That's not to belittle the considerable achievements of Ladybird; their progress is really impressive, and if web-platform-tests are helping their engineering efforts I consider that a win. New implementations of the web platform, including Ladybird, Servo, and Flow, are exciting to see.
However, web-platform-tests specifically decided to optimise for being a useful engineering tool rather than being a good metric. That means there's no real attempt to balance the testsuite across the platform; for example a surprising fraction of the overall test count is encoding tests because they're easy to generate, not because it's an especially hard problem in browser development.
We've also consciously wanted to ensure that contributing tests is low friction, both technically and socially, in order that people don't feel inclined to withhold useful tests. Again that's not the tradeoff you make for a good metric, but is the right one for a good engineering resource.
The Interop Project is designed with different tradeoffs in mind, and overcomes some of these problems by selecting a subsets of tests which are broadly agreed to represent a useful level of coverage of an important feature. But unfortunately the current setup is designed for engines that are already implementing enough feature to be usable as general purpose web-browsers.
This was a reasonably universal assumption in 2005, but became less and less valid over time, we now have high-dpi screens and the whole idea of pixel accuracy has fallen out of favour (it was never a good idea, but 2005) as phone browsers are expected to rescale websites for better readability/usability.
The result is that Acid 2 fails on my phone, and on my laptop it will pass/fail depending on which screen the window is on.
Acid 3 was too forwards looking and rigid. While Acid 2 was (mostly) testing accepted standards (which IE6 implemented very poorly), Acid 3 tested a bunch of draft standards. It was very strict on many things that weren't well defined and later versions of the standards took the opposite approach.
Basically, Acid 2 was very good at shaming Microsoft into fixing Internet Explorer; But in the long run the whole concept of popular cherry picked torture tests proved to be of limited usefulness (and actually counterproductive) to promoting standards compliant browsers.
PS I'm a big fan of the work and appreciate what you do. I check the interop page about once a week!
Therefore it is a metric used by Apple.
The EU DMA says they have to allow third party browser engines access to the same resources (the JIT) that Safari has. It specifically allows them to place reasonable requirements on those third party alternatives:
> The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures to ensure that third-party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.
Access to rwx memory is inherently dangerous, and it's completely reasonable to expect third parties to have proven that they are serious about producing a usable browser engine before putting such a risky product on the market for consumers to download. The law does not require them to allow any third party application to access the JIT, only a third party application that competes with Safari (a usable web browser).
You can't justify a requirement for a minimum level of performance or some capability. You can justify a requirement of a guaranteed absence of security bugs, provided that that's a standard you impose on yourself throughout the system.
Web Platform Tests were literally a project to align browsers on compatible implementations of a bunch of web APIs. Started by Opera and w3c and maintained by w3c https://www.bocoup.com/blog/wpt-an-overview-and-history
Still an amazing feat of development from the entire team.
Why are the tests so disconnected from the usability? My assumption is the tests are closer to a unit test, while browsing a page is essentially an E2E test, and if anything in the pipeline goes wrong (especially given that we use complex JS everywhere) the result is essentially useless.
As such, 90% test pass rate but low usability simply means that 10% of the tests cover a lot of very visible usability features that ladybird hasn't addressed yet.
There’s still a very long way before they can compete with Chrome, of course. And I’m not sure I ever understood the value proposition compared to forking an existing engine.
Another example is around ad blockers -- if Blink is the only option, they can make it hard for ad blockers to function whereas having other engines allows different choices to be made.
there by definition is no vendor lock-in by forking an open-source engine. The worst case is the original maintainers going evil tomorrow and you being on your own, which is no worse than starting from scratch, except you saved yourself some ten million odd lines of mindless spec implementation in the case of a browser.
If you fork that monopolist’s engine, you’re not making any immediate difference to the market. You’ll adopt all their existing behavior, whether or whether not it conforms to spec (and I would guess you would continue to pull in many of their changes down the road).
