The WebKit team is currently busy, integrating the patches made for Google Chrome into the main WebKit repository. This includes the new V8 JavaScript engine and the Skia graphics library. Most integration work is done by Google employee and WebKit reviewer Eric Seidel. V8 is a fast, BSD licensed JavaScript engine that runs on 32bit x86 and ARM CPUs. Due that platform restriction, V8 probably won't replace WebKit's new SquirrelFish engine anytime soon as default, because SquirrelFish has broader CPU architecture support. Epiphany developer and WebKit reviewer Alp Toker gives an overview about Skia. Unlike V8, Skia is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Some of Skia's main features are optional OpenGL-based acceleration, thread-safety, 10,000 less lines of code compared to Cairo, and high portability.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Webkit was the core library for Safari, released as a beta 5 years ago (which means it had at least 6 years of development at Apple). Initially it was a simple wrapper around KHTML/KJS, which had been developed in anger since 1999, which makes for nine years of development.
Gecko's development started in 1997, after Netscape acquired the IP, giving 11 years of development, but development was infamously rebooted in 1999. So Gecko is exactly one year older than Webkit. Until recently, of course, the difference in developers meant Gecko supported more sites, but Webkit has more than made up the difference in the last two years.
You don't seem to know much about coding at all.. Webkit is a component in an overall application.
The Webkit component saw little change, other than hooks to allow a new JS engine to be plugged in, and the Skia library to be used. Webkit, being a redistributable layout engine, always made it easy to change drawing technologies, so none of this was particularly invasive. The work Google undertook was in the design of the overall application utilising the Webkit component.
They went from passing 23% of their layout tests to 99% of them. This is not the same as saying 23% of sites failed to render (no-one would have ever considered if Webkit was that bad). What it means is they identified the layout designs most likely to stress the layout engine. Pages which failed probably used a combination of these.
Webkit needed to be modified to support a new JS engine, and they fixed bugs in its layout, but existing performance on Safari shows that changes were incremental (though keeping in mind the usual 80/20 rule)
I'd be interested to know if you prefer the layout engines (Webkit versus Gecko) or the browsers (Epiphany versus Firefox). My experience has been that even KHTML is faster and more lightweight than Gecko, though it suffers as it does not have all the compatibility fixes Apple (and now Google) contributed to Webkit.
Likewise it may help you to check your facts on Wikipedia before lecturing those around you. The 15 versus 3/4 years development comparison was a pretty poor mistake.