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Keeping Safari a secret

donmelton.com

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Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#31

Post by donmelton »

lelandbatey wrote: post #25
donmelton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, WebKit was based on KHTML and KJS. Even in the beginning, we made a few fundamental changes. Some of those were folded back in, but eventually those differences grew much, much larger. There actually were some sites (in Europe, as I recall) that behaved a bit better when "KHTML" was in the user agent string. I also included it as a nod to the original project. I wanted to show respect for the fine work of Lars K…

That's quite the story, and it's great that you'd keep a reference to a products origins (even if you didn't have to). On a side note, is it still true that Apple has an entire /8 block of IP addresses? I know that a variety of companies where given them, but I was under the impression that large portions of most had been bought back/given back for use elsewhere?

I don't know whether the Apple IP addresses were reallocated. I do know that Stanford returned most of its Class A allocation.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#33

Post by donmelton »

jmspring wrote: post #27
zalew wrote: post #7

TLDR: for whatever reasons it was a very top-secret project, so they spoofed the user agent, the end.

Sometimes the backstory makes for a fun read. Looking for the cliff notes version all the time makes life boring.

Thank you. That was my whole reason for writing it. :)

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#34

Post by [deleted] »

oofabz wrote: post #21
georgemcbay wrote: post #15

"Which explains why the Safari user agent string has so much extra information in it, e.g. KHTML, like Gecko — the names of other browser engines." Wasn't Safari/WebKit largely based on KHTML in the beginning? This doesn't say it wasn't, but seems to imply that there was a separation of the two that was more complete than it really was. I realize the OP is in a better position than I to know exactly what the reasonin…

At the time, Microsoft's hegemony over the web browser market was at its peak. Firefox was the only real competitor. If web pages checked the user agent, they probably only accounted for these two browsers. Anything else fell back to legacy behavior, disabling DHTML (later called Web 2.0). This made Gmail suck. KHTML had almost no market share - it only ran on KDE, and most KDE users used Firefox. Nothing recognized…

[deleted]

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#35

Post by dsl »

lelandbatey wrote: post #25
donmelton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, WebKit was based on KHTML and KJS. Even in the beginning, we made a few fundamental changes. Some of those were folded back in, but eventually those differences grew much, much larger. There actually were some sites (in Europe, as I recall) that behaved a bit better when "KHTML" was in the user agent string. I also included it as a nod to the original project. I wanted to show respect for the fine work of Lars K…

That's quite the story, and it's great that you'd keep a reference to a products origins (even if you didn't have to). On a side note, is it still true that Apple has an entire /8 block of IP addresses? I know that a variety of companies where given them, but I was under the impression that large portions of most had been bought back/given back for use elsewhere?

Apple still has it. You can see the official allocations here: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-addr...

The only people to return /8's have been Stanford, the DoD, and a few defense contractors (BBN and Boeing).

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#37

Post by donmelton »

georgemcbay wrote: post #26
guptaneil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full quote is: "That allowed me to tweak the string for maximum compatibility with the websites of that time. Which explains why the Safari user agent string has so much extra information in it, e.g. KHTML, like Gecko — the names of other browser engines." I interpret that as KHTML and Gecko are names of other browser engines that are listed in Safari's user agent string for compatibility purposes.

Fair enough, I'm not trying to suggest this is some grand conspiracy, it just struck me as a funny phrasing given the shared history of the two layout engines.

I'll be clarifying that shared history in a later post. Specifically, what made me select KHTML/KJS over Gecko and other engines.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#38

Post by bitcartel »

donmelton wrote: post #33
jmspring wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the backstory makes for a fun read. Looking for the cliff notes version all the time makes life boring.

Thank you. That was my whole reason for writing it. :)

What are your thoughts on the present and future for Safari? It appears Safari for Windows is all but dead, with no mention of it on Apple's website. Meanwhile Chrome's adoption has been stellar. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#39

Post by donmelton »

laurent123456 wrote: post #30
cpeterso wrote: post #19

If they were worried about server admins correlating Apple's IP addresses with a new User-Agent string, the team could have VPN'd to a non-Apple network to access the web.

I guess they were worried both about having recognizable IP addresses AND having the name of their new browser appear in logs all around the world. The user agent was something like "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; sv-se) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5", which people would have quickly correlated to Apple, not matter what IP it came from.

The string was originally just contained "WebKit." When it became "AppleWebKit" in mid-December (as I recall) then, yes, it was more likely to be discovered. But I felt that a 17.x.x.x address would be the clincher and the secret would be out.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#40

Post by duopixel »

I distinctly remember how the web dev world (myself included) groaned at the prospect of supporting another rendering engine. Gecko was clearly the best browser at the time, and the choice of KHTML seemed bizarre, to say the least.

Even the intention of Apple building it's own web browser seemed weird, Apple had failed at a previous homebrewed browser (Cyberdog), why not just build on top of what Mozilla had already done?

I remember Apple stating that Konqueror's code was much more leaner, faster and modern. I've always wondered if the birth of Safari was an early sign that Apple was interested in developing the pieces missing for an internet device. Safari seemed like a godsend foresight from Apple when they released the iPhone, but I can't help wonder if it was planned this way all along.

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