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Apple snub stings Mozilla

ibjoshua

ibjoshua

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 17, 2002
611
19
New Zealand
This zdnet.com.au story makes interesting reading.

It gives good coverage of why Apple went with KHTML rather than Gecko.


"Not only were they the basis of an excellent, modern and standards-compliant Web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open-source projects."

i_b_joshua
 
So where does that leave Chimera. Maybe I am missing something, but if the guy who was working on Chimera is the head of development at Apple for Safari, doesn't that mean Chimera will eventually cease to exist?
 
Sorry for the double-post, but I am now officially a "Member"!! Woohoo!!:D
 
Hey, gecko's lucky apple didn't name any names-- they certainly deserve it. Netscape itself almost died (went from like 45% marketshare to about 5%) in the upgrades from 4.0 to 6.0, netscape 2 was really good, then netscape 3 they tried to impliment java but were relatively unsuccessful, which is why almost no one has used 3 (tho strangely a small faction swears by it)... Anyway, it's widely remarked that they stopped removing old code after version 2, so by 6.0 it was so bloated it's not even funny. I was always a die-hard netscape user, but they really screwed up. Finally when it all went opensource, i thought it was going to be the beginning of new and great things. But it looks as tho Gecko is falling into the same trap again. Surely Safari wouldn't be a half the browser it is if they based it on gecko, despite how cute the little dragon is...

:)
pnw
 
I'm totally stuck on tabs. I won't be dropping Chimera unless Safari gets tabs I'm afraid.

i_b_joshua
 
As long as the engine is available 3rd party developers might write their own frontends that could provide the tabbed features that many crave now. On Windows I find that a strength. I currently use MyIE2 which in my opinion is Mozilla meets Opera with an IE engine. It's not the prettiest but it's great otherwise. Even uses the IE extensions like Googlebar that IE uses. I only have to run MS's IE now when I do Windows Updates. Perhaps this could happen with Apple's new browser.
 
Originally posted by Cappy
As long as the engine is available 3rd party developers might write their own frontends that could provide the tabbed features that many crave now. On Windows I find that a strength. I currently use MyIE2 which in my opinion is Mozilla meets Opera with an IE engine. It's not the prettiest but it's great otherwise. Even uses the IE extensions like Googlebar that IE uses. I only have to run MS's IE now when I do Windows Updates. Perhaps this could happen with Apple's new browser.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Omniweb 5 is most likely going to do this <big grin> (info from a post on the OW mailing list by an omnigroup developer)
 
Originally posted by Cursor
So where does that leave Chimera. Maybe I am missing something, but if the guy who was working on Chimera is the head of development at Apple for Safari, doesn't that mean Chimera will eventually cease to exist?
Click to expand...

Dave Hyatt was the head programmer for the Chimera project, then he was hired by apple, and presumably stopped work on Chimera. However, Chimera is open-source. This means you can download the source code. You can compile the source code all you want, and redistribute it for free. So, there is no way it will die out.

It is possible that it will stop being developed eventually. However, this will not happen for a long time, because many users swear by it. If development stops on it, then it will still be available, but will be obsolete.
 
the article is a remarkable example of bad journalism. he couldnt get one source to go on the record with him because he is known for giving mozilla bad press. he had to resort to quoting weblogs of all things OUT OF CONTEXT in order to get the story he wanted to print.

www.mozillazine.org for more.
 
Originally posted by sparkleytone
the article is a remarkable example of bad journalism. he couldnt get one source to go on the record with him because he is known for giving mozilla bad press. he had to resort to quoting weblogs of all things OUT OF CONTEXT in order to get the story he wanted to print.

www.mozillazine.org for more.
Click to expand...

aaaaaah! Thanks sparkleytone that adds a bit of perspective to the argument.

Of particular note "When we were evaluating technologies over a year ago, KHTML and KJS stood out," Safari Engineering Manager Don Melton wrote. (KJS is KDE's JavaScript interpreter.) "Not only were they the basis of an excellent, modern and standards-compliant Web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open-source projects."

it really gives me pause. They are talking about Mozilla from over a year ago. They are talking about a pre-1.0 Mozilla release. Mozilla has gotten a lot better since that evaluation, especially in the form of the Chimera project for OSX, which has grown in leaps and bounds over the last few months. It's like comparing a modern sedan with your 1976 Ford Pinto. Of course, it's going to look better and drive better, it's newer. We're not your mother's Pinto anymore.

Now, is our layout engine huge and ungainly and hard to understand? Yes. Yes it is. And, at least to some degree it's important to understand that Mozilla's layout engine has warts because the web has warts. It's an imperfect place and that leads to imperfect code. Remember that while KHTML is a good bit smaller than our layout engine, it also doesn't render a lot of sites anywhere near as well as Mozilla does. Over time, they are going to have to add many of the same warts to KHTML as we have to our layout engine. They might be able to do so in a more clean way, but they will still be there.

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/html/2003/01/index.shtml#20030114

i_b_joshua
 
Safari has been pretty good with code so far for me. Considering it's a beta and still has some tweaks left in it I think it wipes the floor with mozilla already. Chimera was my main browser until Safari came out. Now I can't wait to see where Safari goes.
 
i would really like to give safari a chance at being my default browser. really i would. i have even opened it a few times to try it. not even thirty seconds goes by before i want a tab. if it doesnt have tabs, i cant use it for my browser. there are plenty of people who have become the same way. bad UI or not, people like it. in fact people have integrated it into the way they browse.
 
Kid Red:

Considering it's a beta and still has some tweaks left in it I think it wipes the floor with mozilla already
Click to expand...
Drop the Apple-worship already. An objective eye can easily see that Safari has a fair number of rendering bugs that Chimera does not. I run both browsers and really I cannot say that Safari is any faster on average (perhaps it scrolls faster)... not to mention that it lacks tabs. This whole orgasmic episode everyone is having with Safari smacks of the RDF. It's an interesting and promising browser, but not worth all this attention.
 

Drop the Apple-worship already. An objective eye can easily see that Safari has a fair number of rendering bugs that Chimera does not. I run both browsers and really I cannot say that Safari is any faster on average (perhaps it scrolls faster)... not to mention that it lacks tabs. This whole orgasmic episode everyone is having with Safari smacks of the RDF. It's an interesting and promising browser, but not worth all this attention.
Click to expand...
word.
 
Originally posted by sparkleytone
i would really like to give safari a chance at being my default browser. really i would. i have even opened it a few times to try it. not even thirty seconds goes by before i want a tab. if it doesnt have tabs, i cant use it for my browser. there are plenty of people who have become the same way. bad UI or not, people like it. in fact people have integrated it into the way they browse.
Click to expand...

No doubt!! Not to mention that Chimera runs a little to alot faster on my comp.
 
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