It's apparently browser engine day today. After Mozilla and Samsung announcing Servo, Google has just announced it's forking WebKit into Blink. Like WebKit, Blink will be open source, and it will also be used by other browser makers - most prominently, Opera has already announced it's not using WebKit, but Blink. Update: Courtesy of MacRumors, this graph illustrates how just how much Google contributed to WebKit. Much more than I thought. Also, Chrome developer Alex Russell: "To make a better platform faster, you must be able to iterate faster. Steps away from that are steps away from a better platform. Today's WebKit defeats that imperative in ways large and small. It's not anybody's fault, but it does need to change. And changing it will allow us to iterate faster, working through the annealing process that takes a good idea from drawing board to API to refined feature."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
WebKit development hasn't been a smooth interaction between Apple and Google who have both contributed significantly but have different technical goals and this has been a source of minor and major irritations now and then. WebKit has 11 different build systems for instance and sometimes merges code from Apple in a heavy handed way leaving little room for consensus among different contributing vendors. Chrome's WebKit is a very different beast from Apple's Webkit anyway and this fork will merely make it more obvious.
Member since:2006-07-15
Member since:2009-06-20
"On higher levels than just WebCore, Apple has actually been using WebKit2, which handles things like sandboxing (the feature that allows one tab to crash without bringing the whole browser down). Die hard Chrome fans may be aware, but Google already has its own method for sandboxing tabs and has no need for WebKit2's implementation. However, WebCore contains a lot of code that is designed to support features like that. How much is "a lot of code," you ask? About 4.5 million lines of code, it seems. "
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/04/03/google-no-longer-cares-for-...
Member since:2005-11-29
I think this is a given, they disagreed on a large component so Google will excise that component from their fork.
I'm more interested in why, and I don't think this would've been a chief motivator for a fork. I think its a good bullet point on a list of reasons why, but the overarching goal here seems to be to have the freedom to set the agenda for their rendering engine.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2009-06-20
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-11
The 'screaming' sound you heard was apple marketing machine trying to prevent the knifing ... forking of webkit
Member since:2005-11-29
Member since:
2005-11-29
Its interesting how people just a few weeks ago were screaming for everyone to "standardize on WebKit" and preaching that a single web engine was great for the web.
Not that I'm criticizing Google's move, I'm all for doing what makes the most business sense. Google thinks it needs to control its destiny and priorities with regards to its web rendering technology. Thats fine. Thats the nature of these projects and forking is part of the game.
I'm interested into what broke down between Apple, Google, and the planning for WebKit2 (which was supposed to bring multi-process support) to lead to this. Its a rather drastic move.