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WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

ejohn.org

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Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#11

Post by gcp »

spicyj wrote: post #10
StavrosK wrote: post #7

I like the arguments: "Don't worry about happening, because it's already happened!"

"…because it's already happened and the world hasn't exploded ." It's hard to know now what the very–long-term effects will be but John's point that the web has benefited from Chrome's creation is hard to argue with. As for whether it's benefited more or less than if Chrome had used a different rendering engine, we'll never know…

I believe KTHML->WebKit has pretty much illustrated that having standards that allow new implementations to be developed is a good, essential thing.

We'd have been in an interesting, and perhaps worse state if Safari and Chrome were both Gecko based instead of competing therewith.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#12

Post by StavrosK »

jeresig wrote: post #9
StavrosK wrote: post #7

I like the arguments: "Don't worry about happening, because it's already happened!"

Pretty much! People worry that the transition to a WebKit monoculture would result in some terrible things. On the contrary Chrome has shown that a shared rendering engine does not result in stagnation. Stagnation is a separate concern from a shared core.

I agree with that, it's just that the way the argument was phrased was funny :)

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#13

Post by oinksoft » 

  In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has
  standardized upon jQuery at this point.
This guy really lives on his own planet. Maybe most websites that only need to add a small piece of JS functionality are using jQuery, but I seriously doubt that "virtually everyone" writing large JS projects is using jQuery. Google Closure Tools, Sencha/ExtJS, and MooTools remain quite popular, and a host of developers are skipping compatibility layers altogether and only supporting IE9+ and other recent browser versions, particularly those targeting mobile devices.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#14

Post by mmatants »

cs702 wrote: post #4

WebKit and jQuery -- and Bootstrap -- are becoming the new 'Win32 API.'

The cool part about jQuery is that I don't have to use it. Same with Bootstrap. So it's not a needless tyranny.

With browser engines things get a little more political - mono-culture is not a good thing. But at least Firefox holds enough of a market share, and of course IE is now a much better player in this space - so WebKit can't get away with too much silliness.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#15

Post by jeresig »

gcp wrote: post #8
fideloper wrote: post #3

Not to derail the topic, but did anyone else read that headline as a negative, only to find that it wasn't (necessarily)?

Maybe it depends on what your view of jQuery is: In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has standardized upon jQuery at this point. In other words, as far as he cares things other than jQuery don't have a right of existence. Although it's very popular it's probably even more arguable if there aren't better JavaScript frameworks than jQuery, compared to whether there are better rendering engines than W…

Are there better JavaScript libraries than jQuery at certain things? Absolutely -- look to Backbone, Angular, Meteor, etc. etc. Are they better than jQuery at doing DOM manipulation? I think that's an easy argument simply by looking at the numbers: http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery

jQuery or WebKit being dominant platforms doesn't requite that innovation stop, it gives innovation the ability to explode: When you don't have to work about nit-picky cross-platform capabilities or standardization then you get to focus on performance and building sweet frameworks like Backbone and Angular.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#16

Post by jeresig »

gcp wrote: post #11
spicyj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"…because it's already happened and the world hasn't exploded ." It's hard to know now what the very–long-term effects will be but John's point that the web has benefited from Chrome's creation is hard to argue with. As for whether it's benefited more or less than if Chrome had used a different rendering engine, we'll never know…

I believe KTHML->WebKit has pretty much illustrated that having standards that allow new implementations to be developed is a good, essential thing. We'd have been in an interesting, and perhaps worse state if Safari and Chrome were both Gecko based instead of competing therewith.

That's an interesting assumption to make: Just because Safari or Chrome hypothetically used Gecko doesn't mean that competition would've halted. Why couldn't it have been any different from when Chrome used WebKit as its basis and absolutely trounced Safari?

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#17

Post by kbutler »

oinksoft wrote: post #13

In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has standardized upon jQuery at this point. This guy really lives on his own planet. Maybe most websites that only need to add a small piece of JS functionality are using jQuery, but I seriously doubt that "virtually everyone" writing large JS projects is using jQuery. Google Closure Tools, Sencha/ExtJS, and MooTools remain quite popular, and a host of developers…

Perhaps he is overstating it a little, given that he's the creator of jQuery.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#18

Post by untog »

oinksoft wrote: post #13

In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has standardized upon jQuery at this point. This guy really lives on his own planet. Maybe most websites that only need to add a small piece of JS functionality are using jQuery, but I seriously doubt that "virtually everyone" writing large JS projects is using jQuery. Google Closure Tools, Sencha/ExtJS, and MooTools remain quite popular, and a host of developers…

No, I think the vast majority of websites really do use jQuery. Certainly, Wordpress uses it, so pretty much every Wordpress blog out there does. I just tried the Spotify homepage- yep- Huffington Post- yep... I think that everyone really has standardised on jQuery unless they're doing something specialised.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#19

Post by oinksoft »

jeresig wrote: post #15
gcp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it depends on what your view of jQuery is: In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has standardized upon jQuery at this point. In other words, as far as he cares things other than jQuery don't have a right of existence. Although it's very popular it's probably even more arguable if there aren't better JavaScript frameworks than jQuery, compared to whether there are better rendering engines than W…

Are there better JavaScript libraries than jQuery at certain things? Absolutely -- look to Backbone, Angular, Meteor, etc. etc. Are they better than jQuery at doing DOM manipulation? I think that's an easy argument simply by looking at the numbers: http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery jQuery or WebKit being dominant platforms doesn't requite that innovation stop, it gives innovation the ability to explode: W…

  I think that's an easy argument simply by looking at the
  numbers
Popular does not imply "better."

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#20

Post by phpnode »

oinksoft wrote: post #13

In the case of JavaScript libraries virtually everyone has standardized upon jQuery at this point. This guy really lives on his own planet. Maybe most websites that only need to add a small piece of JS functionality are using jQuery, but I seriously doubt that "virtually everyone" writing large JS projects is using jQuery. Google Closure Tools, Sencha/ExtJS, and MooTools remain quite popular, and a host of developers…

I don't think he's living on his own planet, he's actually right - jQuery runs the client side web. Not for everyone but easily 90% of sites (that actually have javascript functionality at all) will use jQuery
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