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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

#71

Post by kenjackson »

The web is not open and becoming increasingly less so.

People love to talk about how the web is about open standards and such, but it really is rather quite closed.

It's driven less by standards and more by de-facto implementations. Soon we can get rid of the standards committee and just talk to the implementers of webkit to define the "standard".

And I think even worse has been the wholesale discounting of plugins. I still strongly believe that being tied to JavaScript as really the only client side language is a mistake. It's not a great IL and limiting the language for such a pervasive platform is scary. I powerful plugin model would be, IMO, one of the best things to a truly powerful web.

I wish the web was more open. I wish that browsers were a truly extensible runtime that specified lower level abstractions, that allowed more innovation at the top of the stack.

It feels like we're walking into the dark age of the internet.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#72

Post by pcwalton »

jeresig wrote: post #69
pcwalton wrote: post #63

Increasingly, jQuery is not just an implementation, but is rather an API. That's why we're seeing the rise of alternatives like zepto.js that match the jQuery API de-facto standard but are implemented better (smaller, dropping IE6 compatibility). Replace "jQuery API" with "Web API" and this actually argues against John's point. Multiple implementations are better for everyone.

I'm not sure Zepto could be defined as "better" considering that it only implements a small subset of the jQuery API. In the browser world you can't get away with implementing a small subset of a specification, it'll be consider broken and people won't use it. I'm not arguing against multiple implementations. If Mozilla were to switch to WebKit, rewrite its DOM implementation to be 20x faster, and then release that -…

"If Mozilla were to switch to WebKit, rewrite its DOM implementation to be 20x faster, and then release that -- that would be absolutely stupendous!"

Rewriting WebKit's DOM implementation to be 20x faster wouldn't be possible without rewriting WebKit. The DOM implementation is one of the most central parts of any rendering engine. We're working on doing that (Servo), but not by building on top of WebKit for precisely this reason.

"Much in the same way that the Chrome team created a new JavaScript engine that was much faster than Safari's JS engine."

They did that by replacing JavaScriptCore wholesale, rather than building on top of it. This was only possible because JavaScript is a standard, not defined by JavaScriptCore's implementation. If JSC had had a monopoly and the Web started relying on JSC's quirks, then V8 might never have happened.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#73

Post by etherealG »

kenjackson wrote: post #71

The web is not open and becoming increasingly less so. People love to talk about how the web is about open standards and such, but it really is rather quite closed. It's driven less by standards and more by de-facto implementations. Soon we can get rid of the standards committee and just talk to the implementers of webkit to define the "standard". And I think even worse has been the wholesale discounting of plugins.…

if the code for the de facto implementation is open source, does it matter? i see the code and the standard as the same thing in different languages personally.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#74

Post by tombooth »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #59
petercooper wrote: post #53

I don't disagree but I also see it more as WebKit as the "Linux kernel" of browser engines. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit but are very different in what they offer.. so they're like the Ubuntu and RedHat. Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so. So neither should adopting WebKit as a sort of common kernel in browsers, IMHO. But that's all it is.. MHO ;-)

But Linux isn't even close to being the only kernel being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

So Firefox would be Mach, Trident Windows and the assorted other smaller browser engines other 'kernels'?

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#75

Post by Turing_Machine »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #28
jeresig wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On desktop the only browsers that use Webkit are Chrome (about 1/3 of the market), Safari (about 1/10) and now Opera (currently unreleased). So roughly two thirds of the market are on non-webkit engines which I think contradicts your argument as there's still competition there. However, on mobile (a market which Chrome has only just entered) you could say that webkit is dominant and that we can already see problems t…

According to Statcounter.com's current numbers, Chrome is 36.9%, Safari is 8.57%, and Opera is 1.2% = 46.67%, leaving 53.3% for everything else. That's not "roughly two thirds".

Also, Safari and Chrome are both trending upwards, everything else is trending downwards.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200807-201302

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#76

Post by maratd »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #59
petercooper wrote: post #53

I don't disagree but I also see it more as WebKit as the "Linux kernel" of browser engines. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit but are very different in what they offer.. so they're like the Ubuntu and RedHat. Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so. So neither should adopting WebKit as a sort of common kernel in browsers, IMHO. But that's all it is.. MHO ;-)

But Linux isn't even close to being the only kernel being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

But WebKit isn't even close to being the only engine being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

Hence, the comparison. Firefox and IE both comprise a major chunk of the market.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#77

Post by etherealG »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #28
jeresig wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On desktop the only browsers that use Webkit are Chrome (about 1/3 of the market), Safari (about 1/10) and now Opera (currently unreleased). So roughly two thirds of the market are on non-webkit engines which I think contradicts your argument as there's still competition there. However, on mobile (a market which Chrome has only just entered) you could say that webkit is dominant and that we can already see problems t…

i think you're forgetting opera's massive use in the far east. aren't they overall more used than ios on mobile if you count global stats?

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#78

Post by tolmasky »

etherealG wrote: post #73
kenjackson wrote: post #71

The web is not open and becoming increasingly less so. People love to talk about how the web is about open standards and such, but it really is rather quite closed. It's driven less by standards and more by de-facto implementations. Soon we can get rid of the standards committee and just talk to the implementers of webkit to define the "standard". And I think even worse has been the wholesale discounting of plugins.…

if the code for the de facto implementation is open source, does it matter? i see the code and the standard as the same thing in different languages personally.

They are different things because its unrealistic to fork WebKit and get any significant market share. So even though you might make a worthwhile change to the engine, realistically you need that change to be accepted by WebKit proper for it to matter.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#79

Post by pcwalton »

petercooper wrote: post #53

I don't disagree but I also see it more as WebKit as the "Linux kernel" of browser engines. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit but are very different in what they offer.. so they're like the Ubuntu and RedHat. Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so. So neither should adopting WebKit as a sort of common kernel in browsers, IMHO. But that's all it is.. MHO ;-)

"Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so."

Note that Solaris innovated with ZFS, which helped spur Linux to implement btrfs. Competition matters, even in OS kernels.

Re: WebKit is the jQuery of Browser Engines

#80

Post by snprbob86 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #59
petercooper wrote: post #53

I don't disagree but I also see it more as WebKit as the "Linux kernel" of browser engines. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit but are very different in what they offer.. so they're like the Ubuntu and RedHat. Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so. So neither should adopting WebKit as a sort of common kernel in browsers, IMHO. But that's all it is.. MHO ;-)

But Linux isn't even close to being the only kernel being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

What's your point? There's also Trident (IE) and Gecko (FF), just like there's NT and BSD.
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