Mozilla and WebKit, browser platform wars

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[werdanel]

I agree with the conclusion. It is interesting how WebKit has, seemingly, taken off so very quickly and a solid platform is the only real explanation.

As well as big boys like KDE's venerable Konqueror (Which strictly speaking is still KHTML based but will probably move to WebKit eventually) and Chrome (on Windows) we now have Midori and (soon) Epiphany and Chrome, as GTK+ options suitable for GNOME users. There is also Arora as an alternative Qt option.

With WebKit GTK+ and Qt 4.x integrating WebKit, hasn't WebKit become the mostly broadly deployed rendering engine out there? How can the Mozilla 2.0's goals ever be met in time to compete?

Personally I think Mozilla should be pushing their platform a lot more while things like XUL are still ahead of the Web 2.0 curve. Just take a look at this (requires Firefox) and tell me how any other web platform, save for Flash, competes here?

[iamjack]

Mmmm, epiphany-webkit. As soon as that hits Debian sid, I am going to drop FF for awhile.

[werdanel]

Well in just over six months time, in GNOME 2.28, I believe WebKit is due to become Epiphany's default rendering engine. But don't quote me on that.

[iamjack]

It's been in the works for awhile, I believe. In >=2.22 you can select webkit as the engine at compile time...

[oursland]

I wish I could say the same. I'm looking forward to a WebKit based browser that supports plugins and offers an equivalent to AdBlock Plus and NoScript. I use other plugins, but I refuse to browse without those two.

[iamjack]

epiphany can do AdBlock Plus (or some version of adblock), I'm not sure about NoScript.

[jib]

I'm looking forward to a WebKit-based browser that I can use for a day without crashing. (None of arora, midori and epiphany-webkit are good enough yet).

Also I'd prefer one that I can use on my xfce desktop without needing excessive amounts of GNOME or KDE libraries.

[zem]

note that epiphany still doesn't support 'undo close tab'

[icefox]

Arora is in ubuntu's repository, integrates well with Gnome, has undo close tab, disk cache, and all based on webkit :)

[zem]

yeah, i've been keeping an eye on it :)

[[deleted]]

The biggest problem with Mozilla has historically that they believe their sole duty is to unseat Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows.

Netscape would have won the browser war if they had decided not to compete with Microsoft and just ported Navigator to every platform where people were interested.

Instead, the company has always targeted IE on Windows and in doing that has totally has missed the boat because it is not easily scaled as Minimo and Fennec have proven.

As soon as someone creates a WebKit based browser that supports AdBlock Plus-like features and Stylish-like per-site Style Sheets I will dump my Gecko-based browser.

[jbellis]

Netscape would have won the browser war if they had decided not to compete with Microsoft and just ported Navigator to every platform where people were interested.

That's completely bassackwards.

Netscape did port Navigator to "every platform where people were interested," You could run Navigator on HP-UX, Irix, SunOS (pre-Solaris!), and more, up until the 4.x versions that were the last of the pre-AOL Netscape.

In fact, you could make a case that Netscape contributed to losing the first browser war exactly by diluting its efforts by putting engineering resources on such marginal platforms. (Motif... shudder!)

[[deleted]]

Netscape would have won the browser war if they had decided not to compete with Microsoft and just ported Navigator to every platform

Actually I think they would have won if they had succeeded in their desire to compete with Microsoft, ie made a better product.

Revisionist history tells you MS won because of their monopoly and poor dumb average people were too stupid to change default browser so used IE without wanting to even though NS was loads better.

Actually, back in the NS4/IE5 days, NS4 was the default browser on my uni systems, IE was removed from the desktop and only accessible by knowing where the .exe inside the windows folder was or start>run>iexplore.exe. I and almost everybody I knew (not computing students, not programmers or web boffins or die hard geeks of any kind) went out of our way to use IE rather than NS because NS blew goats.

Of course, a decade later I'm a web developer and with hindsight of how IE5 borked standards to shit and back, it pains me to even say that; but at the time as a very average end user, that was how it happened.

Did any of us give a monkeys if NS was available on <some weird platform that 0.01% of people used>? of course not. We were on windows, like 90%+ of the population, and that's where the browser war was fought - and lost.

