[dopik]

Hi all,

I know that Safari is based on the Konqueror open source project. Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about Firefox and the fact it is gaining more and more market share. I am wondering if it would not have been better to use the rendering engine used for Firefox for Safari. According to this article http://news.com.com/Study+FireFox+st...76.html?tag=nl right now, Safari has less than 1% and Firefox and Mozilla combined have 6% of market share. In case Firefox would indeed gain 10% of market share by the end of 2005, more websites - especially financial institution ones - would make it compliance to Firefox on top of their compliance for IE for Windows. Talking about my own personal experience, there are some sites, not many, where I have to use IE in order to access them.

So, if Safari were based on Firefox, it would add more user to this specific rendering engine and it would help people not using the Windows system to access the web.

Am I totally wrong? Thanks for your enlightment...

do

[cpac]

Apple explained why they weren't going to use the Gecko engine (netscape/mozilla/firefox/camino) - because it's HUGE and bloated (cross-platform code takes up lots of space). The code base for KHTML was orders of magnitude smaller. On top of that, there were *already* plenty of gecko-based options available.

I personally wish they'd bought the Omniweb rendering engine (used in 4.2 and earlier) since that had all sorts of multi-threading goodness that KHTML lacks. (If Omnigroup was able to make it as good as it was with only a couple people working on it, imagine what Apple could have done with their (comparatively) vast resources!).

[JKT]

Originally posted by dopik:
Am I totally wrong? Thanks for your enlightment...

do

Yes.

It doesn't matter if Safari (Konqueror rendering engine) uses the Firefox (Gecko) rendering engine or not - both are designed on the basis of being standards compliant and theoretically they will (eventually) both display standards compliant websites in the same way. Assuming FireFox/Mozilla does achieve 10% user share and Safari achieved 2% that would add up to 12% using a standards compliant engine. Even if Safari did use Gecko, it would still only add up to 12%.

[TETENAL]

Apple chose KHTML over Gecko because it is much leaner, more elegant and easier to adapt to its uses.

Firefox gaining user share is a good thing, because it means we will see less sites with Internet Explorer specific code.

[siMac]

Originally posted by JKT:
Yes.

It doesn't matter if Safari (Konqueror rendering engine) uses the Firefox (Gecko) rendering engine or not - both are designed on the basis of being standards compliant and theoretically they will (eventually) both display standards compliant websites in the same way. Assuming FireFox/Mozilla does achieve 10% user share and Safari achieved 2% that would add up to 12% using a standards compliant engine. Even if Safari did use Gecko, it would still only add up to 12%.

Exactly.

The way to look at it is this: take all the standards browsers and bundle them together as a statistic against IE Win and it's flagrant disregard for said standards. It doesn't matter which particular engine is being used, just that standards browsers increase in user base.

Maybe that'll force lazy web developers to stop coding for IE only, and help decent web developers avoid having to use the shocking number of hacks needed to get a standards-based webpage to look right in IE.

Trouble is, Micro$oft don't tend to accept standards if they weren't set by them.

[Millennium]

Apple chose KHTML over Gecko because they saw it as less bloated, and were willing to accept the somewhat lesser functionality of KHTML to save space. Either way, the gap is closing; KHTML is almost as good as Gecko with HTML and CSS now.

The old OmniWeb engine was, frankly, junk for its time. It had good multithreading, but its standards support -the only thing that really matters- was even worse than Netscape 4, which it attempted to emulate. Omni was going to dump it for a next-generation engine they were developing, but then Safari came along and they decided to use WebCore instead. At least at first, they planned to use WebCore as a stepping stone while continuing to develop their next-generation engine; is that still the case?

[Millennium]

Interestingly enough, Gecko was recently ported over to KDE's system, such that it can act as a drop-in replacement for KHTML. KHTML, for its part, was ported over to GNOME's system as well, so that the reverse is possible. Given this, might someone attempt to port Gecko over to the WebCore system in the future? How cool would it be to be able to select your browser's rendering engine?

[cpac]

Originally posted by Millennium:
At least at first, they planned to use WebCore as a stepping stone while continuing to develop their next-generation engine; is that still the case?

good question.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The old OmniWeb engine was, frankly, junk for its time. It had good multithreading, but its standards support -the only thing that really matters- was even worse than Netscape 4, which it attempted to emulate. Omni was going to dump it for a next-generation engine they were developing, but then Safari came along and they decided to use WebCore instead. At least at first, they planned to use WebCore as a stepping stone while continuing to develop their next-generation engine; is that still the case?

