4 ms·

So many of these types of browsers use webkit; I'm curious why there aren't more that use gecko. Is it a technical issue or a social one?

Evidlo 6y ago
Qutebrowser uses webengine.
- curlypaul924 6y ago
  Am I misunderstanding what webkit is? QtWebEngine uses chromium, but I thought that necessarily implied a webkit derivative (blink).
  - cxr 6y ago
    > Am I misunderstanding what webkit is? Yes.
  - toyg 6y ago
    blink is basically a fork of a fork of webkit (which is itself a fork of KHTML). It's in the same family, but different.
    - abrowne 6y ago
      An ostrich and a woodpecker are similar in a lot of ways, both birds descending from a common ancestor. But I don't think you'd confuse them.
      - curlypaul924 6y ago
        My question still stands. If webkit is a bird and gecko is a reptile, then why are there (relatively) so few reptile browsers? Is it easier to embed engines from the webkit family, or are they popular because chrome and safari are popular?
        toyg 6y ago
        Largely the former. The efforts to make Gecko easily embeddable, started some 15 years ago, have long floundered.
- pbronez 6y ago
  The Qutebrowser dependency list says it can use either QtWebEngine (Chromium) or QtWebKit (WebKit): > QtWebEngine, or alternatively QtWebKit (5.212) - This is not recommended due to known security issues in QtWebKit, you most likely want to use qutebrowser with the default QtWebEngine backend (based on Chromium) instead. Quoting the QtWebKit releases page: [The latest QtWebKit] release is based on [an] old WebKit revision with known unpatched vulnerabilities. Please use it carefully and avoid visiting untrusted websites and using it for transmission of sensitive data. https://www.qutebrowser.org/ https://www.qutebrowser.org/ To use Geko (or hopefully Quantum) with Qutebrowser you would need a nice QT integration. Poking around a bit, it looks like Mozilla and Nokia did some work on this in 2008, but it doesn’t seem it ever got out of beta: http://browser.garage.maemo.org/news/10/ http://browser.garage.maemo.org/news/10/
  - The-Compiler 6y ago
    I had hoped for Servo to fill that gap at some point, but so far that hasn't happened yet: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 Another possibility is for Geckoview to be ported to Desktop platforms some day: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ - something the people behind Tridactyl would like to happen: https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64 https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64
simias 6y ago
I suspect mainly technical. Chromium is already embedded everywhere, Gecko a lot less so (I can't even come up with a single modern example, although I'm sure they have to exist). There's probably a lot fewer resources and support if you decide to go the Gecko route. I also vaguely remember reading somewhere that Gecko is a lot harder to work with for third parties due to unstable APIs and frequent breakage, but don't quote me on on this.
- cxr 6y ago
  Neither Chrome nor Chromium use WebKit.
  - chaorace 6y ago
    You're technically correct, because they use Blink, which is a descendant of WebKit. I'd say it's about as pendantic as insisting that Windows 7 is built on top of Vista as opposed to XP. The prior statement is certainly more direct and strictly accurate, but that doesn't mean the latter statement is automatically false.
    - cxr 6y ago
      I don't know how to respond to this except to say that anyone operating on either the assumption that Chromium uses WebKit or the belief that Blink being a WebKit fork means that it makes sense not to consider them sufficiently distinct is mistaken one way or another. People will act like the prospect of maintaining private forks of NPM modules is a major crisis, but then convince themselves—or let other people get away with convincing themselves—that 8+ years of diverging development involving two software giants' investments of billions of dollars of engineering resources poured into implementing their vision of what is one of the most complex and complicated undertakings that exists in software development is somehow no big deal. (And that's not what "pedantic" means. Both this parenthetical and your comment are examples of pedantry.)
      - chaorace 6y ago
        I actually agree with you. That probably prompts the question: "how on Earth could you possibly hold both of these stances simultaneously without being a big, fat phony?". Yeah... okay, admittedly it probably doesn't prompt that question because you have better things to be doing, but I have nothing better to do, so I'll explain myself anyway! The comparison to 7/Vista/XP was not accidental. As you may know, there is an 8 year time gap between the release of 7 and XP. Moreover, Vista was a huge transitional change. Under the hood, 7 and XP are different animals, even if they do share common ancestry and deliver the same baseline functions. Taking these things into consideration, it's not terribly pedantic to insist that Windows 7 is, in fact, built on top of Vista and not XP. It's still a hair pedantic, but only in the context of this fact being used to correct someone with a less strictly correct (although, I insist, still true) interpretation. That's the feeling I was trying (and failing) to convey with my comparison, which happens to actually be in agreement with your counterpoints.
The-Compiler 6y ago
Chromium/WebKit is available as a library in various ways; Gecko isn't really. I had hoped for Servo to fill that gap at some point, but so far that hasn't happened yet: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 Another possibility is for Geckoview to be ported to Desktop platforms some day: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ - something the people behind Tridactyl would like to happen: https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64 https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  Mozilla is actively hostile to anything that smells like "libfirefox". This is a big part of why they killed xulrunner. This is really sad. IMHO their adoption numbers would not still be plunging if people had a way to insulate themselves from the large, random, and often undesired changes in the UI that are forced upon users with each Firefox security update.
  - hda2 6y ago
    I'd pay for a book that sheds light on the questionable decisions Mozilla has made throughout the years and the rationale behind them. From where I'm standing, they seem to consistently make the poorest decisions.

