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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

#121

Post by candybar »

macrael wrote: post #112

So, I'm pretty sure this is a correct history: 1. Google builds a new process architecture into Chrome as a product differentiator. (It was a major part of Chrome's initial marketing) 2. WebKit 2 is built (mostly by Apple?) to bake the same type of architecture straight into the core framework -- anyone using WebKit can use it and get the same security/stability benefits.[1] 3. Google says that the pain in maintainin…

Isn't WebKit2 as much a fork of WebKit as Blink is? And it's not production ready?

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#122

Post by math0ne »

I don't get why people think this is a good thing. The web was just starting to become standardized around webkit.

This is a pure business decision, google want to splinter the web making their version of it the best bringing all the advertising under it's roof.

Pure and simple greed.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#123

Post by makomk »

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…

I think Apple has already made a similar decision. A while ago, they decided that they'd allow commits which broke the build on non-Apple platforms and that it would be up to platform maintainers to try and keep up.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#124

Post by tolmasky »

macrael wrote: post #112

So, I'm pretty sure this is a correct history: 1. Google builds a new process architecture into Chrome as a product differentiator. (It was a major part of Chrome's initial marketing) 2. WebKit 2 is built (mostly by Apple?) to bake the same type of architecture straight into the core framework -- anyone using WebKit can use it and get the same security/stability benefits.[1] 3. Google says that the pain in maintainin…

Maybe because anyone who has used Safari knows that WebKit2's multiprocess architecture is worse in practice. As a full-time Safari user I can tell you that things have gotten markedly worse since it went multiprocess. Pages go white momentarily (not crash) all the time, and on top of that they also crash all the time. Additionally, I believe that unlike Chrome, Safari has ONE separate process for all the tabs, and the render process (whereas Chrome tries one-process per tab -- way better in my opinion).

Just out of curiosity, why do you think WebKit2 is the "standard"? Just because they named it "WebKit2"? Had Google named their multi-process version "WebKitB" would it be equally standard? It certainly came FIRST (I think it took WebKit2 years before it had an answer).

I think this is a success of open source. Was the creation of WebKit a failure of Mozilla open source? Of course not. Sometimes you need to just actually test two ideas instead of discussing them.

EDIT: Upon further inspection, I think current Safari isn't even using WebKit2. The wiki still says it should be considered a "technology demo", and exists largely in parallel to WebKit. So whatever multi-process thing its doing now I guess is separate? It's not clear to me.

EDIT 2: I guess it is using WebKit2, so my criticisms stand.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#126

Post by mikewest »

macrael wrote: post #112

So, I'm pretty sure this is a correct history: 1. Google builds a new process architecture into Chrome as a product differentiator. (It was a major part of Chrome's initial marketing) 2. WebKit 2 is built (mostly by Apple?) to bake the same type of architecture straight into the core framework -- anyone using WebKit can use it and get the same security/stability benefits.[1] 3. Google says that the pain in maintainin…

It's a complex question. To be stunningly reductive: the architectures are simply quite different. We hook into the network stack in different places, we have different sandbox models and constraints (Win XP for instance), etc.

Also note that the timing is fairly important: Chromium was quite far along with our implementation when WebKit2 was announced, and rather than iterating on the solution we'd proposed and run with, Apple created its own framework. That had advantages and disadvantages.

More generally, I'd point to the Content layer as a better integration point: Opera, for instance, is building on top of our multi-process architecture successfully. Chromium Embedded Framework (https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/) is another example of how other projects can leverage the work we've done.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#127

Post by beshrkayali »

vladikoff wrote: post #72
beshrkayali wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, then it's already sucky :) I never tried/used the android version.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#128

Post by mikewest »

macrael wrote: post #112

So, I'm pretty sure this is a correct history: 1. Google builds a new process architecture into Chrome as a product differentiator. (It was a major part of Chrome's initial marketing) 2. WebKit 2 is built (mostly by Apple?) to bake the same type of architecture straight into the core framework -- anyone using WebKit can use it and get the same security/stability benefits.[1] 3. Google says that the pain in maintainin…

Also: these sorts of deep technical questions would be great for tomorrow's hangout: engineering leads Darin Fisher and Eric Seidel, product manager Alex Komoroske, and developer advocate Paul Irish will be more than happy to answer whatever you can throw at them. Add questions to the Moderator at: http://google.com/moderator/#15/e=20ac1d&t=20ac1d.40&#38....

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#130

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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