Ladybird merged 333 PRs in April 2026, shipping inline PDF via pdf.js, GTK4 frontend, speculative HTML parsing, off-thread JS compilation, and async DNS.
Key Takeaways
Off-thread JS bytecode compilation shifts ~200ms of main-thread work to background threads; O(1) register allocator fix saved ~800ms wasted on x.com load.
Speculative HTML parser issues prefetch requests for <script>, <link>, and <img> while the main parser blocks on synchronous scripts, deduped via the preload map.
Async DNS via LibDNS thread pool with parallel A/AAAA queries (RFC 8305) eliminated main-thread blocking; O(n²) response-drain bug in RequestServer was costing ~30s on YouTube video open.
Speedometer 2 improved from 67.7 to 73.6; per-navigable rasterization on independent threads preps iframes for future sandboxed-process isolation.
CSS anchor positioning, color interpolation rewrite, RTL list markers, and presentational-hint cascade fixes unblock real sites including cssdoom.wtf and Arabic Wikipedia.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters are broadly enthusiastic; the iterative “fixed X, site Y now works” cadence draws direct comparisons to gaming emulator progress logs.
No technical disagreement or skepticism surfaced; discussion is celebratory with one commenter noting reddit rendering and CSS Doom as tangible milestones.
Notable Comments
@bityard: compares the update style to emulator changelogs – “fixed X bug to make Y behave correctly, which means game Z works now” – and flags CSS Doom as literal overlap.
@satvikpendem: points to a separate no-JS Rust browser prototype from the Dioxus GUI framework as an adjacent from-scratch renderer effort.