Evidlo 6y ago

Qutebrowser uses webengine.

curlypaul924 6y ago
Am I misunderstanding what webkit is? QtWebEngine uses chromium, but I thought that necessarily implied a webkit derivative (blink).
- cxr 6y ago
  > Am I misunderstanding what webkit is? Yes.
- toyg 6y ago
  blink is basically a fork of a fork of webkit (which is itself a fork of KHTML). It's in the same family, but different.
  - abrowne 6y ago
    An ostrich and a woodpecker are similar in a lot of ways, both birds descending from a common ancestor. But I don't think you'd confuse them.
    - curlypaul924 6y ago
      My question still stands. If webkit is a bird and gecko is a reptile, then why are there (relatively) so few reptile browsers? Is it easier to embed engines from the webkit family, or are they popular because chrome and safari are popular?
      - toyg 6y ago
        Largely the former. The efforts to make Gecko easily embeddable, started some 15 years ago, have long floundered.
pbronez 6y ago
The Qutebrowser dependency list says it can use either QtWebEngine (Chromium) or QtWebKit (WebKit): > QtWebEngine, or alternatively QtWebKit (5.212) - This is not recommended due to known security issues in QtWebKit, you most likely want to use qutebrowser with the default QtWebEngine backend (based on Chromium) instead. Quoting the QtWebKit releases page: [The latest QtWebKit] release is based on [an] old WebKit revision with known unpatched vulnerabilities. Please use it carefully and avoid visiting untrusted websites and using it for transmission of sensitive data. https://www.qutebrowser.org/ https://www.qutebrowser.org/ To use Geko (or hopefully Quantum) with Qutebrowser you would need a nice QT integration. Poking around a bit, it looks like Mozilla and Nokia did some work on this in 2008, but it doesn’t seem it ever got out of beta: http://browser.garage.maemo.org/news/10/ http://browser.garage.maemo.org/news/10/
- The-Compiler 6y ago
  I had hoped for Servo to fill that gap at some point, but so far that hasn't happened yet: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 Another possibility is for Geckoview to be ported to Desktop platforms some day: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ - something the people behind Tridactyl would like to happen: https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64 https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64

simias 6y ago

I suspect mainly technical. Chromium is already embedded everywhere, Gecko a lot less so (I can't even come up with a single modern example, although I'm sure they have to exist). There's probably a lot fewer resources and support if you decide to go the Gecko route. I also vaguely remember reading somewhere that Gecko is a lot harder to work with for third parties due to unstable APIs and frequent breakage, but don't quote me on on this.

cxr 6y ago
Neither Chrome nor Chromium use WebKit.
- chaorace 6y ago
  You're technically correct, because they use Blink, which is a descendant of WebKit. I'd say it's about as pendantic as insisting that Windows 7 is built on top of Vista as opposed to XP. The prior statement is certainly more direct and strictly accurate, but that doesn't mean the latter statement is automatically false.
  - cxr 6y ago
    I don't know how to respond to this except to say that anyone operating on either the assumption that Chromium uses WebKit or the belief that Blink being a WebKit fork means that it makes sense not to consider them sufficiently distinct is mistaken one way or another. People will act like the prospect of maintaining private forks of NPM modules is a major crisis, but then convince themselves—or let other people get away with convincing themselves—that 8+ years of diverging development involving two software giants' investments of billions of dollars of engineering resources poured into implementing their vision of what is one of the most complex and complicated undertakings that exists in software development is somehow no big deal. (And that's not what "pedantic" means. Both this parenthetical and your comment are examples of pedantry.)
    - chaorace 6y ago
      I actually agree with you. That probably prompts the question: "how on Earth could you possibly hold both of these stances simultaneously without being a big, fat phony?". Yeah... okay, admittedly it probably doesn't prompt that question because you have better things to be doing, but I have nothing better to do, so I'll explain myself anyway! The comparison to 7/Vista/XP was not accidental. As you may know, there is an 8 year time gap between the release of 7 and XP. Moreover, Vista was a huge transitional change. Under the hood, 7 and XP are different animals, even if they do share common ancestry and deliver the same baseline functions. Taking these things into consideration, it's not terribly pedantic to insist that Windows 7 is, in fact, built on top of Vista and not XP. It's still a hair pedantic, but only in the context of this fact being used to correct someone with a less strictly correct (although, I insist, still true) interpretation. That's the feeling I was trying (and failing) to convey with my comparison, which happens to actually be in agreement with your counterpoints.

The-Compiler 6y ago

Chromium/WebKit is available as a library in various ways; Gecko isn't really. I had hoped for Servo to fill that gap at some point, but so far that hasn't happened yet: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/27579 Another possibility is for Geckoview to be ported to Desktop platforms some day: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ - something the people behind Tridactyl would like to happen: https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64 https://tridactyl.xyz/ideas/#port-geckoview-to-x86_64

KirillPanov 6y ago
Mozilla is actively hostile to anything that smells like "libfirefox". This is a big part of why they killed xulrunner. This is really sad. IMHO their adoption numbers would not still be plunging if people had a way to insulate themselves from the large, random, and often undesired changes in the UI that are forced upon users with each Firefox security update.
- hda2 6y ago
  I'd pay for a book that sheds light on the questionable decisions Mozilla has made throughout the years and the rationale behind them. From where I'm standing, they seem to consistently make the poorest decisions.