3 ms·

What is sort of interesting is this thread (sort of) suggests they might have been looking at the Mozilla renderer at the same time as the Webkit one. I wonder

by neffo 4y ago

What is sort of interesting is this thread (sort of) suggests they might have been looking at the Mozilla renderer at the same time as the Webkit one. I wonder if the licensing (MPL?) would have allowed that fork to happen. That everyone ended up going with Webkit is a bit sad imo.

DonHopkins 4y ago
Mozilla was in no shape to run on mobile or embedded devices (and still isn't afaik), while WebKit ran quite nicely on mobile and embedded devices, thank you. And as we all know, Android is as important to Google as iOS is to Apple. So there was really no chance of either of them (or any other of the many companies interested in mobile and embedded devices, like TomTom for example) ever building on top of Mozilla/xulrunner.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Mozilla was in no shape to run on mobile or embedded devices (and still isn't afaik) Probably true at the time (anno 2007), but since ~2014, FirefoxOS which is an entire mobile OS based on Gecko (called boot2gecko) I think proves that at least the browser engine (not UI) could be used for more than just simple webpages, and on mobile devices. The OS itself was relatively fast, but the public perception of the performance of the OS was very low, as most (if not all devices) running FirefoxOS was very low powered compared to the contemporary flagship models for Android and iPhone.
- fifilura 4y ago
  The irony here is that the person was in many parts responsible for creating XPCOM at Mozilla which was a major reason for the bloat, jumped ship to Apple/Safari at the early stages. I remember a rigorous article where he dissected Mozilla vs Webkit and explained by why the latter was superior (= less abstractions and no XPCOM). I wouldn't be surprised if that article was the basis for the decision to not go with Mozilla at Apple. Nothing to be held against him for sure, if you have been in this business for this long you are sure to have created stuff that you realize was not optimal. Particularly over-abstractions. Also I would not be surprised if it is that person they are talking about in the mail conversation.

by neffo 4y ago

DonHopkins 4y ago

Mozilla was in no shape to run on mobile or embedded devices (and still isn't afaik), while WebKit ran quite nicely on mobile and embedded devices, thank you. And as we all know, Android is as important to Google as iOS is to Apple. So there was really no chance of either of them (or any other of the many companies interested in mobile and embedded devices, like TomTom for example) ever building on top of Mozilla/xulrunner.

capableweb 4y ago
> Mozilla was in no shape to run on mobile or embedded devices (and still isn't afaik) Probably true at the time (anno 2007), but since ~2014, FirefoxOS which is an entire mobile OS based on Gecko (called boot2gecko) I think proves that at least the browser engine (not UI) could be used for more than just simple webpages, and on mobile devices. The OS itself was relatively fast, but the public perception of the performance of the OS was very low, as most (if not all devices) running FirefoxOS was very low powered compared to the contemporary flagship models for Android and iPhone.
fifilura 4y ago
The irony here is that the person was in many parts responsible for creating XPCOM at Mozilla which was a major reason for the bloat, jumped ship to Apple/Safari at the early stages. I remember a rigorous article where he dissected Mozilla vs Webkit and explained by why the latter was superior (= less abstractions and no XPCOM). I wouldn't be surprised if that article was the basis for the decision to not go with Mozilla at Apple. Nothing to be held against him for sure, if you have been in this business for this long you are sure to have created stuff that you realize was not optimal. Particularly over-abstractions. Also I would not be surprised if it is that person they are talking about in the mail conversation.