Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
You guys are hugely on fire. Who would have thought someday a new engine rises in this climate, and then who would have thought it would be a small team, without a trillion dollar giant behind them pouring hundreds of millions into its production? This is truly one of the greatest things I have seen in my lifetime.
> Who would have thought someday a new engine rises in this climate, and then who would have thought it would be a small team, without a trillion dollar giant behind them pouring hundreds of millions into its production?
Anybody who has ever worked on a large enterprise software team. Anybody who has ever worked in this scenario will believe this. Computing history is full of 2-10 people teams beating giant well funded teams to the punch.
This mostly occurs because work expands to fill the time and resources allowed for the project (Parkinson's Law), and large companies have almost unlimited amounts of both.
Exactly, and to add to that: people who work on the stuff they personally like tend to do thing faster than people who work on stuff because they have to (like it is often the case in large enterprises).
On Twitter, Andreas points out that his Keynote Presentation on the Ladybird Browser on the FUTO conference in Texas earlier in the year, might be the best current introduction to the project:
I've watched this a few months ago after randomly seeing it on YouTube. It's a very good talk and fun to follow even if you are not a browser developer. He's a good presenter.
120Hz limit for high refresh rate support seems strange. The most common refresh rate for high refresh rate monitors is 144Hz, and faster refresh rates are available. If you run a 120fps animation on a 144Hz monitor you'll get duplicated frames, which negates a large part of the benefit.
My first thought was that this was done with consideration for mobile phones, since many higher-end models use 120 Hz displays, but Ladybird does not seem to support mobile for now.
> Websites using requestAnimationFrame now render at up to 120Hz on supported hardware
But the phrasing of it about "can now" suggests to me that this may simply be a performance issue too. They changed it from 60 to 120. Perhaps in the future they can go from 120 to 144 or even 240.
There are monitors running 120hz and you can set most 144hz monitors to 120 if you want to down clock them
Also why would running 120 frames on 144 largely negate the benefits ? The whole reason we settled on these numbers is they are all multiples of 24 in the first place
Interesting whether guys employ LLM to speed up development. Starting a new browser just like this would be very bold decision like 15 years ago, now seems like a reasonable thing to do actually.
Would have to be at the hands of an already skilled practitioner. Average Joe programmer setting out to build a browser with Copilot will end badly. Big-picture architecture and discipline is too important with this level of complexity.
Starting a new browser, using LLMs... Is not going to maintain enough context.
Whilst Andreas does use Copilot a fair bit [0], he tends to do a line at a time, frequently disagree and rewrites his own, before prompting again. That is... He basically uses it as a fancy autocomplete. Not much else.
A comment that could apply to anything. Notice how nobody except for your subthread here is talking about AI. This thread is not about AI or LLMs, for a good reason.
they’re downvoting you, but the developer actually uses copilot a lot in his development videos. why are people so up in arms?
of course, he’s a very, very proficient developer and a browser specialist. he’s not just vibecoding, like you might be implying. but he also uses llms for development.
It is so amazing and wholesome to see a huge team of people come together and just collaborate on something they are passionate about and seriously believe in. I'm very hopeful that Ladybird will get to the point where we can use it as a main browser.
Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
You forgot the enormous learning curve of understanding how browsers work and how to write proper code in Ladybug that doesn't waste the maintainers´ time.
Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked with it. Where do you even begin contributing to such a large, complex, very much WIP project? The barrier to entry is daunting.
I did actually watch a friend compile and run it, and we tried it on a couple of simple web pages and were impressed with the results!
However, there are two barriers to me building it myself and submitting PRs. The first is that it's not officially supported to build or run on Windows, so I'd have to get familiar with WSL first or set up a dual-boot environment.
The second is that it's written in the obsolete and unusable language of C++. I would have loved an opportunity here to get into Rust or something, but C++ has proven itself hazardous to my mental health, so I'm staying away from it.
Really really hope these guys get a foothold in the market. I'm a decades long Firefox user but even I have to admit things with Mozilla aren't looking bright so projects like this are the only things that can save us from the chrome clone wars.
What I really find useful in Firefox and not in other browsers is the native browser functionality/UI besides rendering webpages. I think Ladybird isn't focusing on those.
Readit News
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Docu...
Here are the latest Web Platform (WPT) tests:
https://wpt.fyi/results/?run_id=6292901677236224
There is a Discord if you want to ask questions:
https://discord.gg/c8JEZkDvtY
Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
how to build Ladybird https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
Look at a WPT test and try to focus on it.
Look at the web spec
Ask questions in the Discord about where it would be, and people are gladly willing to help. :)
Anybody who has ever worked on a large enterprise software team. Anybody who has ever worked in this scenario will believe this. Computing history is full of 2-10 people teams beating giant well funded teams to the punch.
This mostly occurs because work expands to fill the time and resources allowed for the project (Parkinson's Law), and large companies have almost unlimited amounts of both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YM7pDMLvr4
> Websites using requestAnimationFrame now render at up to 120Hz on supported hardware
But the phrasing of it about "can now" suggests to me that this may simply be a performance issue too. They changed it from 60 to 120. Perhaps in the future they can go from 120 to 144 or even 240.
Also why would running 120 frames on 144 largely negate the benefits ? The whole reason we settled on these numbers is they are all multiples of 24 in the first place
And it doesn't hurt that Andreas seems to be such a nice, humble guy.
Truer words have never been spoken!
His monthly update videos are so soothing to watch.
Starting a new browser, using LLMs... Is not going to maintain enough context.
Whilst Andreas does use Copilot a fair bit [0], he tends to do a line at a time, frequently disagree and rewrites his own, before prompting again. That is... He basically uses it as a fancy autocomplete. Not much else.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxubNQC5O8&t=3099s
of course, he’s a very, very proficient developer and a browser specialist. he’s not just vibecoding, like you might be implying. but he also uses llms for development.
how to build ladybird https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked with it. Where do you even begin contributing to such a large, complex, very much WIP project? The barrier to entry is daunting.
However, there are two barriers to me building it myself and submitting PRs. The first is that it's not officially supported to build or run on Windows, so I'd have to get familiar with WSL first or set up a dual-boot environment.
The second is that it's written in the obsolete and unusable language of C++. I would have loved an opportunity here to get into Rust or something, but C++ has proven itself hazardous to my mental health, so I'm staying away from it.