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Hi Andreas,

First, thanks for this project and making your self accessible!

Will "plug-in" or "add-on" support be a first-party concept in Ladybird?

I ask that because in years past a few other browsers (Konqueror, Falkon, Dillo, etc) made it pretty far but lacking add-ons, useful capability such as 'NoScript' or 'uBlock' or even a tab manager made them non-starters.




NoScript for Dillo makes no sense as it doesn't support JS anyway. uBlock... yeah, a little, but most annoyances will be blocked by the lack of JS support anyway.

Plus there are plugins for dillo... https://dillo-browser.github.io/#plugins


The plugins for Dillo are only protocol plugins; there are no file format plugins and no other kinds of plugins. However, I mentioned they should implement file format plugins too; other people also wanted this, and it does seem to be wanted enough that they might do it. (Other plugins will be more complicated to consider how to support it)


Exactly. I need 1Password and a vim mode plugin for me to be productive on the web.


Same, bitwarden is essential, as are ublock origin and privacy guard.


I second Bitwarden, ublock origin and privacy guard.

Also: how will you handle bookmarks? IMHO only Chrome does a good job with bookmarks — please copy them instead of reinventing the wheel.


What does Chrome do better than FF with bookmarks?


The interface to move them around, create and move folders etc.

If I had to use bookmarks on FF, I would simply not use them at all.


I tried the bookmark bar and could find no difference. The bookmark manager for FF seems far more advanced, with Chrome going the simplicity, beauty, and lack of information route.

I use bookmarks heavily.


Really ?

Here are bookmarks on FF-based Mullvad Browser

(I stopped using FF proper a long time ago)

https://imgur.com/a/RSy8B2L

Here are bookmarks on Chromium-based Iridium browser

https://imgur.com/a/k2Kwk0I

Where does it look easier to manage bookmarks ?


> Where does it look easier to manage bookmarks ?

Above.


As I said, style over substance is indeed what chrome offers. Can’t even see the damn URLs at a glance.


So, on what "substance" does FF beat Chrome on bookmarks ?


You keep not reading my comments, why ask questions?


I would hope that plug-ins and add-ons can be written in C (although any extensions written in C should be only allowed if installed manually by the end user (e.g. by adding it to some configuration file); it should never install them automatically from a "app store" or similar). That is a feature I would use.


If by "C" you're asking for C compiled to WASM, then fine. But otherwise I would hope that WASN'T ever possible.

The endless security nightmare that was ActiveX and NPAPI should serve as more than enough reason why that shouldn't be a thing again.

"Installed manually not from app store" is even worse because then you're encouraging people to download random binaries from random websites and that's even worse


I do not mean C compiled to WASM. I mean native code (with dlopen).

My point is not for other people to make extensions that you must use. Rather, my point is in case the user wants to write their own extensions do things that have more permissions, without needing to recompile everything. It is specifically if the user does not want the extra security (because they intend to program it to do things beyond that provided by the browser's security context), and only for that case.

(However, there might be another alternative: Provide a .a file (in case do not intend to compile it by yourself, which might take some time and require several dependencies) and allow the end user to link that file together with their own .o files, instead of using .so files. The constructor functions can be used to tell the main program of the presence of these extensions.)

(Another alternative would be to provide a separate version that may permit this, e.g. "advanced version", that might also offer additional options and other features which are intended to only be used by advanced users, therefore making the user interface more confusing for users who do not read the documentation.)

C (and other programming languages) that is compiled to WASM could be installable from the app store, since then it is safe. Native code extensions must be installed manually.


I would think that wasm should probably be the "binary" extension target, which could include C source.

Just my opinion.


Wat?




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