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the perfect browser (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 weeks ago by cqst@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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[-] vaguerant@fedia.io 2 points 2 weeks ago

As long as we're filling out our fantasy browser brackets, I'm hoping that the Servo engine and browser/s can become viable. Servo was started at Mozilla as a web rendering engine only, before they laid off the whole team and the Linux Foundation took over the project. Basically revived from the dead in 2023, the current project is working on an engine and a demonstration browser that uses it. It's years away from being a usable replacement for current browsers and the engine is certainly the main project. A separate browser which employs Servo as its engine is a more likely future than an actual Servo browser.

Still, you can download a demo build of the official browser from the web site. Currently, it's only usable for very simple web sites. Even Lemmy/Mbin display is a little broken, and I think of those as fairly basic. YouTube is out of the question. One of the sites that's been used to demonstrate its capability to render web pages is the web site for Space Jam (1996) if that gives you any idea of its current state.

[-] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 0 points 2 weeks ago

Well… according to ladybird, at this point they are more conformant than servo in web standards…

[-] PlantPowerPhysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 weeks ago

does the ability to view websites other than Space Jam '96 really improve your life?

[-] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

I will give you that

[-] stetech@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Honest question, since I have no clue about web/browser engines other than being able to maybe name 4-5 of them (Ladybird, Servo, Webkit, Gecko, … shit, what was Chromium’s called again?):

What makes browsers/browser engines so difficult that they need millions upon millions of LOC?

Naively thinking, it’s “just” XML + CSS + JS, right? (Edit: and then the networking stack/hyperlinks)

So what am I missing? (Since I’m obviously either forgetting something and/or underestimating how difficult engines for the aforementioned three are to build…)

[-] qqq@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

JavaScript alone is not a simple beast. It needs to be optimized to deal with modern JavaScript web apps so it needs JIT, it also needs sandboxing, and all of the standard web APIs it has to implement. All of this also needs to be robust. Browsers ingest the majority of what people see on the Internet and they have to handle every single edge case gracefully. Robust software is actually incredibly difficult and good error handling often adds a lot more code complexity. Security in a browser is also not easy, you're parsing a bunch of different untrusted HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You're also executing untrusted code.

Then there is the monster that is CSS and layout. I can't imagine being the people that have to write code dealing with that it'd drive me crazy.

Then there are all of the image formats, HTML5 canvases, videos, PDFs, etc. These all have to be parsed safely and displayed correctly as well.

There is also the entire HTTP spec that I didn't even think to bring up. Yikes is that a monster too, you have to support all versions. Then there is all of that networking state and TLS + PKI.

There is likely so much that I'm still leaving out, like how all of this will also be cross platform and sometimes even cross architecture.

[-] stetech@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks for these explanations, that makes a lot more sense now. I didn’t even think to consider browsers might be using something else than an off-the-shelf implementation for image/other file formats…, lol

[-] qqq@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Sorry I didn't mean to imply they don't use shared libs, they definitely do, but they have to integrate them into the larger system still and put consistent interfaces over them.

[-] vaguerant@fedia.io 1 points 2 weeks ago

Adding on to this, while this article is fast approaching 20 years old, it gets into the quagmire that is web standards and how ~10 (now ~30) years of untrained amateurs (and/or professionals) doing their own interpretations of what the web standards mean--plus another decade or so before that in which there were no standards--has led to a situation of browsers needing to gracefully handle millions of contradictory instructions coming from different authors' web sites.

Here's a bonus: the W3C standards page. Try scrolling down it.

[-] cmhe@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

What makes implementation so difficult is that browsers cannot just "work", they need to be correct in what they do. And support all websites.

The standards of HTML, CSS and JS have developed over a long time, not only is the amount of stuff massive, over time sometimes strange features where implemented, that were then used by website developers, and now these all need to be handled correctly by all new browsers.

Emulating and reimplementing existing stuff is often more difficult, especially if you cannot leave out any feature, no matter how obscure, because that might break someone's website.

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not only C++ but also Swift, which just feels strange

Why build a new browser in C++ when safer and more modern languages are available?

Ladybird started as a component of the SerenityOS hobby project, which only allows C++. The choice of language was not so much a technical decision, but more one of personal convenience. Andreas was most comfortable with C++ when creating SerenityOS, and now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain.

However, now that Ladybird has forked and become its own independent project, all constraints previously imposed by SerenityOS are no longer in effect.

We have evaluated a number of alternatives, and will begin incremental adoption of Swift as a successor language, once Swift version 6 is released.

[-] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Swift is a pretty fully fledged systems language at this point ... however, it's far from tried and tested for use cases like this and cross platform support is still garbage, so still a pretty questionable choice.

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[-] mlg@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Hey it could be worse. It could be the completely and utterly worthless MIT license.

[-] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 weeks ago

I don't understand why everyone wants to jump ship to a whole new browser, when the governance of a browser is the real issue to solve regardless of which browser is supported. A good stewardship model has to be established by people of integrity, technical skill, and funding. From there forking making a hard fork of Firefox is way cheaper and easier than trying to invest in one that's not even finished.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Having more than two browser engines out there would be nice for standardization reasons.

[-] lemon@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I’m OOTL. Are these actual issues people have with the project?

C++ might not be as memory-safe as Rust, but let’s not pretend a Rust code base wouldn’t be riddled with raw pointers.