A brand new implementation is much more difficult, but if it works it’s much more meaningful in preventing a monopoly.
It's like projects trying to keep Firefox XUL alive, or GTK+ 2 or 3.
The project has now moved from just updating the external dependency to working on that and possibly actively fighting against the tide. That is a lot harder and requires more work each time you update the dependency.
So in effect you have vendor lock-in. And if the vendor controls or affects downstream products like plugin developers (targeting manifest V3) or application developers (targeting GTK+ 3 or 4) then its even harder to maintain support for the other functionality.
It’s that Chrome and V8’s implementation has grown to match resourcing. You probably can’t maintain a fork of their engine long-term without Google level funding.
Though, I suppose even if true, it would still be a pretty good timeframe.
To quote Rich Harris, the author of Svelte: https://x.com/Rich_Harris/status/1841605646128460111
--- start quote ---
saying 'no' is the key to good software design, but in standards you can only 'champion' proposals — you can't champion the _lack_ of a proposal. the best you can hope for is inertia.
in my experience the only feedback that is welcome is around the details of an idea, never around whether the idea has merit in the first place, and you should expect to be reminded that implementers are the only people whose opinions actually matter.
--- end quote ---
and someone else in the same conversation:
--- start quote ---
You can't practically anti-champion standards that are small improvements to features that ought to have been abandoned, like Shadow DOM. Shadow DOM sucks, but it sucked a little less when they added CSS Module Scripts, Selection.getComposedRanges(), ElementInternals.shadowRoot…
https://x.com/dfabu/status/1841936377350652391
---
It's doable, but not easy especially when the train engine is being stuffed with high-octane fuel by Google's resources.
They are decades of work away from having a browser that would be competitive with Chrome or Firefox.
It’s a valuable, ambitious project, but it is going to take a while before it can be used for anything real.
At least now the cynical pessimistic takes changed from "impossible, not even MS with their giant teams can do it" to "it may take decades for this small team to do it".
They changed course.
How does Chrome have so much market share?
Chrome on Windows doesn't allow the full version of uBlock Origin that still works on the YouTube website.
It's just Google abusing its browser monopoly in the name of ad revenue.
It's the exact same playbook Microsoft is using to block users from logging onto their own computer without using an online Microsoft account.
Given that Google has already started working to limit sideloading on Android, those days seem limited.
Your entire argument relies on a hypothetical you can't prove and doesn't scare anyone. To Android users you sound more like Chicken Little than the Boy who Cried Wolf.
> Google’s Requirement For All Android Developers To Register And Be Verified Threatens To Close Down Open Source App Store F-Droid
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/07/googles-requirement-for-...
Just building a good html/css renderer and a JS engine is crazy, but now you are hooked into the ecosystem and at the mercy of whatever comes next. Chrome can push back against proposals but little browsers either use chromium or are basically in a riptide trying to make sure they keep up.
The problem isn't Chrome pushing back proposals. The problem is Chrome pushing ahead with its own proposals regardless of anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371575
Otherwise you get Internet Explorer, in reverse: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
Chrome literally doesn't even bother pretending that many of their proposals are more than some scribbles in spec-adjacent format. E.g. a spec for WebHID that other browsers could implement was just dumped into the repo after Chrome shipped it.
Constructable Stylesheets had both a badly named API and a trivially triggered race condition. Shipped in Chrome in the middle of discussion because Google-developed lit "needed" it.
And so on and so forth.
The problem with all of these new specifications is that Google can’t convince anybody to do this, no matter how much money they throw at them. That’s not an Apple veto stopping these things from becoming standards, that’s Google pushing shitty specs.
We've kinda come full circle. Web standards were made to prevent what happened when Internet Explorer ruled the world but now a corporation has near-monopoly browser share and is driving the web standards themselves
At this point a modern browser is basically an operating system.
If Google is strong arming or pushing ahead their own agenda, the standards body should have plenty enough votes to veto.