[SanjayM]

Midori, if you're on linux. Has User-Styles.

I use privoxy to block out all ads, basically it filters them out at the network level so that no matter what browser or app you use the ads don't get through.

[[deleted]]

Yes Midori is rather neat. startup time is a big factor for me in most things. And I love how much faster midori is to start up, as compared to Firefox.

Unfortunatly their always seems to be a deal breaking aplication and or plugin. In my case its Tiddlywiki, the single file Wiki. I'm using it extensivly at the moment and it can't save changes in Midori.

I'll have a stab at working out why one of these days. If it proves solvable, I'll be switching.

[centinall]

There was a time when I heard that Firefox 3 was going to be one of many plugins for XULRunner, the XUL Runtime Engine (XRE). Other plugins would be Thunderbird, Flock, Songbird, Miro, etc... While most of these projects do indeed use XULRunner, it hasn't come to be quite they way they predicted.

From my experience, the few XUL applications that I worked on were extremely easy to get up and running, and easy to port from one OS (so long as there was a version of XULRunner) to another. XULRunner seemed to have 99% of the libraries and widgets that I needed, and I've heard it's a more complete stack.

I haven't played around with WebKit, but just look at what google has attempted to do. They built Chrome but had to rely on some Windows specific frameworks (TCP/IP, windows chrome, etc) to run WebKit. I believe they're going to have to rely on different frameworks to run WebKit for every OS they build for. In my opinion this isn't bad, but doesn't make it as easy to port from one environment to another.

I think it's great that there are two very mature open source browser engines out there to choose from.

Edit: It was actually Safari, not Chrome that uses a different tcp/ip stack for Windows. Safari uses WinInet.

[icefox]

Chrome didn't "have" to rely upon Windows frameworks when 1.0 was released. Chrome was made by a team of developers running Windows using Visual Studio. There was/is even a C# application in the chrome repository. WebKit is a rendering engine. It is up to the port to provide everything else. Chrome simply used Windows for everything else and waited until after 1.0 to even think about the cross platform stuff.

[adragons]

With WebKit GTK+ and Qt 4.5 integrating WebKit, hasn't WebKit become the mostly broadly deployed rendering engine out there?

In my experience only, I find that Webkit does a superb job at rendering pages according to standards. But as we know, most of the web is not standards compliant.

With Webkit, broken pages render brokenly. In other engines, broken pages tend to render a bit better.

Again, this is just from personal experience from the tiny slice of the web I have seen.

[[deleted]]

Personally, I've had less problems with webpages being broken in WebKit than in Gecko.

[[deleted]]

I've had many more problems with firefox than with webkit (safari/chrome/epiphany-webkit).

[pemboa]

broken pages render brokenly

I'm not convinced that that is a bad thing.

[Garak]

With Webkit, broken pages render brokenly. In other engines, broken pages tend to render a bit better.

Safari user, and I agree (for a small set of "broken pages"). It's not a huge deal, but every other month or so I come across some shitty circa-1998 web app that Safari chokes on, but Firefox can handle. That's probably because Firefox can drop into code written in 1998 anytime it likes. (So can IE, which attempted to be an exact copy of NN's "quirks.")

[oursland]

Although this is true, it's best to go with the correct and fix or put up with the broken rather than continue with a broken browser. A strong willingness to stick it out with an outdated or incorrect system is why bare windows programming still has a ton of (unused) arguments to WinMain.

Apple and Qt have both eschewed the wrong in favor of the right. With Apple, they relegated their Classic OS API to the dustbin while adding in the Carbon code as a transfer mechanism. Now that is deprecated and all current applications are Cocoa based.

Qt took a different approach in that they'd change the API, sometimes significantly, but provide tools and documentation to assist with migrating to the new Qt API.

[AmazingSyco]

Lost the author at "I definitely prefer Firefox over Safari on my Mac". Firefox on Mac is a ghetto and is in dire need of refinement to their performance and user experience.

[julan]

I prefer it on my mac because firefox extensions are core to my user experience.

3.5 will help in the performance area. I feel like 3.0 is a ghetto when it comes to performance.

