Keeping Safari a secret • Hacker News Board

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#81

Post by Someone » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 7:24 PM UTC

duopixel wrote: post #40

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…

I would not call Cyberdog a failure. Yes, it wasn't fast and it didn't have a great rendering engine, but frankly, neither did the competition, and I found its look and feel so good that I kept using it for a long time (with IE as a backup for pages it did not handle, IIRC)

OpenDoc, on which it was built, failed, but even that, I would not call a complete failure. It may have just been bad timing (of the Newton vs iPhone kind). If you are looking for a large hobby project: I would love to see something OpenDoc-like today running in a browser. Require viewers to be freely downloadable from e.g. GitHub, but allow developers to sell their editors, and see where it gets.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#82

Post by Yaggo » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 8:10 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #72

Yaggo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I used KHTML (later known as Konqueror) as my primary browser (as a webdev!) since early days of KDE until I switched to Mac in 2006. Konqueror always felt right on KDE, just like Safari feels right on OS X (native feel, integration, etc). A little feature I still miss was that you could navigate up in URL hierarchy by alt+up, just like in file-browsing mode (not sure if it's still supported by today's Konquer…

Try command-clicking the Safari title bar sometime (when you're at a page with a URL that goes several levels deep) if you haven't before.

That's nice one! )Although not nearby as intuitive as +up.)

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#83

Post by glhaynes » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 8:16 PM UTC

donmelton wrote: post #37

georgemcbay wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Will be fascinated to read that. I remember during the keynote when Safari was announced thinking it was bizarre (not to mention risky) that Gecko wasn't used, but, I knew you all must've had your reasons. As a regular user of Safari and/or WebKit on at least five different platforms, I'm rather happy with how it turned out.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#84

Post by glhaynes » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

Yaggo wrote: post #82

glhaynes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try command-clicking the Safari title bar sometime (when you're at a page with a URL that goes several levels deep) if you haven't before.

That's nice one! )Although not nearby as intuitive as +up.)

Not sure I agree — its standard for OS X documents to show their hierarchy when their title bar is command-clicked; cmd-up arrow is much less broadly used.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#85

Post by neumann_alfred » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

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.

Looking for the cliff notes version all the time makes life boring.

Not for me, I prefer doing stuff (like typing this inane comment right here) to hearing about trivial things others did. In this case, even the cliff's notes are kinda "meh".

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#86

Post by jdechko » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 10:33 PM UTC

daxelrod wrote: post #69

jdechko wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been better at the time to use gecko, but apparently building a new rendering engine had enough advantages that Apple decided it was worth it. In hindsight, WebKit was the right call. It's powerful enough to run advanced desktop browsers, yet lightweight enough to power (almost) the entire mobile web.

I thought that WebKit was based upon KHTML. Was it different enough upon initial release that you would consider it "building a new rendering engine"?

I honestly have no idea. I'm not a developer. :)

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#87

Post by sbuk » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 10:46 PM UTC

neumann_alfred wrote: post #85

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.

Looking for the cliff notes version all the time makes life boring. Not for me, I prefer doing stuff (like typing this inane comment right here) to hearing about trivial things others did. In this case, even the cliff's notes are kinda "meh".

WebKit and Safari are hardly "trivial", are they.

*Edited for the benefit of Alfred.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#88

Post by neumann_alfred » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 10:51 PM UTC

sbuk wrote: post #87

neumann_alfred wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking for the cliff notes version all the time makes life boring. Not for me, I prefer doing stuff (like typing this inane comment right here) to hearing about trivial things others did. In this case, even the cliff's notes are kinda "meh".

WebKit and Safari are hardly "trivial", are they. *Edited for the benefit of Alfred.

WekKit also isn't Safari, is it. I was referring to the reasons to keep bespoke Safari "secret" and the ways to do so... as in, to the actual fucking article, not "Apple success porn" in general, or whatever "sensibilities" I might have offended here.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#89

Post by sbuk » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

neumann_alfred wrote: post #88

sbuk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit and Safari are hardly "trivial", are they. *Edited for the benefit of Alfred.

WekKit also isn't Safari, is it. I was referring to the reasons to keep bespoke Safari "secret" and the ways to do so... as in, to the actual fucking article, not "Apple success porn" in general, or whatever "sensibilities" I might have offended here.

Wow.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#90

Post by glasshead969 » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 11:16 PM UTC

neumann_alfred wrote: post #88

sbuk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit and Safari are hardly "trivial", are they. *Edited for the benefit of Alfred.

WekKit also isn't Safari, is it. I was referring to the reasons to keep bespoke Safari "secret" and the ways to do so... as in, to the actual fucking article, not "Apple success porn" in general, or whatever "sensibilities" I might have offended here.

Safari is a subset of WebKit.