Ladybird Proves You CAN Just Build a New Web Browser

The Google / Mozilla stooges said, “It can’t be done!”. Ladybird said, “Hold my beer.”

One of my favorite things is seeing a small team (or even just a solo developer) come along and put the big teams — the entrenched powers — to shame. I get a real kick out of it.

I love it when there is a deafening chorus of “It can’t be done!” and someone comes along and says “Hold my beer”.

Case in point: The world of Web Browsers has been dominated by two primary rendering engines — one driven by Google and the other driven by Mozilla (but funded almost entirely by Google). And there is an almost endless supply of Google / Mozilla stooges who try to discourage anyone from making a new competitor.

“But you can’t just build a new web browser engine,” they exclaim!

“It’s too complex to pull off,” says the stooge. “You need hundreds of developers working on it for years to make a real web browser engine! Better just leave that work to Google and Mozilla!”

We’ve all heard statements like that. Poo-poo-ing any attempt at building a truly new web browser engine as “too difficult” or even “impossible”. The purpose is to shut down the dreams of solo developers and small teams. To stop them from competing with the “big dogs”.

In fact, right on cue, when the Ladybird web browser project was announced — a truly “from scratch” browser engine — they trotted out those same lines. By the droves.

Heck, many even began smear campaigns against Ladybird in an effort to stop the project entirely.

But Ladybird didn’t stop. Development has continued.

And, oh-lawdy, the progress has been amazing.

Allow me to share with you a selection of screenshots — showing off the state of Ladybird, posted by the developer who started the project — which prove that a web browser engine can absolutely be built by a small team.

It may be challenging. But it can be done.

Take a look, and tell me if you’re not deeply impressed.

Yeah, that’s the Cut the Rope game. Fully playable in Ladybird.

We’re not talking about HTML table layouts and HREF tags here. This represents a huge collection of different “Web technologies” developed “from scratch”. All working to an amazing degree.

Web IDEs? Yeah. Those are working in Ladybird, too.

Freaking Discord? Working. It may not be 100% here — the developer calls it “usable but a little glitchy” — but that’s a lot of modern web browser-y-ness working to make that happen.

To showcase the rapid speed of development… In the span of two weeks, Ladybird added over 12,000 new (passing) web-platform-tests. You’ll note on this bar chart that Ladybird is quickly catching up to Firefox.

It’s not there yet… but, at the current rate? We may have a usable Ladybird — for most daily browser uses — before you know it.

Just to put that all in perspective, here is the first iteration of Ladybird a few years back:

Now go take a look at those other screenshots again.

Come a long way, eh?

There’s a lesson here.

When an army of people shout, in unison, that something cannot be done… ignore them and hand somebody your beer.