http://www.osnews.com/story/15406/First_Windows_Browser_Based_on_Apple_s_Webkit Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:01:50 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?149812 http://osnews.com/thread?149812 Too many Windows users stick with buggy old end-of-lifed IE from sheer intertia. Maybe this will help. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TomB7) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149816 http://osnews.com/thread?149816 What about the engine found in Konqueror? Doesn't this one make it five? Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rcsteiner) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149819 http://osnews.com/thread?149819 Well, "coming to the Windows platform" was specified, and as far as I know, there are no KHTML-based browsers built for Windows. I suppose Konqueror itself could be run via Cygwin, and KDE4 has plans for Windows support, but that's all not quite the same...

Besides, are WebKit and KHTML not effectively the same (particularly with Unity and all)? Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FlipmodePlaya) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149820 http://osnews.com/thread?149820 well, konqi is only usable atm by using cygwin. also, khtml is not webkit, apple forked khtml. for KDE 4 there is the Unity project which might bring both trees back in sync, and KDE 4 apps will run on windows and Mac OS X, so in 6 or 7 months we might see konqi using webkit on windows. but GetWebKit was first, then ;-) Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149821 http://osnews.com/thread?149821 The site is pretty sparse on information. The online subversion repository is empty, the link to the forums times out, and the main page has absolutely no information about who is involved in this project or any of the other information one might expect to find on a project page.

Also, although on the website the browser is always just referred to as "WebKit", the installer calls it "Swift" everywhere.

The whole thing makes me kind of wary of installing it.. Has anyone confirmed that this is for real?

PS. Rcsteiner: Konqueror doesn't run on windows yet (cygwin and X11 doesn't count for most users). However, it hopefully will around the time that KDE4 is released. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leos) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149823 http://osnews.com/thread?149823 Has anyone confirmed that this is for real?

I'll upload a screenshot once the WWDC keynote is over, okay? Works fine here. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149824 http://osnews.com/thread?149824 Ok, well I bit the bullet and installed it and it is actually what it claims

Naturally, the browser is very very basic still, but I didn't see any problems in the rendering so far and no crashes. Unfortunately I couldn't post this comment from Swift, since the password field for OSNews doesn't appear.

Here's a screenshot:
http://www.mushroomstamp.ca/swift.png Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leos) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149827 http://osnews.com/thread?149827 For the most part, the HTML code itself renders good. I haven't tried breaking it with CSS yet.

Maybe once it's more than a container with Webkit stuck into it it will be usable.

I would rather see GetWebkit develop it as a control that can be embedded from the ground up...just like the IE Control and Mozilla Control. Sure, ActiveX is bad for the Internet, but it's useful for RAD.

That would also be good to create a plugin for Firefox similar to IE Tab so developers can test sites in Webkit, IE, and Gecko without leaving Firefox.

Furthermore I think they should use the Crystal Icon set for Swift, it would just feel right.

It's a good start no doubt, but don't download it unless you are into alpha-grade software. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous Coward) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149828 http://osnews.com/thread?149828 Being the reckless sort that I am, I installed it on my WinXP box. The installer stopped with "Module C:Program FilesSwift TeamSwiftbinWebKit.dll failed to register. HRESULT -2147010895. Contact your support personnel." This error dialog had the options of Exit Installation, Try Again or Continue. I chose to continue, and the installer finished up. The program wouldn't start however, saying something about an incorrect application configuration.

This sounds like an installer error more than anything else. I doubt it installed any malware; my antivirus and spyware/malware scanners aren't getting any hits. That being said, proceed with caution. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Morgan) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149835 http://osnews.com/thread?149835 Well, it is really maybe an alpha stage. It's the first release you see there. I know that, I'm an official translator.

The password boxes not showing up is a bug the developpers currently did not fix, it is not only on osnews, but everywhere. There will soon be a workaround using normal inputs instead of password boxes, and as soon that they rule that bug, they will be set back as password boxes.

[EDIT] I do not know exactly if this browser should have it the news at this stage, but I hope you won't make your mind only on that (buggy) first public build Edited 2006-08-07 18:02 Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (samueldr) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149836 http://osnews.com/thread?149836 That's error code 0x800736B1, a library manifest problem. Make sure you have the Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable installed first - you can download it from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32BC1BEE-A... Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moocha) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149837 http://osnews.com/thread?149837 Too many Windows users simply do not know there is a viable alternative. Heck, most Windows users don't want to know.

They don't know there's an alternative to Windows. Many that know macs exist don't trust something different, aren't sure it will work right - can they do everything they can already do? Do they need to learn something new?

IE IS the internet for most. If they don't know what a web browser is or does, or that there are alternatives that are better, how do you expect them to know where to go, install, and use it?

The problem isn't intertia itself - the problem is ignorance. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ThawkTH) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149839 http://osnews.com/thread?149839 Wow, stealing KHTML and using an opera interface, innovative, just kidding, the tabs on top are the best position, I hope Konqi gets that right one day. For the rest I don't understand why they just try to help porting Konqueror to windows, it's gonna be done anyway and the project is pretty much a bit more mature, and they're going to sync with webkit again and going further together (under the name: Unity). But well, if it's for fun why not ;-), good luck with it I'd say. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Terracotta) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149845 http://osnews.com/thread?149845 I had the same error. Following your advice I was able to install it and use it. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TaterSalad) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149850 http://osnews.com/thread?149850 It would probably help if Windows had drag-and-drop application installation, but don't hold your breath.... Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TomB7) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149864 http://osnews.com/thread?149864 The OSS community needs a good alternative to Gecko, and this could be it. Unfortunately, everyone working on a new browser for *nix seems to be dead set on using 30-odd megabytes of slow, poorly maintained bloat (otherwise known as xulrunner) to power their software. I really, really hope that someone out there, someone in Gnome or XFCE development or an independent programmer or whatever, looks at Webkit and says, "Hey, this looks useful. Maybe I should base my browser on it, and actually stick with it instead of abandoning the thing after a month." Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Gullible Jones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149880 http://osnews.com/thread?149880 Why do you dismiss KHTML ? Konqueror is a very good browser, and is free. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lezard) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149902 http://osnews.com/thread?149902 You're kidding, right?

