Given that he's already written an entire OS, I don't think he's being too ambitious. It already passes Acid3, which is more than can be said for Dillo and NetSurf, the two other prominent "alternative browser" projects. Those aren't even capable of passing Acid2.
The Ladybird browser came to life on July 4th
Coincidence or not, that's a great date.
> Given that he's already written an entire OS, I don't think he's being too ambitious.
Also, he actually did work on web browsers previously:
> Until that point, my career had been focused on web browsers (WebKit at Apple & Nokia).
So he knows exactly what he's doing.
Based on those two datapoints, I'd say he (and other contributors) have a good shot at it.
I haven't used it, but it seems that Flow[0] is also a plausible modern alternative browser which passes the Acid tests[1], unless you disqualify it for being closed source and borrowing its JS engine from Firefox.
[0] https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ [1] https://www.ekioh.com/devblog/acid/
> unless you disqualify it for being closed source
Yes, I do disqualify it for that reason.
>> The Ladybird browser came to life on July 4th
> Coincidence or not, that's a great date.
Especially if considering that St. Ulrich is also the saint of the dying.
Was thinking more along the lines of "browser independence" (from Big Tech) day.
Ladybird doesn't pass Acid 2 either. It does pass Acid 3.
That's surprising. I'd expect Acid3 to require far more effort to pass than Acid2.
Why? Acid3 just requires basic CSS support and a someone ES5 conformant js-implementation.
Acid2 was specifically built to call IE out and to put browser builders on notice. It tests the most nuanced little quirks of some specific specs; and, because of some changes in the modern standard, doesn’t actually conform anymore.
Firefox passes acid2.
what's the failure? I _think_ some stuff got changed in spec land which makes acid2 no longer "correct"
Safari on iOS only scores 98/100 on Acid 3!
my local FireFox is only 97/100; which susprises me...
Try this version: http://wpt.live/acid/acid3/test.html
That's also "only" 97% in Firefox.
Huh. I get 100% with 104.0.2 on Ubuntu.
I get 100% using Firefox 104.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 10. Maybe it's related to the platform or addons? Could it be uMatrix or something blocking some kind of behavior that would be questionable on a normal webpage?
I get 100% also, using Librewolf fork of FF (104.0.2). RFP is on and uBlock Origin enabled.
edit: MacOS and Windows.
100% on FF 104.0 for Ubuntu
Also 100% on Firefox Mobile 104.2.0
99% :-/
Try “https”?
Strangely I get 99% with https and 100% with http
On FF for Android it hits 100% but the image is incorrect (there is red text in the top-left).
> Strangely I get 99% with https and 100% with http
Same (FF 104.0.2 on Mac, with uBO).
The failing test is:
That test is actually assuming the url is http, and doesn't work on https.
100% - Firefox 103.0.2 on Mac OS
Try disabling addons. 10ten reader, for example, is known to alter pages' style and to break Acid3. There may be other addons doing the same.
I was also seeing only 97% in Firefox.
Disabling the LastPass add-on brought it to 100%. I'm guessing you also use LastPass?
That's a very fingerprintable observation.
Most rendering oddities are not directly detectable by JS on the page, with the notable exception of the <canvas> element.
Though I suppose rendering differences that affect z-order or visibility could be detected indirectly, by listening for pointer events on elements that are "supposed to be" visible/hidden.
Isn't one of the main uses of JS to get the contents of elements on the page? That "97%" and "100%" would be clearly evident.
You are of course correct. I should not try to think about software at 4am! :)
You're right, disable LastPass and I get a 100%... Strange.
100/100 on my Firefox, and it's fairly customized with a bunch of extensions and non-default settings to the extent some sites refuse to work normally and I have to either ignore them or open them in an "alternative" "clean" browser.
try click on A for more info. In stable i get 100/100 (97/100 in beta, but with privacy.trackingprotection.enabled=true and privacy.resistFingerprinting)
Strangely I get 99/100 and it is totally smooth but pauses for just a second at item 68. Red text also appears in the very upper left that says " YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS AT ALL "
This is with all extensions off using Firefox ESR
https://imgur.com/a/ExBMzlx
Came to Hacker News expecting the top comment to be a critical one outlining the inherent problems with this project and why it was doomed to failure, so this whole thread has made for quite pleasant and exciting reading! Thank you!
