto stuff, no gaming stuff, no VPN services, no browser password managers, no sponsored links, no sponsored default search engines, no email client, blah blah blah.
Browser, adblock, self-hosted sync, done.
Nah nah fuck that noise. 'Jack of all trades but ace of none' or however the saying goes, is a shitty way to go about things. I don't have the biggest dick but I know my way around around the block, and I know I'm good at it. More specialized > the catch-all bitches.
Let the fucks with their special engine requirements eat shit. Standardize or write a fucking proper program (miss me with that "app" bullshit) or fuck right off. "everyone is special... exactly like you" now fuck off web dev. Your shit doesn't get a permit.
.....
I may have some... disputes with the way the web is done nowadays.
I could have been a little more clear: I don't think the whole must-compete-or-forget-it mindset makes any damn sense.
I'm more than happy to use software that does what I want/need (which, more and more, is simply just not fucking spying on, trying to sell things to, or otherwise annoying me) even if it's not like, the most bestest version of whatever.
Only 114 million words of spec!
Interestingly the founder of the project seems to explicitly disagree with that article
Their rendering engine is already pretty solide (see penultimate video in their channel). Now that their "no third party code" restriction is lifted, they can actually focus on building a browser engine instead of recreating 30 years worth of technologies from scratch.