And for teeth, compliance should be a requirement for Google to even be allowed to have its own browser. If they break it, no more browser for Google.
Chrome has the best compliance with standards of any of the big three (see wpt.fyi) - which is not surprising, because they also have the most engineering time dedicated to their browser, and the most people working on standards.
These bodies require buy in from multiple vendors, but generally not unanimity. That said, browsers can and do ship things which haven't been standardized (e.g. WebUSB, which is still only a draft because only Chrome wants to ship it). In a lot of cases this pretty much has to happen pre-standardization, because it is difficult to come up with a good standard from the ivory tower with no contact with actual use. Chrome is unusually good about working in public to develop specifications for such features even when other browsers aren't currently interested in shipping them.
I don't know what problem you think this proposal would solve.
That is, if there's a promotion, or a company bet, or a need to establish/secure market dominance for one property or another, Chrome dumps a scribble on a napkin, barely engages in any conversation, and ships to production within a few weeks after dumping said scribbles.
Once it's out there, it couldn't care less what other browsers vendors will say. Dominant market share and an army of developers who never bothered to learn about standards processes will make sure that this is now a standard.
Google isn't your friend.
If you're a consumer, they're limiting choice.
If you're a startup or midcap, they're in your way.
I expect startups to out-innovate once the giants get a regulatory buzz cut.
And there's no way, in general, to differentiate you (who I'm assuming to be a good-intentioned actual-expert) from someone who is either (a) not an expert or (b) not good-intentioned (i.e. a lobbyist) - so this offer is effectively useless, and the more general point of "there are experts that can help" is invalid.
I've been thinking about this problem a lot, because it is one that needs to be solved. But it's more complicated than just saying that "experts from the community can offer to help draft regulations" because the problem of how lawmakers can trust those offering help is very difficult.
...and that's assuming that the lawmakers are operating in good faith and accurately representing their constitutents' interests, which there is scientific research[1] that indicates is not true.
[1] https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testin...
https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/
Seemed to have fairly frequent commits but they abruptly spotted 3 months ago.
https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/-/commits/main?ref_ty...
And in that sense, is it better than Gecko with firefox, which is non-profit?
Ladybird is still far from usable or fast enough to even start comparing it to Gecko.
Shopify, CloudFlare, and others.
Well, it could be that AI actually speeds up development, who knows.
90% is Apple’s standard. I wonder what the general public requires.
Do I need accelerometer support to watch a full screen video in landscape on YouTube? That’s probably a big deal for anyone who doesn’t use the app, for example.
And how could ladybird attract so many sponsors for such a project? Why wouldn't they fund Firefox instead if they want to achieve some diversity in browser engine field?
I'm curious, not skeptical.
That's just a tired thrope that keeps being repeated by people who don't know any better.
I tried it on my m4, it's surprisedly usable.
I am not saying they do not have A LOT left to do. But your comment almost makes it sound like they are falling behind and that is most certainly not the case.
The team is quite pragmatic and many perfectly modern websites work already. Again, A LOT to do. But it is looking very doable. They still expect a "usable" release sometime next year.
The real test isn't passing 90%—it's whether they can keep pace as the web platform adds new APIs faster than any independent team can implement them. Browser engine development has become a regulatory moat, and breaking it requires either massive funding or accepting permanent incompatibility with the "modern web."
Still rooting for them. Browser monoculture is worse than metric gaming.
I suppose their success is likely directly related to the fact they made reasonable, practical development choices, but still.
They have actively rejected Rust as they see it as unsuitable for a heavily OOP code base. They see OOP as a great fit for implementing the web spec.
To me that all sounds like wishful thinking on their part. But I have a lot of faith in Andreas and the team, so I'm willing to take their opinion over my knee-jerk reaction shrugs.
It's also not clear what you're looking for in terms of cross-platform support. Some languages provide better standard library support for UI elements, but that's the part a browser will be implementing for itself regardless.
