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Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#71

Post by mikewest »

simonster wrote: post #13
ebbv wrote: post #2

I can't help but think that forking WebKit is a business based decision since Apple controls WebKit. This blog post doesn't make an engineering based argument* so I'm left with the business ones. Which sucks. * - Just vague "we need to innovate faster" boilerplate. Which is what business people say when there's not a solid engineering based reason. EDIT: At the bottom of the project page are some engineering reasons:…

Apple doesn't actually control WebKit. A decent proportion of reviewers at http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit%20Team are Google employees. The engineering argument is that the differences between Chromium's multi-process model and WebKit2 are big enough that, in order for both projects to move forward, Google needs to fork WebKit. I'm not competent to judge whether this is actually true.

http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2 outlines the technical differences between the architectures pretty well. Suffice it to say, the model runs deep, and has real impact on the way things like WebCore are put together.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#72

Post by vladikoff »

beshrkayali wrote: post #45
mtgx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google will be using 2 increasingly different rendering engines for Chrome in the future? Well that sucks. Apple really needs to allow other rendering engines on iOS, or at least be forced into it. People complain about the "webkit mono-culture", but a huge platform like iOS actually mandating you use webkit, and their single version of webkit, is a lot worse.

I agree, that would suck. Specially if -for some reason- we start seeing differences in terms of rendering speed/js engine/or other techs between the android version and the iOS version.

This is already true today.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#73

Post by mtgx »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #66
bmuon wrote: post #18

Standing ovation. This is most welcomed news since Opera's move to WebKit to keep the current browser innovation pace. Coupled with Mozilla's announcement of its partnership with Samsung to move Servo forward this is great news for the future of the web. Hopefully multi-process/multi-threaded rendering engines will address some of our current performance gripes with the DOM and open the gate for even more complex UIs…

Parallelism is listed as something they are considering, whereas with Servo it's one of the biggest (if not the main) reasons for it existing. From this announcement I can't quite tell what it is with this project that they hope to achieve but I'm sure that will become more clear over time.

I sure hope Google is considering heterogeneous computing, too, and better sooner than later.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#74

Post by cromwellian »

macrael wrote: post #67
mythz wrote: post #27

Alex Russell has a good analysis about the move: http://infrequently.org/2013/04/probably-wrong/

The argument is essentially: "It took up lots of engineering time and effort to maintain compatibility with other platforms, so this allows us not to worry about other platforms and only focus on our own and that will allow us to move faster." Hopefully this is easier for everyone. If the chrome multithreading architecture really was the pain point then does that mean that webkit will also be deleting thousands of fi…

Does Apple already maintain a private WebKit fork for iOS?

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#75

Post by SunboX »

igrigorik wrote: post #37
ttrashh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome for iOS is just a wrapper around Safari.

Not at all. iOS version uses UIWebView, but all the rest is Chrome code.

UIWebView means DOM, CSS and JavaScript is brought by mobile safari? All the stuff to show and run a web page?

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#76

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

natem345 wrote: post #70
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rendering engine monoculture isn't a good thing though. If a single rendering engine dominates, then there is less reason to write standards-compliant code - after all, everyone uses WebKit, right?

Just like everyone used IE6 back in the day!

Yeah, it was wonderful! The alternate browsers just accepted the standards dictated by the dominant browser, and that didn't cause any problems at all!

/s

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#77

Post by MatthewPhillips »

tolmasky wrote: post #29
ebbv wrote: post #2

I can't help but think that forking WebKit is a business based decision since Apple controls WebKit. This blog post doesn't make an engineering based argument* so I'm left with the business ones. Which sucks. * - Just vague "we need to innovate faster" boilerplate. Which is what business people say when there's not a solid engineering based reason. EDIT: At the bottom of the project page are some engineering reasons:…

If you look at the commits, there's a fair argument that Google "controls" WebKit. You could almost say Apple got KHTML'ed ;) I believe this is an honest move. This is what happens with software. Goals change, old code and design no longer makes sense, you refactor or rewrite. The architecture of WebKit was created to address goals that are a decade old now. The multi-process nature of Chrome alone, an amazing achiev…

If you want to really put a tinfoil cap on, you could say that by Google contributing to WebKit they are giving Apple a lot of free code, allowing them to devote fewer resources to their browser. Once Blink diverges father from WebKit it won't be practical for WebKit to merge in changes from there.

One has to wonder if Google will be recruiting other WebKit contributors (RIM, Intel, Nokia, etc) to move over to Blink. This would put Apple in a tough spot.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#78

Post by aniket_ray »

beshrkayali wrote: post #45
mtgx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google will be using 2 increasingly different rendering engines for Chrome in the future? Well that sucks. Apple really needs to allow other rendering engines on iOS, or at least be forced into it. People complain about the "webkit mono-culture", but a huge platform like iOS actually mandating you use webkit, and their single version of webkit, is a lot worse.

I agree, that would suck. Specially if -for some reason- we start seeing differences in terms of rendering speed/js engine/or other techs between the android version and the iOS version.

The Android and iOS versions have always been different. Apple does not approve any browser apps that do not use the default UIWebView.

It was this reason that Adobe could never launch a flash enabled browser on iOS.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#79

Post by cromwellian »

Joeri wrote: post #31

Google seems on a "replace open with less open" streak, with google reader and caldav shuttering, and now this. The caldav situation especially i cannot conceive as anything but a business decision given that they're keeping it around for those people they like.

Godwin's Rule Corollary violation: o Mentioning Google Reader in a discussion unrelated to RSS or Blogging causes automatic loss of debate/argument/credibility.
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