4 ms·

Web kit is a fail that has a tiny percentage of the browser use. Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv), and Chrome just screws up too

by wdewind 16y ago

Web kit is a fail that has a tiny percentage of the browser use. Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv), and Chrome just screws up too many small things (despite being an otherwise overwhelmingly better browser than the alternatives).

masklinn 16y ago
> Web kit is a fail How? > that has a tiny percentage of the browser use Yeah, on the desktop, now consider the fast-growing mobilespace. iOS? Webkit. Android? Webkit. WebOS? Webkit. Blackberry 6? Webkit. Bada? Webkit. And they're making deep inroads in libraries (QtWebkit, which means all of Nokia's future is likely linked to webkit as well) and embedded in software (Steam switched fully to webkit a while ago). Webkit definitely isn't "a fail". Not in the long run (it will keep growing in importance) but not right now either, it's given a good kick to the 'nads to the Mozilla team, it iterates and develops fast (and is a standard driver), it's where innovation now happens in the OSS browserspace (the other source of innovation being mostly Opera) and the sole reason we have mobile browsers worth using these days is webkit. Webkit is a resounding success considering the first public release was 7 years ago and pretty dreadful.
- wdewind 16y ago
  I guess you ignored the part where I said except mobile obv. My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. Instead they gave us yet another OS to support. Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit? And for the record, steam is a great example of what I'm talking about: completely mediocre rendering performance for really simple tasks (essentially a web browser). It's shocking how bad web content looks in steam, I'm kind of surprised you even brought it up. Yes - Webkit long term will be good, it can't not (even IE9 is looking alright at this point). Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive). So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional. I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.
  - naz 16y ago
    > My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. You're right, there was. It was called KHTML, and they did.
    - wdewind 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29 Not that it really matters for the sake of the argument, because my point was that gecko was widely used already whereas KHTML was not and so they should've used it instead, but gecko was also around before KHTML.
      - othermaciej 16y ago
        It's not likely we would have had the same success on mobile if we'd started with Gecko, since at least at the time it was a much larger code base.
      - pyre 16y ago
        When Apple announced that they were going to use KHTML in Safari (when they announced Safari) they stated that it was due to the library's small footprint. I assume that they didn't want to spend the time to reign in the Gecko engine to do what they wanted it to do (or hack/optimize it down to size). Just because something exists and seems to be 'good enough' doesn't necessarily mean that it would be a good fit. Unless you develop for WebKit, Safari, Firefox and/or Gecko, I'm not sure any of us are really qualified to make those kinds of statements. Also remember that you can't compare the current state of the two codebases. You have to compare the state of the codebases at the time that Apple created Safari/WebKit.
        wdewind 16y ago
        Agree to disagree, but I hope you don't complain about browser fragmentation.
      - 16y ago
eru 16y ago
And what conclusion should we draw from that?
bobbyi 16y ago
> Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv) And IE has too small a % to be relevant, except on Windows.

by wdewind 16y ago

masklinn 16y ago

> Web kit is a fail How? > that has a tiny percentage of the browser use Yeah, on the desktop, now consider the fast-growing mobilespace. iOS? Webkit. Android? Webkit. WebOS? Webkit. Blackberry 6? Webkit. Bada? Webkit. And they're making deep inroads in libraries (QtWebkit, which means all of Nokia's future is likely linked to webkit as well) and embedded in software (Steam switched fully to webkit a while ago). Webkit definitely isn't "a fail". Not in the long run (it will keep growing in importance) but not right now either, it's given a good kick to the 'nads to the Mozilla team, it iterates and develops fast (and is a standard driver), it's where innovation now happens in the OSS browserspace (the other source of innovation being mostly Opera) and the sole reason we have mobile browsers worth using these days is webkit. Webkit is a resounding success considering the first public release was 7 years ago and pretty dreadful.

wdewind 16y ago
I guess you ignored the part where I said except mobile obv. My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. Instead they gave us yet another OS to support. Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit? And for the record, steam is a great example of what I'm talking about: completely mediocre rendering performance for really simple tasks (essentially a web browser). It's shocking how bad web content looks in steam, I'm kind of surprised you even brought it up. Yes - Webkit long term will be good, it can't not (even IE9 is looking alright at this point). Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive). So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional. I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.
- naz 16y ago
  > My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. You're right, there was. It was called KHTML, and they did.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29 Not that it really matters for the sake of the argument, because my point was that gecko was widely used already whereas KHTML was not and so they should've used it instead, but gecko was also around before KHTML.
    - othermaciej 16y ago
      It's not likely we would have had the same success on mobile if we'd started with Gecko, since at least at the time it was a much larger code base.
    - pyre 16y ago
      When Apple announced that they were going to use KHTML in Safari (when they announced Safari) they stated that it was due to the library's small footprint. I assume that they didn't want to spend the time to reign in the Gecko engine to do what they wanted it to do (or hack/optimize it down to size). Just because something exists and seems to be 'good enough' doesn't necessarily mean that it would be a good fit. Unless you develop for WebKit, Safari, Firefox and/or Gecko, I'm not sure any of us are really qualified to make those kinds of statements. Also remember that you can't compare the current state of the two codebases. You have to compare the state of the codebases at the time that Apple created Safari/WebKit.
      - wdewind 16y ago
        Agree to disagree, but I hope you don't complain about browser fragmentation.
    - 16y ago

eru 16y ago

And what conclusion should we draw from that?

bobbyi 16y ago

> Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv) And IE has too small a % to be relevant, except on Windows.