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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML This Month in Ladybird â October 2025
fguerraz wrote 6 hours 1 min ago:
While I truly admire how much progress theyâve made, and respect that
everyone should pursue whatever they feel like doing with their time,
it still feels to me like such a waste that itâs not written in a
modern memory safe language.
I fear itâs ultimately going to be the most promising, least safe
browser to use.
But hey, I want to be proven wrong, so I still gave them some moneyâ¦
robinhood wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
They've started to gradually use Swift in the last year or so.
ramon156 wrote 3 hours 4 min ago:
There still isn't a solid plan, which worries me a bit. This is
going to end up as a rewrite of a rewrite.
That's not to say it isn't realistic, but it's definitely going to
be interesting.
I also think Swift will bring in more contributors
anthk wrote 7 hours 15 min ago:
This will be what Otter Browser failed to do in order to create a
widely used browser written in QT after Konqueror under KDE3 days. And,
well, the same with Falkon/Qupzilla.
Ladybird might be the next Opera but without reusing the Blink engine
making it a Chromium clone. And, OFC, fully libre.
KaiMagnus wrote 7 hours 31 min ago:
Iâm impressed how well Google maps works already.
Seems though as if the WPT score is not super meaningful in measuring
actual usability. The growth of passed tests seems suspiciously uniform
across browsers, so I guess it has more to do with new passing tests
being added and less with failing tests that got fixed.
jeroenhd wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
A large amount of tests includes rendering text and basic elements
correctly, which is an incredibly difficult problem. Getting JS to
render right is one thing, but preventing bugs like "Google Maps
works but completely breaks when a business has õ in its name"
requires a lot of seemingly useless tests to pass.
Fixing a few rendering issues could fix all of the tests that depend
on correct rendering but break, so I think the rate at which tests
are fixed makes a lot of sense. [1] shows that even the big players
have room for improvement, but also has a nice breakdown of all the
different kinds of tests that make up the score.
HTML [1]: https://wpt.fyi/results
zaruvi wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
>Weâve continued to make solid progress on WPT this month. There
has been a significant increase in passing subtests, with 111,431 new
passing subtests bringing our total to 1,964,649.
The majority of this increase comes from a large update to the test
suite itself, with 100,751 subtests being added - mainly due to the
Wasm core tests being updated to Wasm 3.0.
They fixed ~10k tests, but indeed this month is a bit of an exception
as there were lots of new tests added.
bovermyer wrote 7 hours 33 min ago:
Good progress this month! Good to see it running on Windows now, even
if I don't use Windows myself anymore. That'll help boost adoption once
it releases.
throwaway34564 wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
If they'd just have used an Electron stack from the get-go, it would
have been cross platform already
thiht wrote 3 hours 15 min ago:
That makes no sense, they're writing a browser engine...
nechuchelo wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
If they were happy with using an existing browser engine, they
wouldn't be writing one from scratch
throwaway34564 wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
I agree, they can write it from scratch and compile to
web-assembly. That way they can use Electron for the UI layer.
(apparently needed)
mindcrash wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the
water.
This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of
people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and
Spotify.
They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in
practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the
cost, requirements, and Google as gatekeeper. Some developers of
small opensource Chromium/Electron based browsers also earlier tried
and Google simply said no.
And even if they have reverse engineered the CDM extension (which
will make Widevine work, not unlike a small hack/workaround with
regard to Chromium and Chromium forks) it will not work because all
browsers using Widevine on those two platforms require something
called VMP (Verified Media Path) which is, as far as I understand, a
certificate and verification library supplied by Widevine embedded
within the browser.
Without VMP embedded in the browser streaming from popular commercial
providers such as Netflix will not work on Windows and MacOS, even
when the Widevine extension is in fact active.
Believe me, I checked.
IMO all of this is not only set in motion to (try to) protect from
piracy, but also to kill any serious competition from small parties
like LadyBird, and to keep the browser market firmly in the hands of
the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google. Because who will use a
browser in 2025 unable to stream content, or without hacks at 720p
maximum? (looking at you, Brave and Netflix)
This also means that browsers like Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox are in
fact not true opensource browsers because their respective public
repositories do not contain the assets needed for VMP signing.