I think that was cpac's point - if Apple had taken on the OmniWeb engine as it was or as OmniGroup were planning on rebuilding it, and developed it to be standard's compliant, it may have been a better rendering engine given its multi-threaded nature and its ability to take advantage of multiple processors.

I don't know if OmniGroup are still considering writing their own rendering engine or not (certainly not in the near future, that is for sure) - I guess it would depend on a number of factors, not least of which will be how WebCore develops over the next few years and the commercial viability of such an undertaking.

[wataru]

Originally posted by Millennium:
How cool would it be to be able to select your browser's rendering engine?

A little. Too bad 99.9999% of the population woudn't even understand what that means.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Safari + FireFox ? Camino.

[wataru]

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch:
Safari + FireFox ? Camino.

Camino = Safari + Firefox - essential features. Just stick with Firefox.

[cpac]

Originally posted by wataru:
Camino = Safari + Firefox - essential features. Just stick with Firefox.

these equations are always confusing.

On the Gecko-based front you've got:

Netscape (branded, super-bloated)
Mozilla (unbranded, still super-bloated)
FireFox (focused just on browsing, but maintains extra code that allows various extensions to work)
Camino (cocoa wrapper for the gecko engine; native toolbar & widgets, but no extensibility)

I keep Camino updated and around because the only time I really use any gecko browser is when Omniweb or Safari don't work, which is rare.

[wataru]

My equation means that Camino is like Safari plus Firefox, but missing essential features.

The only benefit to Camino over Firefox is the Aqua style and the integration with certain system services. Other than that, there's no reason to use it over Firefox.

I don't know about you, but I find extensions to be much more useful than Address Book and Keychain integration.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by wataru:
Camino = Safari + Firefox - essential features. Just stick with Firefox.

What is it with you and your Firefox fanaticism? Jeez.

Camino has a nicer interface than FireFox. I realize that you don't care about that, but some people do, and consequently some people prefer Camino.

Similarly, the extensions may be an essential feature to you, but that does not mean that everyone requires them.

[wataru]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
What is it with you and your Firefox fanaticism? Jeez.

Camino has a nicer interface than FireFox. I realize that you don't care about that, but some people do, and consequently some people prefer Camino.

Similarly, the extensions may be an essential feature to you, but that does not mean that everyone requires them.

How am I being a fanatic? All I'm doing is giving my opinion. If you don't like it, put me on your ignore list.

[dopik]

Thanks every one for your enlightment...

two more questions, is it possible to develop a bar a la Google or Yahoo! for Safari (I know A9 has just developped one for firefox and it works on the mac too)? If yes, does anyone know when we should get one?

Thanks.

Do

[Millennium]

Originally posted by dopik:
Thanks every one for your enlightment...

two more questions, is it possible to develop a bar a la Google or Yahoo! for Safari (I know A9 has just developped one for firefox and it works on the mac too)? If yes, does anyone know when we should get one?

Not in exactly the same way, no. Safari doesn't have the kinds of extension hooks that Firefox and IE/Win do. It may be possible to do some kind of add-on palette using AppleScript, but that's as close as you could get, and it wouldn't look all that similar even if it did the same stuff. For one, it would have to be its own window, rather than attached to other browser windows.

[cpac]

Originally posted by dopik:
two more questions, is it possible to develop a bar a la Google or Yahoo! for Safari (I know A9 has just developped one for firefox and it works on the mac too)?

Nope. But you can always use Omniweb (where adding a new search engine to the search bar be it google or yahoo or amazon or IMDB or even the MacNN software forum involves a single click)

[jbianchini]

"How cool would it be to be able to select your browser's rendering engine?"
No, it wouldn't. I'm an intermediate (Read proficient) computer user, and the last thing I want to be doing is more work to view websites then I have to. For the nerds, sure it’d be cool…but not for 99% of the population.

[Simon X]

I would love to see something like the Web Developer extension from Firefox for Safari. I realise there is a limitation to how Safari can be extended, but Apple should see this as an important feature for the future - Safari add-ons.

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Originally posted by JKT:

I don't know if OmniGroup are still considering writing their own rendering engine or not (certainly not in the near future, that is for sure) - I guess it would depend on a number of factors, not least of which will be how WebCore develops over the next few years and the commercial viability of such an undertaking.

