out of curiosity, would you donate some of your GPU time as part of a distributed cloud of computers running AI to develop a browser?
My project ToyBrowser[1] got to the stage that it is able to render some very simple web pages and post on the Internet.
The size of the Internet standards for technologies is immense, but a million people contributing a few hours of GPU time might be enough to code it up if it is distributed in small and clear parts.
The result could be entirely in the public domain and people could have it do whatever they want. We are already collecting feature ideas here [2]
would you contribute a few hours of your gpu to make it a reality?
Browser monoculture is bad for the open web and if all we have is Webkit (Safari on iOS, Macs) and its fork Blink for all the Chromium browsers, then the web will start becoming a mess of proprietary extensions instead of open standards.
I see this claim often. As someone who learned web dev during the days of IE dominance, I don't understand it.
Internet Explorer never kept up, especially after IE6 reigned supreme. They weren't "a little behind" or didn't have some more niche APIs missing or implemented in a buggy or proprietary way. It actively ignored standards, it didn't receive real updates for a long time (IE11 being the fruition of what the best they could offer was) and generally with few exceptions (namely, the invention of CSS Grid and XMLHttpRequest) generally degraded the ecosystem for over a decade. It actively held back companies from adopting new web standards. Its why polyfilling became as proliferated as it is now.
Safari / WebKit has not induced any of this. Yes, sometimes Safari lags behind in ways that are frustrating. Yes, sometimes Apple refuses to implement an entire API for political rather than technical reasons (see the FileSystem API), but largely it has managed to stay up to date with standards in a reasonable time frame.
While their missing or subset implemented APIs can feel really frustrating, they haven't actively held back any work nor the mass adoption of newer browser APIs.
Apple has their faults, but this isn't even close to the drudgery that was the IE heyday era.
Ladybird is a pet project of no relevance to the web. there is no tech advantage, its just as riddled with vulnerabilities. chromium and webkit are the winners. you need a whole new ecosystem to get something different.
I think Ladybird is becoming more than that. It's actually helping set the web standard specifications straight in many cases and a from-scratch implementation will have its own advantages once it catches up. Which it will. There's no permanent winner as long as the standards are open.
Ladybird is playing catch-up with features already done years ago. They can either break compatability, or follow. Theyre following, which makes them yet another dead end.