BSD tells me the team probably wants Ladybird to become not just a standalone browser but also a new competing base for others to build a browser on top of – a Chromium competitor. Even though BSD wouldn’t force downstream projects to contribute back upstream, they probably would, since that’s far less resource-intensive than maintaining a fork. (Source: me, who works on proprietary software, can’t use GPL stuff, but contributes back to my open-source dependencies.)

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

BSD tells me the team probably wants Ladybird to become not just a standalone browser but also a new competing base for others to build a browser on top of

skeletor facts until-we-meet-again meme format, saying that every major web browser uses a rendering engine with a copyleft license

[-] lemon@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago

Don’t have time to factcheck so going to take your word for it. Interesting bit of knowledge! Honestly wouldn’t have thought that. How else are Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi and co getting away with building proprietary layers on top of a copyleft dependency?

I’m no legal expert. All I know is that when I’m picking dependencies at work, if it’s copyleft, I leave it on the table. I love the spirit of GPL, but I don’t love the idea of failing an audit by potential investors because of avoidable liabilities.

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The three currently-maintained engines which (at their feature intersection) effectively define what "the web" is today are Mozilla's Gecko, Apple's WebKit, and Google's Blink.

The latter two are both descended from KHTML, which came from the Konquerer browser which was first released as part of KDE 2.0 in 2000, and thus both are LGPL licensed.

After having their own proprietary engine for over two decades, Microsoft stopped developing it and switched to Google's fork of Apple's fork of KDE's free software web engine.

Probably Windows will replace its kernel with Linux eventually too, for better or worse :)

How else are Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi and co getting away with building proprietary layers on top of a copyleft dependency?

They're allowed to because the LGPL (unlike the normal GPL) is a weak copyleft license.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That's not controlled by Google...

It is also important to note that the license is still foss and GPL compatible. In the future they could made it GPL.

[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago

Every contributor needs to have signed a CLA in order for the license to be changed

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

with mandatory male pronouns for users in the documentation.

(and no politics allowed!)

notethis issue was resolved eventually by another dev; ~~afaik~~ the lead dev ~~stopped commenting on it after he~~ closed a PR and said people who wanted to remove the docs' implied assumption of users' maleness were "advertising personal politics".

edit: ok, i went and checked, here are the details:

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

........I have no idea what this is referencing. Duckduckgo?

[-] gay4dudes@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago

Its a new Browser build from the ground up. I think its called ladybird.

[-] cm0002@lemmy.cafe 0 points 2 weeks ago

It's a monumental effort really, building a browser engine from scratch and taking it to daily driver usable is probably among the most difficult programming challenges. It's way easier to build a new Linux kernel from scratch than a browser engine lmao

Even Microshit tried and gave up because it was so hard

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

Even Microshit tried and gave up because it was so hard

They also failed at building operative systems, so not sure they are the best example.

[-] SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago

it is also written from the ground up wich means it also has its own engine

[-] cqst@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

explaining the difference between a Toyota and a Honda

[-] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

God forbid someone on the internet has less niche knowledge about browser engines than you.

[-] exocortex@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 weeks ago

What is the problem with a BSD-license? I'm not familiar with the different open source licensing models and their problems.

[-] Allero@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago

Basically, it allows you to steal all the code and use it in your closed-source programs, giving a green light for corporations to use open-source code without giving anything back.

GPL doesn't allow that, forcing you to open-source anything that was produced using other GPL-licensed code. That's, for example, why so much of Linux software is open-source - it commonly relies on various dependencies that are GPL-licensed, so there is no other legal option other than sharing the code as well.

[-] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's not "stealing". It's explicitly allowed. Using IP according to its licence is the opposite of stealing.

[-] graphene@lemm.ee 0 points 2 weeks ago

Unrelated to this exact discussion, but like, the law does not dictate morality nor the other way around. If I believe that using someone's hard work to make a profit without paying them or contributing some work of your own is morally wrong, I can reasonably say it's 'stealing'. Even if the person who did the work fully understands that the license under which the work was released makes it not actually stealing.

I am judging someone as a thief, not legally but morally.

[-] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

I never stated what was or wasn't moral; I stated what was legal, and stealing is a legalistic term. How can you enforce property ownership, intellectual or material, without law, and legal rights to property?

For the record, I want the abolition of property and of law. I do not believe stealing to be wrong. "Stealing" can only be a legal category if you believe it to be morally neutral.

That definition also makes no sense. If I gift you a laptop I worked hard to afford and you use it, no sane person would call that stealing, even to those to whom stealing is a moral category. That is the same thing as someone using MIT code according to the licence. The original coder gifted the code to the public and said "I explicitly want you to use this however you like, under the sole condition that you credit me." Just like if I gifted you a laptop I'd be saying "I want you to use this laptop however you like."

[-] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Remember the Minix operating system that runs on your processors ? It's a proprietary spyware now because of BSD licencing

[-] HouseWolf@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

It's not really an issue for the end user. But it's basically made for companies to take advantage of free hobbyist developers without needing to give anything back in return.

So if you're the kind of person who runs to foss software to get away from corporate tech bull, having a license that benefits companies more than users just kinda feels scummy.

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[-] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

Everyone knows links2 is the best browser.

#links2gang

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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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