Ladybird seems to have received a nice boost in momentum in the past two years. If you've ever watched one of Andreas videos on YouTube you'll find he's incredibly driven and knowledgeable in this area. I can imagine someone like him would go from being a "10x programmer" to a "100x programmer" with AI assistance. I am not entirely sure to what degree AI is being leveraged to speed up development, but I am indeed happier I might be able to ditch FF and begin using their browser soon.
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vivzkestrel
few stupid questions as always so that i can become a smarter person
- what is the process of making a browser engine? what does the requirements look like
- how is an actual html, css and javascript speification implemented at the code level? are we painting an empty canvas or is it more complicated
- how is backward compatibility implemented?
- is all the code written in c++ or is it rust these days?
- how many people in a team do you need and how long would it take to write a browser engine from scratch
- what test cases do you consider for making something like this? how do you determine if you have handled all the outliers or not?
- how is mobile vs desktop handled at the browser engine code level?
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senfiaj
I am watching this project with interest.
It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is a pain for web developers. And it's the most stubborn part to be fixed. Also, keep in mind that it hasn't much market, at least IE had a significant market that forced the developers to support it (with all the hate).
I'm honestly relieved to see that I'm not the only one to test optimized/newer implementations against less optimized/older implementations. It's what I came up with after thinking about it for quite a while and I've been wondering why so little other software seems to do that. In my case, it's about serialization code. My test compare self-reported reader / writer states and serialized data.
Ladybird goes further by also running the engines in parallel in debug builds during normal use. They have a way to extract test cases from any bugs found that way.
robinpie
So excited about this. Writing a real new web browser is a titanic project and Ladybird is making amazing progress
binarymax
Really excited for alpha. When it hits I plan on using it for my daily driver to help them with usage stats and crash reports.
Cider9986
Are there other sites that get through ad blockers as well as Twitch?
Meneth
> We also download over four parallel connections where possible.
I hope you can turn that off. It fragments the file and puts unnecessary load on the server.
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jazzyjackson
This is such a nerdy newsletter I love it
junaru
If you ever said you'd pay for a browser that doesn't exploit you nows the chance - donate to the project!
phendrenad2
Feels like the old "browser wars" days again. Between AI productivity, and Google losing the grace to bloat the web specs, I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to take market share away from other browsers as soon as it's stable.
I didn't expect to see Twitch working so soon!
Ladybird seems to have received a nice boost in momentum in the past two years. If you've ever watched one of Andreas videos on YouTube you'll find he's incredibly driven and knowledgeable in this area. I can imagine someone like him would go from being a "10x programmer" to a "100x programmer" with AI assistance. I am not entirely sure to what degree AI is being leveraged to speed up development, but I am indeed happier I might be able to ditch FF and begin using their browser soon.
few stupid questions as always so that i can become a smarter person
- what is the process of making a browser engine? what does the requirements look like
- how is an actual html, css and javascript speification implemented at the code level? are we painting an empty canvas or is it more complicated
- how is backward compatibility implemented?
- is all the code written in c++ or is it rust these days?
- how many people in a team do you need and how long would it take to write a browser engine from scratch
- what test cases do you consider for making something like this? how do you determine if you have handled all the outliers or not?
- how is mobile vs desktop handled at the browser engine code level?
I am watching this project with interest.
It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that is a pain for web developers. And it's the most stubborn part to be fixed. Also, keep in mind that it hasn't much market, at least IE had a significant market that forced the developers to support it (with all the hate).
https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-...
I'm honestly relieved to see that I'm not the only one to test optimized/newer implementations against less optimized/older implementations. It's what I came up with after thinking about it for quite a while and I've been wondering why so little other software seems to do that. In my case, it's about serialization code. My test compare self-reported reader / writer states and serialized data.
Ladybird goes further by also running the engines in parallel in debug builds during normal use. They have a way to extract test cases from any bugs found that way.
So excited about this. Writing a real new web browser is a titanic project and Ladybird is making amazing progress
Really excited for alpha. When it hits I plan on using it for my daily driver to help them with usage stats and crash reports.
Are there other sites that get through ad blockers as well as Twitch?
> We also download over four parallel connections where possible.
I hope you can turn that off. It fragments the file and puts unnecessary load on the server.
This is such a nerdy newsletter I love it
If you ever said you'd pay for a browser that doesn't exploit you nows the chance - donate to the project!
Feels like the old "browser wars" days again. Between AI productivity, and Google losing the grace to bloat the web specs, I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to take market share away from other browsers as soon as it's stable.