It's useless to get a higher score on compliance than the leading engines because ... no one else can use them.
Ladybird does not hide implementations behind feature flags (yet) because there's no need when you don't have users. So its score on test262.fyi includes all proposals it has implemented thus far.
The other engines on that site have an "experimental options" variant to include these proposals, which is a bit more of an honest comparison. As of right now, that shows: Spidermonkey (Firefox) at 98.3%, V8 (Chrome) at 97.9%, LibJS (Ladybird) at 96.9%, and JavaScriptCore (Safari) at 93.2%.
Here's a link with those options selected: https://test262.fyi/#|v8_exp,jsc_exp,sm_exp,libjs
Me as customer: oh man I'm sure glad stuff is reviewed to some quality bar and the OS limits API access.
- browsers having to go through Apple means slower updates (including for bugs or security), not needed on Mac or any other platform
- Apple forces every alternative-engine browser to use a pretty broken framework that Safari does not use, not needed on Mac or any other platform
- Apple's restrictions on alternative engines in the EU are a vast list of malicious compliance[0], making those engines a theoretical academic exercise, so they're definitely still fucking you as a consumer.
[0]: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...
- Companies forking over more margin and control to Apple mean they have to make up for it in other ways.
- Apple and Google wielding so much control removes overall choice and competition from the market.
- I sure hope Apple and Google only ever have my interests at heart because they have all the keys to the kingdom and could really screw me over.
- I wish I could do XYZ with my phone. Too bad...
- I wish there were more diverse phone SKUs. It used to be wildly competitive and we used to have all kinds of innovation because it wasn't so winner-take-all. Where's my eink low power open source phone with gpio and thermal sensors, etc.
- My car and phone feel like frenemies.
- There's still no good alternative OS for phones. Probably because it'd be impossible to make money and compete against titans.
- The company that removed manifest V2 is now forcing app signing? I wonder if they'll limit web browsing options and ad blocking soon.
- Why do I have to de-Google my phone with every update? They have tyranny of defaults (that lay people can't adjust) and just reset the defaults back to themselves every time you upgrade. Or give you scare walls and alerts asking to be default again. Lay people are probably stuck with this.
- "Google News" legitimately has half page ads and popups and that's the default experience. It is physically impossible to even read the news.
Just because consumers are unaware that a problem exist doesn't mean they wouldn't care if they knew.
Consumers in a general sense don't know much of how the world works - safe radiation exposure, food safety, drug dosing thermodynamics, household electrical wiring, airborne particulate, airline maintenance...
This is why we have a government regulatory regime to protect them. The government has to strong arm companies out of bad behavior, because consumers do not understand.
Some people who have Apple and Google stock will voice opinion against regulation. Or people who really love their devices and don't understand the harms.
But the fact is that this Titanic command of markets damages the robustness of the economy. Google and Apple are doing massive harm.
Capitalism should be hard. It should be a treadmill. You shouldn't be able to coast.
We like the market. We like evolutionary pressure. Giants this large, however, are an ecological hack that get to escape the same algorithm we subject every other company to. They created an artificial and illegal means to prevent themselves from facing competition. They're an invasive species picking on ecosystems that literally cannot fight back.
It's a good thing that new companies can (or could) threaten old companies. It's a renewing forest fire, a de-ossification. It rewards innovation capital rather than institutions.
Apple and Google have found a way to forever avoid this by wedging themselves in as "owners of mobile computing". These two companies own it. Period. You don't. Consumers don't. No other company can even enter into the arena. You play by their rules.
Antitrust enforcement has never been more needed. We've had two decades of devices we really only rent and don't own. Devices that strangle consumer control over how we spend our time and money.
If America doesn't do it, foreign countries seeking sovereignty should.
Testing in non-Chrome browsers should identify anything like this before stuff ships. It is legitimately not hard to do.
