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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

#171

Post by malandrew »

dragonwriter wrote: post #140
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…

> Google says that the pain in maintaining their separate, non standard, process architecture is too much of a burden to continue to contribute into WebKit proper, so they must fork. Actually, they didn't say that the pain of maintaining their own work was too much of a burden, they said the pain of maintaining their model within the constraints and obligations WebKit had was too much of a burden (and, imposed too mu…

Just look up the history of browsers and you'll see that forking is rampant. Forking isn't failure. It's evolution. Once a project reaches a certain size, there exist enough developers in the community to be able to split into two or more self-sustaining communities that can take the project in two or more directions that are valid and serve different needs. It's called specialization.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#173

Post by dubcanada »

jfoster wrote: post #119
account_taken wrote: post #24

Competition is good. Nobody wants to be left behind by Google, so time for Apple and MS to step it up again.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. Apple no longer get a free ride. On the other hand, now that Firefox is using WebKit perhaps Mozilla just replaces Google there.

You do know that most of the WebKit code as it is is Apple's right? If anything it was Google who got a free ride.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#174

Post by dubcanada »

mtgx wrote: post #33
gsnedders wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just means that instead of Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS having different versions of WebKit, Chrome for Android will use Blink and Chrome for iOS will use the system WebKit, as it does now.

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.

They allowed Opera on the market. They allow other engines. They just don't allow private source code. Which just so happens to be part of Chromium.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#175

Post by mikewest »

checker659 wrote: post #170

Can anyone from the chromium team answer few questions? 1. How does this affect the build system? 2. Will Blink always remain a fork of Webcore, or do you plan on replacing all the bits and pieces from Webcore with your own code? 3. Are we still stuck with the LGPL license? 4. Does this change anything in the spectacularly lacking source documentation / porting guidelines front. 5. You mentioned stripping out a lot.…

1. Chromium will continue to build via gyp.

2. I'm not sure what you mean.

3. We can't, and don't want to, change the license of code that's already been released. That said, most (all?) of WebCore isn't LGPL. See my favourite file, http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/page/Con... for example.

4. WebKit and Chromium have historically had differing opinions regarding what makes a "good" comment. I think you can expect Blink's code to tend more and more towards Chromium-style as time goes on, but it's not going to happen overnight.

5. ~5 million lines of code that we don't currently compile or run in Chromium. That's a bit, but it won't have much effect on the binary size.

6. Short term, not much will change. Longer term, a few things will probably happen: for instance, the widget tree will likely be removed, and we'll likely be able to step back and reevaluate some changes in light of that.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#176

Post by mikewest »

xxgreg wrote: post #164

These bits from the docs are really interesting. Can anyone here explain them in more detail? (I've also posted them as questions in moderator) "we’d like to explore even larger ideas like moving the entire Document Object Model (DOM) into JavaScript. This has the potential to make JavaScript DOM access dramatically faster" "Removing obscure parts of the DOM and make backwards incompatible changes to obscure parts of…

My expectation is that we'll be posting more design docs to chromium.org more frequently. The best way to stay on top of that will be to join the blink-dev group (https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!...) which will be ramping up shortly.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#177

Post by supervillain »

Well I just killall chrome processes anyway for my desktop to be usable, these multiple and dozens of chrome processes is an absolute nuisance, and it crashes my machine, my desktop, chrome is not even reliable coz it crashes on me everytime. if you want to get pissed bigtime, use chrome.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#178

Post by guywithabike »

oscargrouch wrote: post #103

Chromium have a very agressive innovative agenda, compared to other players.. im sure they will benefit from this move.. They were probably carrying webkit in their own shoulders anyway, cause nobody does so much experiments as chromium team does.. If they have the energy to do it.. thats good news for us :)

> compared to other players

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#179

Post by macrael »

dragonwriter wrote: post #159
macrael wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says WebKit2 has been part of Safari since Safari 5.1 which I believe was released with Lion, or so. So it absolutely is in production. The major difference here being that WebKit2 is part of the webkit project, so as the rendering engine (which sits atop both webkit1 and webkit2) is improved by all the various parties involved in WebKit's development, it gets better for everyone. Google's fork now means th…

> The major difference here being that WebKit2 is part of the webkit project, so as the rendering engine (which sits atop both webkit1 and webkit2) is improved by all the various parties involved in WebKit's development, it gets better for everyone. Google's fork now means that changes to the rendering engine they make to Blink will no longer have any effect on the WebKit project, which does seem to be a major differ…

Well that's ultimately kind of sad, right? It's certainly not the argument that was made in this blog post, but it certainly is a believable one. WebKit is a giant open source project that is relied upon by many many different companies and Google contributed a lot to that. Now they are gone and all those companies are left continuing to build WebKit with a goal of interoperability between the myriad different clients while Google takes their ball and goes home and only works on their own platforms.

Re: Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project

#180

Post by tambourine_man »

Very sad news. This seems more of a political/economical move than a technical one.

Two of the biggest players (and now arch rivals) sharing what's arguably the most strategic piece of code there is, couldn't last very long.

It's a shame though. It was probably the biggest open source success story.

An open source monoculture is not the same as a proprietary monopoly.

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