This document is a beginner-friendly guide to getting familiar with Ladybird and helping the project through testing, bug reports, reductions, standards discussion, design discussion, security reports, and technical feedback.
If you’ve never worked on browser-engine code before, and you’re not sure where to begin— one great place to get started is by reading the book [Web Browser Engineering](https://browser.engineering/). It explains how browser engines in general work, and how they’re built— by walking you through real code for actually building all the parts of a basic but complete browser engine (networking code, HTML parsing, layout engine, JavaScript handling, and more), in a couple thousand lines of Python.
Ladybird must be built from source during this pre-alpha stage of development, and currently natively supports Linux and macOS; running it on Windows requires WSL.
Carefully follow the steps outlined in the [build instructions](BuildInstructionsLadybird.md). If you are facing issues, consult the [troubleshooting guide](Troubleshooting.md) and the #build-problems channel on Discord.
* By finding failing WPT tests on [WPT.fyi](https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&product=ladybird). You do not need to submit issue reports for individual tests.
* By finding WPT tests on [WPT.fyi](https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&product=ladybird) that are [timing out in Ladybird](https://wpt.fyi/results/?product=ladybird&q=status%3Atimeout). For a real-world walk-through of doing that from start to finish with an actual timing-out-in-Ladybird test case, see the [“Fixing a WPT timeout in Window.postMessage()”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4S9afzRTXs) “browser hacking” video.
* By looking for [`TODO`](https://github.com/search?q=repo%3ALadybirdBrowser%2Fladybird%20%22%2F%2F%20TODO%22&type=code) and [`FIXME`](https://github.com/search?q=repo%3ALadybirdBrowser%2Fladybird+%22%2F%2F+FIXME%22&type=code) comments in the codebase.
If you’re not necessarily fluent in C++, beginning by troubleshooting WPT tests may be the very best way to get started helping the project— especially if you _do_ already have some proficiency with frontend JavaScript code.
That’s because without even knowing any C++ at all, you can still— by working just with the JavaScript code in the WPT test source— get a long way toward isolating the cause of a particular WPT test failure or timeout. That alone can be a very big help to maintainers and other people investigating the related C++ code.
If you have found an issue that is not already in the [issue tracker](https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues), you may submit it. Do not submit general questions about the project, please use the Discord server instead.
Read the [project participation guidelines](/CONTRIBUTING.md), in particular the Issue policy and Human language policy. It is recommended you reduce the website to the most minimal amount of HTML/CSS/JS which still results in the error (if applicable), and provide the result expected from other browsers vs Ladybird. Read the [detailed issue-reporting guidelines](/ISSUES.md) for the exact steps to do so.
Ladybird requires at least a basic knowledge of C++. Consult a tutorial website like [Learn C++](https://www.learncpp.com/) and online references if you need help.
Ladybird makes use of the included AK library instead of the C++ STL, and employs a specific coding style based around it. Unfortunately most AK and internal library facilities are not documented; you may need to look for the header files, and examples of usage in existing code.