They're ALL free, and all of them have their various strengths and weaknesses.... Konqis forte seems to be bloated code... Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dolphin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149925 http://osnews.com/thread?149925 Glad to help. If you have the time, you may want to notify the Swift developers about the problem and the fix. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moocha) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149926 http://osnews.com/thread?149926 Wait a second. Would that be a dependency issue? On windows? Clicking "next" didn't just work? Maybe yum, apt, portage, conary, ports, pkg_add or something similar would have helped.


Feel free to mod me how you like. I couldn't help myself. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kernelpanicked) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149939 http://osnews.com/thread?149939 You're kidding, right?
KHTML is eveything but bloated. Some thinks that Konqueror, the interface for KDE that uses KHTML, is bloated (whatever that means), but it is a pleasure to use. Isn't that more important ? Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lezard) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149944 http://osnews.com/thread?149944 Konqis forte seems to be bloated code...

Dude, what are you talking about?

First off, Konqui is simply a shell wrapper for khtml.

Khtml was chosen by Apple over Gecko specifically because it was smaller, leaner and more efficient code.

From Apple at the time:

"When we were evaluating technologies over a year ago, KHTML and KJS stood out," Safari Engineering Manager Don Melton wrote. (KJS is KDE's JavaScript interpreter.) "Not only were they the basis of an excellent, modern and standards-compliant Web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open-source projects."

And Mozilla's response to that?

"I guess I'm supposed to be mortally offended--or at least embarrassed--that they went with KHTML instead of our Gecko engine, but I'm having trouble working up the indignation," wrote Mike Shaver in a Web log posting. "We've all known forever that Gecko missed its 'small-and-lean' target by an area code, and we've been slogging back towards the goal, dragging our profilers and benchmarks behind us, for years."

Shaver, who left Netscape three years ago but retained his position on the small Mozilla staff, said that in Apple's shoes he might have made a similar decision.

"If I had to write a new browser, and I was going to have to touch the layout code in a serious way, I would think about Mozilla alternatives," Shaver wrote. "I really, really hope that Mozilla will learn from Safari/KHTML, because they've done a lot of great work in about a tenth of the code."

It's also worth noting that the Safari team had roots in Mozilla, yet selected khtml anyways.

(source: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980492.html)

If you want to argue the merits of various browsers, that's fine, but please, explain again exactly how Konq/khtml suffers from "bloated code"? Compared to what, exactly? Lynx, maybe? Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149981 http://osnews.com/thread?149981 "It would probably help if Windows had drag-and-drop application installation, but don't hold your breath...."

Easily done with .Net applications, provided it doesn't need to access the registry. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jayson.knight) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?149993 http://osnews.com/thread?149993 Haven't you heard? Everything in KDE is bloated. Your fancy quotes, facts, and reasoning doesn't make any sense, because it is obviously wrong.



Clearly the poster was just complaining that Konqueror has too many buttons. And he has a point, although the simple mode that Kubuntu defaults to isn't that bad. What people don't realize is that a gui has almost no impact on how bloated an html engine like khtml is. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150025 http://osnews.com/thread?150025 Interesting... Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jedd) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150047 http://osnews.com/thread?150047 Does this mean that Windows-based web developers and designers can now test Safari rendering without Mac OS?

Is there anything like this for Linux?Edited 2006-08-08 00:42 Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ChiliJ) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150055 http://osnews.com/thread?150055 "Is there anything like this for Linux?"

Yes, http://www.konqueror.org/ Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sb56637) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150056 http://osnews.com/thread?150056 Hmmmm, anyone know why Swift is so big? (15MB) Debug code or something? Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sb56637) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150061 http://osnews.com/thread?150061 Yeah, I guess that slipped my mind. But is the css and javascript rendering of KHTML vs Webkit really close enough? Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ChiliJ) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150084 http://osnews.com/thread?150084 To loudly trumpet a "new" browser and praise WebKit without once mentioning KHTML is just plain unkind. Give credit where credit is due: Yes, WebKit is somewhat enhanced by Apple, but without KHTML it's just a collection of patches. Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sorpigal) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150159 http://osnews.com/thread?150159 Now if the author forgot to include the DLL in the installer, what is the difference if he forgets to add the dependency to the library in a package (and he would have forgotten it, as we see)? None.

In both cases that file would be missing. Tue, 08 Aug 2006 09:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Legend) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150243 http://osnews.com/thread?150243 application can mostly be designed like that but some shared library are considered common enough among dev.
static linking is nice and fast but is not considered as disk space wise. Plus an OS panel for install/uninstall is quite common and useful when wisely designed ( see : package manager in most linux distros ).
dotNet doesn't solve the problem but help with the commonly known 'dll nightmare' where shared library version are overwritten by older version Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dvhh) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150583 http://osnews.com/thread?150583 Yall may now get sources, you need alteast Visual Studio 2005 Standard and a compiled WebKit .tlb from http://webkit.opendarwin.org  See the OpenDarwin Wiki on how to build WebKit for Windows. Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cfuenty_swift) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?150692 http://osnews.com/thread?150692 Dependency handling is non-trivial on any operating system, but it's the responsibility of the package maintainer. Not wanting to defend any particular OS or anything, but in this case the fault lies smack with the developers since they forgot to include the merge module for the VC2005 runtime in the setup. Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moocha) Comments