Write a page on chrome, works 90% on Firefox. But will likely works 10% on safari. Supports safari literally means support another browser (by workaround all its bugs).
I think web devs have too much faith in the "standard"; the WHATWG specifies anything supported by two implementations, and with Google controlling Mozilla that already feels somewhat unfair...
> Write a page on chrome, works 90% on Firefox. But will likely works 10% on safari.
Disregarding the issue that you're writing pages that only 90% work on anything but Chrome... do you have any examples of Safari misbehaving?
Your desire for Safari to vanish is also historically short sighted. Ladybird has near-zero usage, Firefox is practically dead and is fully bought and paid for by Google, everything else is just a Chrome or Chromium fork. Safari is realistically the only thing holding back an outright Chrome monopoly with meaningful usage.
Besides these, the service worker debugger never work on my iphone device since like two major version ago.(It did not show up in the safari menu) There is no way to use it as a developer even I want to (let alone the devtool crashes and disconnects frequently)
"Oh, is this metric important? Let me get right on that."
No shade intended towards the Ladybird team. You were given the terms and you're behaving rationally in response to them. More power to you. It's just a fantastic demonstration of what it looks like to very suddenly be developing against a very specific metric.
Also, I don't think that the Ladybird folks are just doing the bare minimum to only increase their score on WPT. They're implementing each feature in such a way that basic browsing seems to work better and that their WPT score improves.
However, a jump like that means precisely and exactly what I said it means; very suddenly, that metric became much more important to the team. It is written straight into the graph.
A large number of encoding-related tests that were probably relatively easy to fix in bulk is certainly a plausible explanation.
A lot of people are imputing to me assumptions that they are bringing to my post, such as assuming that such improvements must be fake or bad or somehow otherwise cheating. Nope. Moreover, if you are thinking that, don't take it up with me, go take it up with the graph directly. It's not my graph. I'm just amused at the spectacular demonstration of Goodhart's Law.
Are the commentators who think I'm being critical of the Ladybird project going to defend their implicit proposition that the browser got twice as good in whatever period that graph is in, a week or a month or whatever? Of course that's not the case.
Not really, though. The latest jump was from implementing some CSS Typed OM features, which has been in-progress work for a while now. The 6k increase in the test score was a bit of a happy surprise. It's also not that much of a jump when you zoom out and see it's "just" a continuation of a steady increase in score over a long period.
Too much useful insight is withheld or misappropriated these days.
And, in any case, implementing more of the standards is just simply good, and would need to be done at some point anyway.
Some measures are better than no measures. The world isn't black and white.
Of course this is the infuriating type of response I'd expect to receive
https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
Are you suggesting they reach 100% code completion and test coverage before making it available to anyone?
I don't think Andreas is suggesting that it will be offered on iOS any time soon so much as he is pointing out that they achieved this arbitrary milestone.
Have you seen the state of the tech industry?
"Ship it, then fix it" is considered normal now, for some reason.
Google's business model was to take FLOSS software, ostensibly make it work without them being involved, but make it obvious that if you wanted things to be as simple as possible, you needed to use their version of it. Can you use Chromium as your daily driver? Sure, but it's not as simple as just using Chrome. Android is even more like this. And of course, the simplest way to use this software also just happens to give Google a ton of your data, which enabled them as an ad-serving company.
They wouldn't have given the browser away for free if they weren't making at least the cost of the browser development back in the take from ad revenues.
I guess you could argue that the moves to buy services like YouTube and other big pillars of the web and have that reflected in Chrome development cost money.
They also had a good browser (before it became spyware), but there is no conceivable way to get a billion people to care about javascript performance and memory usage.
Yes, even Opera - it never hit the heights that Firefox did outside of niche markets, even though they were great about a lot of other things.
Uhh.... I.... ok.
I didn't see any feature suggestions from you, please feel free to suggest a browser feature for AI to build once it is powerful enough to do so, you can do so at the bottom of the page. It only takes a few seconds. Thank you.