On another note, at this moment the majority of people should be glad
that browsers with corporate backing and enough income like Brave
(whatever you might think of Brendan Eich's ideas), Vivaldi and
Firefox exist because without them you would have no serious choice
on Windows or MacOS at all.
morcus wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
I don't know the usage numbers so I might be way off, but with
Smart TVs becoming a more common thing I can't remember the last
time I tried to stream video on my computer.
Am I in the minority here? Do we have stats on what the breakdown
of streaming traffic is by Mobile / TV / Desktop?
doubled112 wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
I'm another that tends to stream directly on a TV. Or a tablet.
It's very possible it's a workaround to the streaming on PC
situation though.
muyuu wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
> This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of
people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix
and Spotify.
Well, there's a niche.
Personally I have zero interest in Netflix and Spotify and I don't
even know what Tidal is.
gertop wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Wanting to stream multimedia content from commercial streaming
services is definitely not a "niche."
muyuu wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
never claimed such thing
people who are not interested in these things, or can use
separate systems for those things, are a viable niche for a
pure-OSS distribution of Ladybird
jeroenhd wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
You can build Firefox without Widevine if you don't like DRM. The
browser itself will work just fine. A few specific websites won't,
by design: they do not want to work on computers that will let you
save the high-res video they serve to a file.
Without EME, we'd still be stuck with Silverlight or ActiveX DRM in
these browsers. There are browsers without Widevine that stream
just fine; they use FairPlay and PlayReady instead. The current
situation is still a significant improvement over the days when
"free" web browsers were still a thing.
This isn't a web browser problem, it's a video streaming problem.
As it turns out, the vast majority of people care more about
streaming Netflix than they do about software freedom.
The minority that wants a truly open browser can buy DVDs and
Blurays, or pirate the content they want to stream.
If Ladybird is willing to agree to the right terms and sign the
right paperwork, I'm sure they'd get Widevine support eventually,
but obviously they wouldn't be able to publish the source code for
any of it.
Santosh83 wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
How is withholding Widevine CDM not anti-competitive behaviour?
martini333 wrote 5 hours 34 min ago:
@EU
dorfsmay wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
Does Widevine CDM work on Firefox on Linux?
If so, why would Google allow this but not for other OSS browsers?
tmikaeld wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
It doesn't, this is also the reason that streamers like Nvidia
Shield or Apple TV are the only two choices if you want to view
4K content at all.
SSLy wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
and yet ~some devices are constantly pwned, and pristine UHD
WEB-DL's are being ripped automatically.
skywal_l wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
I have been using firefox on linux for a little more than a
decade now and haven't realize I was missing on anything so I
guess it's probably not a real problem.
ac29 wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
Netflix et al work on Linux but are limited to 480p.
anthk wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
Without the propietary Widevine, maybe.
mistercheph wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
yeah, that's a problem for me like losing access to E! and TLC when
getting rid of tv service box, legacy media platforms bye bye,
hello copyright violation in sweet sweet high bitrate 4k
nurumaik wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
Well, they want me to view free movies if I use free browser, then
teddyh wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
You mean gratis movies using a libre browser. They are not the
same concept.
binary132 wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
I donât know about you but I am perfectly content to use a free
browser and open either a nonfree browser or an app if I want to
use a feature that is not available in my preferred software.
RamRodification wrote 6 hours 48 min ago:
I don't know about you but I am very sad that I can't really
recommend a browser not made by evil-mega-corp (or their
associates) to friends and family because for some stupid reason
that I can't explain to them, they aren't allowed to view high
quality streaming video with it.
binary132 wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
âIt doesnât work with Netflix, but I just open Chrome when
I want thatâ
is that really so hard?
DRM is not a good thing
garganzol wrote 7 hours 38 min ago:
I always wonder why there are no download links. Alpha, beta, something
at least.
stephen_g wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
Alpha is supposed to come out next year. Until then they donât want
to offer downloads so people who donât understand software
development donât download highly unstable pre-alpha software and
judge it based on that. Those kind of first impressions can stick.
haunter wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
I use these on Mac
HTML [1]: https://sizeof.cat/project/ladybird-builds/
_diyar wrote 7 hours 36 min ago:
Its pre alpha, you can build it from source.
lkramer wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
Yeah, it's quite easy to do from a normal laptop. The instructions
are very clear and straightforward. Have played around with it a
few times.
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