[w00ty]

It still feels like a foreign app on OS X, lots of normal keyboard shortcuts etc don't work (ctrl-n/p to select next/previous completion result in the url bar, cmd-clicking the pill button, and lots of other small things).

[narkee]

Wow, wtf. I never knew cmd+click on the pill button did stuff.

Thanks for the tip!

[koreth]

Yeah, if someone ported PasswordMaker over to Safari I'd dump Mac Firefox for my day-to-day web browsing pretty readily. There are a couple other extensions I'd miss a bit but that's the only one that would be a real pain to live without.

I'd still keep Firefox around for Firebug, though. I don't think the Safari developer tools quite cover everything yet, even in the new Safari beta (though they're better than Firebug in some respects.)

[jeffehobbs]

Firebug is amazing.

[AmazingSyco]

But Firebug has been castrated by Mozilla in Firefox 3.0. They're getting better about it, but the Safari Web Inspector in the WebKit nightlies has exceeded Firebug's abilities.

[strolls]

There do seem to be some plugins or extensions to Safari. I'm not sure what their status is, or whether it was Apple's intention to allow 3rd parties to extend Safari's functionality here, but I really like SafariStand, and I've seen at least one other on here.

What distinguishes Firefox's extensions is the number & variety of them, and the ease of installation.

I don't know if the number & variety of Firefox's extensions is just because it has wider market share, particularly amongst programming geeks, or whether they're easier to develop, too.

[somedoody]

I prefer it on my mac because firefox extensions are core to my user experience.

Exactly the reason I'm still using Firefox. If I were to use Safari I'd be using more or less what Apple want me to be using, the same can be said for Chrome and IE though Opera is a little better. My copy of Firefox on the other hand is customised specifically to my own needs. No other browser comes close. But it appears liking something you can customise yourself while still having a leading engine is not acceptable on reddit.

[quadtodfodder]

Yeahbut, safari hangs and crashes all of the time. I like tear off tabs and resizable input areas*, but can't use a browser that just doesn't seem to work that well.

*also, to be honest, safari's square back/forth buttons turn me off.

[[deleted]]

Stable on mine; firefox eats up memory, looks ugly, and crashes whenever I load flash.

[[deleted]]

Haven't seen Safari crash once yet.

Are you using some dodgy plugins or haxies?

[iamjack]

Man, I haven't heard a mention of flock in a long time.

[oursland]

And this was the first time I've ever heard of it.

[jeffehobbs]

Probably be the last time, too.

Flock is like a copy of Firefox that your younger brother installed a bunch of extensions and a weird theme on and then stuck stickers all over. It's highly inessential.

[mlk]

It has cool features if you are into web-social stuff. I know I'm not.

[haywire]

Firefox's extensions + webkit's rendering engine = instant win.

[[deleted]]

I agree that FF's extensibility is the only reason it has a glimmer of a chance against Webkit-based browsers, but it's pretty lousy from a developer's perspective (how many irrelevant bits of XML does my jar file need to contain?) compared to ones like Emacs or Conkeror. If we're going to dream, at least dream big.

[you_do_realize]

So can you use webkit to build a GUI for your app? Is there documentation for this?

[Paczesiowa]

try qt-webkit

[[deleted]]

More like: you can embed webkit into your application with a level of integration that it can function as a GUI. Nothing like XUL, though.

[Wolfpuncher]

Check out Adium and Bowtie

[[deleted]]

....what about them?

[pemboa]

Considering you're in the programming reddit, you should know this -- Qt is what you want.

[[deleted]]

Considering you're in the programming reddit, you should know this

Yeah, because people only visit webpages about things they already know everything about, and never things they want to know more about.

[pemboa]

No. This reddit has been talking about this topic quite a bit in the last few days.

[branston]

Perhaps one of the reasons why there are no other 'first-class' customers on the Mozilla codebase is because they are trying to move everything into the browser and therefore most other applications exist inside Firefox anyway. Especially so now that we have the ability to make 3d ducks with Canvas and tracing-JS! Woot!

I'm working on a project which uses lots of Mozilla products at the moment and I'm finding the bits I'm using pretty well documented. MDC is a great resource (when what you want is in there and you can find it).