It would cost too much for a compagny.Even Apple did not write their engine from scratch for the same reasons. Web site rendering can be hell very easely because people make site - they don't bother with html grammar (even if a few do). They did the good choice, they now "only" work on features, not on the rendering, the product can only become better.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Ludovic Hirlimann:
It would cost too much for a compagny.Even Apple did not write their engine from scratch for the same reasons. Web site rendering can be hell very easely because people make site - they don't bother with html grammar (even if a few do). They did the good choice, they now "only" work on features, not on the rendering, the product can only become better.

OmniGroup wouldn't be writing it from scratch - they already had their own rendering engine as a basis to work from. The question would have been how much they would have to rewrite and/or rip out and start over again. Obviously it was too much at the time to make commercial sense and mostly the decision to go with WebCore was the right one for the company. However, it was something of a shame for we end users.

[cpac]

Originally posted by JKT:
OmniGroup wouldn't be writing it from scratch - they already had their own rendering engine as a basis to work from. The question would have been how much they would have to rewrite and/or rip out and start over again. Obviously it was too much at the time to make commercial sense and mostly the decision to go with WebCore was the right one for the company. However, it was something of a shame for we end users.

exactly. In one of those epic 4.1 or 4.2 threads one of the omnifolk posted a graphic, (that looked somewhat like the graphic describing the various elements of graphics in OS X) showing (iirc) essentially that it was a couple of low level things (an html parser, something else?) that needed to be re-written, and not the entire rendering engine. -Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think writing those things is a small task or anything, just that I think it was not the equivalent of starting from scratch.

Omnigroup thought it was a feasible project until the landscape changed and they had to compete/contend in a market where Apple was writing and updating a free rendering engine that can be easily adapted into other applications--that's why they switched to webcore.

I would hope, however, that there are still plans to keep working on the Omni rendering engine as it is still the only engine written from the ground up for NeXT/OSX, and as such has the potential to be the fastest/best engineered browser for OS X.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Interestingly enough, Gecko was recently ported over to KDE's system, such that it can act as a drop-in replacement for KHTML. KHTML, for its part, was ported over to GNOME's system as well, so that the reverse is possible. Given this, might someone attempt to port Gecko over to the WebCore system in the future? How cool would it be to be able to select your browser's rendering engine?

Eventually, Gecko and KHTML will fuse into a single browser at the nexus of the universe.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by wataru:
Camino = Safari + Firefox - essential features. Just stick with Firefox.

Thats what I meant.. I tried alt-shift-= and it gave me that wave-equals-sign-thingy™...

[mitchell_pgh]

I can't wait until some of these sites get with the program and drop the Win. IE specific code. There simply isn't any need for it!

[gregomni]

Originally posted by JKT:
I think that was cpac's point - if Apple had taken on the OmniWeb engine as it was or as OmniGroup were planning on rebuilding it, and developed it to be standard's compliant, it may have been a better rendering engine given its multi-threaded nature and its ability to take advantage of multiple processors.

It's hard to know whether it would have ended up better or not. About a year before Safari appeared Steve Jobs did actually make us an offer - can't discuss details - and we decided to turn it down, whereupon he told us, basically, "fine, we'll crush you then". Thus, Apple _did_ think about going this route, and then later Safari wasn't _too_ much of a surprise to us.

I don't know if OmniGroup are still considering writing their own rendering engine or not (certainly not in the near future, that is for sure) - I guess it would depend on a number of factors, not least of which will be how WebCore develops over the next few years and the commercial viability of such an undertaking.

Nope, I highly doubt we'll ever be in the rendering engine business again. Writing your own renderer becomes a worse and worse idea as time passes, and I don't ever see that trend changing.

[ghporter]

I haven't tried Firefox on a Mac yet, but I've just started running it on my Windows machine. It ROCKS! It is faster at rendering just about everything, loads faster, gives you more information when something doesn't work-it's way ahead of IE.

The functionality level of Firefox does make Safari look a little anemic. For example, animated radar pictures on Weather.com work perfectly in Firefox, but they don't "animate" in Safari-unless there's some setting I haven't seen yet that makes it work.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by GHPorter:
For example, animated radar pictures on Weather.com work perfectly in Firefox, but they don't "animate" in Safari-unless there's some setting I haven't seen yet that makes it work.

They work for me with Safari. I'm running 10.3.6, so I can't say for anything prior.

[bmedina]

So... who's keeping track of how many times we've rehashed this subject since Safari came out? Are we at 20 yet?