Yes, I am aware also that HN has blindspots, eg with Show HN Dropbox
July 4th is only celebrated in the US of A. The author is Swedish.
I tried to find some July 4th where something Swedish happened:
> 1708 Battle of Holowczyn: Swedish King Charles XII defeats superior Russian force in surprising vctory
That must have been it.
Given how that campaign ended for Charles, I hope not!
I'm still living in 1708 Sweden, don't spoil anything for me!
July 4th occurs worldwide.
which is probably why the person you're replying to didn't say "July 4th only occurs in the US of A" but instead said "July 4th is only celebrated in the US of A"
You'd be hard-pressed to find it occuring in Iran.
Do they just skip from the 3rd to the 5th in Iran and have some kind of un-leap year? This is news to me. I thought the calendar was the same all over the world.
Jokes aside, the calendar is in no way the same all over the world.
They don’t have July. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Hijri_calendar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tir_(month)#Observances:
“Independence Day (United States) - 14 or 15 Tir”
>July 4th is only celebrated in the US of A.
Not entirely!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebild_Festival
Surely some people have birthdays, anniversaries, etc. on July 4th outside the USA.
That must be why it's a coincidence, then, because it's a date in the year that surely some people must have birthdays, anniversaries, etc. on. I didn't think that was unusual for dates, though.
July 4th matters, even if you are not American. It represents the first non-imperialist great power.
I’m not American by the way.
Non-imperialist at the time maybe?
First in all of history? I highly doubt that.
Relatedly, I find that with regards to history, most people have quite a large recency bias. If I ask someone who the greatest actors of all time are, at least half will be within the last several years. Same with this question, the first non imperialist great power is likely some random Chinese or Mesopotamian or African kingdom.
“Non-imperialist”? What?
All european US vasals are at least very happy to remember this day.
The whole world celebrates 4th July thanks to Jeff Goldblum's virus and Will Smith's flying skills /s
Why is July 4th relevant?
Because of LadyBird Johnson former first lady of the United States.
Acid tests are not strict standards test suites. You should not be looking to adhere to them.
No, but they're good signals for the capabilities of a browser engine. Passing Acid3 means you've got a browser that would have been pretty damn good in 2010 or so. It's a good mark of progress for any three month old browser engine.
two years and 3 months
They're better than strict standard test suites, because they exercize real world useful stuff AND give a fun visual representation of the maturity. Wish we had such "acid test" for later CSS features like Flexbox too...
No, they're immediately provably worse. If you started work on a CSS rasterizer today, there are zero test suites you can use for reference comparison.
I'm talking about easy stuff, too, like normal flow, margin, border, padding box alignment.
The existing official test suites are entirely manual.
Edit: What you're describing requires you to make the entire world first, then finally test something.
Here's an example: I want to test the white-space property. How do I test that? Oh also, font rasterizers are all different and standards don't dictate what happens after box layout. It's acceptable that glyphs render with different dimensions.
How do I test that? A casual HN reader isn't going to care. Someone actually writing this stuff, will.
Sure, but I think you have a misconception: that those are like compliance tests for developers or have that role.
Rather, those acid tests were tests that test the rendering engine (in multiple aspects at the same time), and are meant for the end users: to give them a nice visual representation of the browser's progress, or lack thereof, and to push browser developers to fix issues that cause visual glitches (with features drawing the test image selected to be nice for layout writers to have) and have them race each other to pass them...
I don't have any misconceptions about the state of web technology testing, or how WaSP made an impact on the miserable state of the industry at the time. I work on browser technology.
> there are zero test suites you can use for reference comparison.
What about W3C's web-platform-tests suite [1]?
[1]: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/tree/master/css
To test white space, quick thought have not tried, perhaps render some text that hits a chunk of the differences. Start default/normal. like perhaps text has a lot of tabs. JS measure offsetWidth. Or maybe use canvas export image see if base64 is same
Do it again with different CSS settings.