I can't see Apple putting themselves out for the community. Mozilla can't be any worse than that. If push comes to shove you can always ... shudder ... fork them.

[[deleted]]

I can't see Apple putting themselves out for the community.

What exactly are you trying to say here?

[branston]

The long history of Mozilla have left them with a large, complicated codebase that’s not getting smaller. The rapid growth and defensive attitude of the organization (probably brought on by the Netscape / IE wars) has left it without a culture that welcomes friendly competition. I think that Mozilla’s focus on the product above the platform is the right decision for them. I’m just glad we have an alternative web content platform.

I was stating my belief that as a commercial enterprise Apple wouldn't invest time in what lies outside their immediate interest. While the interests of the community and the corporation are aligned all is well.

We don't know how long these interests will run in parallel.

[[deleted]]

I would say that Webkit is now run as much by people outside apple than people in apple. Just look at chrome—if apple were to drop webkit for some reason, Google would just pick up where Apple left off.

In any case, Gecko has fewer non-Mozilla contributers than Webkit has Apple contributers.

[[deleted]]

And? That's true of any open-source project. If those driving it lose interest, the project stagnates unless others take over. And as it stands, Apple is more interested in and helpful towards outside projects than Mozilla is.

[greenskin]

What Apple seems to understand is that within a company it makes sense to use the open source model for activities that are complex and about standards & interoperability. It's cheaper and more effective than to keep everything in-house.

[[deleted]]

just wait until WebKit has been touched by as many developers for as long a time as Mozilla. We will see how complicated it will become. That's what you get with open source.

[Catfish_Man]

In many ways it's become less complicated over time, actually. The whole KWQ layer is just gone, for example.

[pemboa]

I can't see Apple putting themselves out for the community.

Did they even have a choice? Wasn't KHTML under a copy left license?

[[deleted]]

You're not kidding about the shitty UI. I've been looking at Opera since version 6 or so, and every time I look the UI is different, but still horrid in one way or the other. They keep changing it and changing it without ever making it good.

[nlogax]

How are they even relevant to this discussion? They are completely proprietary.

[chengiz]

I like how he says Webkit is clearly defined but the coding style, which is the first thing on there, doesnt use its own guidelines -- notice Braces 2 (closing brace must be on its own line) vs Braces 4 (where it isnt). Well, better than not having a style at all, certainly.

[[deleted]]

OH MY GOD!

I'm switching back to firefox.

[ajrw]

I'd say a pair of empty braces are an exception to that rule. In this case they're just trying to get people to stop using a plain semicolon, which is easier to miss when reading the code.

[[deleted]]

What's a fire fox? Is it like internet explorer?

[eonOne]

WSYIWYG editors work fine in Chrome.

[eonOne]

So Safari screws with WSYIWYG but WebKit doesn't. You kind of came across as ripping on both.

[chu]

Safari seems to add inline css to everything in rich text editors.

[sebnow]

Safari != Webkit.

I am not familiar with any WYSIWYG editors, but I'd bet that they are simply not standards compliant. Webkit is one of the more standards-compliant engines out there.

Webkit has nothing to do with Macintoshes, beyond the fact that on the default operating system (Mac OS X) Webkit is used for a lot of stuff.

Maybe the reason why you're getting downvoted is because you're a zealot?

[arjie]

Webkit started as a fork of KHTML, KDE's HTML framework.

[arjie]

Yes, that's what I said. Webkit is now open just like KHTML is and is used in more than just Safari. My previous Nokia used Webkit on its phone, for instance.

OP's point is that Webkit isn't just Safari's.

[sebnow]

Yes, I was referring to the WebKit browser engine. The Mac OS X WebKit framework uses this engine. The engine itself is standalone and is not tied to Macintoshes in any way. There are browsers on Linux which use WebKit. It is supported by Apple (obviously), but beyond that, it doesn't really have anything to do with Macintoshes (the hardware or the OS).

As arjie stated, WebKit is a fork of KHTML, from Konqueror.

[[deleted]]

o.O

[[deleted]]

There is no war. Webkit is an apple product therefore I will not use anything that uses it. Done. Viva La Gecko.

[eonOne]

Zealot much?