I'm not saying Safari is bad or it shouldn't exist. I'm just asking why Apple made one when there's chrome, firefox and opera out there.
This.Ummm, you know that Safari was out before all of those right?![]()
Because at one point Chrome didn't exist, FireFox was Mozilla/Netscape and not very good, and Opera never really had a big following. That left Internet Explorer. Apple felt that they needed their own browser to go with their own operating system. That and Microsoft dropping IE support from Mac were two of the pushing things that made Apple make Safari.
And IE is terrible. That means Safari is the best Browser. Then how come many people still use Google Chrome?
And IE is terrible.
Then how come many people still use Google Chrome?
Safari on Windows is terrible. The majority of the PC market still runs windows, and so the best alternatives to IE on that platform are Firefox and Chrome.
Webkit has been one of Apple's most underrated successes.
Webkit
Webkit is the engine that powers Safari and lays the foundation for other web technologies.
Webkit has been one of Apple's most underrated successes.
It was - When Apple started working on the fork of WebKit, Apple still had a bundling agreement with MS with IE and by 2003 it had been severely neglected by MS (the windows version was much more advanced and was in version 5 or 6 by then) and the Mac version was at 4 I believe.
Webkit was pretty much the only thing out there and Apple decided to use that since it was very powerful.
And IE is terrible. That means Safari is the best Browser. Then how come many people still use Google Chrome?
I've been hearing Webkit every time someone mentions Safari. What is Webkit anyway, and how did it become a success? How did it affect browsing compared to others?
... Then how come many people still use Google Chrome?
I'm not saying Safari is bad or it shouldn't exist. I'm just asking why Apple made one when there's chrome, firefox and opera out there.
Apple didn't work on a fork of WebKit; Apple developed WebKit, period. WebKit is the set of frameworks upon which Safari is based. It was derived from the opensource KHTML browser engine. Apple released WebKit back to opensource. Other browser developers selected WebKit as their browsers. The OmniGroup switched OmniWeb to WebKit. Google selected WebKit as the basis of its Chrome browser. Small developers have also developed WebKit-based browsers such as Shiira and Sunrise....When Apple started working on the fork of WebKit, ...
Apple didn't work on a fork of WebKit; Apple developed WebKit, period. WebKit is the set of frameworks upon which Safari is based. It was derived from the opensource KHTML browser engine.
It's not quite correct to compare version numbers in this case because IE for Mac used a completely different rendering engine than the PC version. In fact, in many ways, the Mac versions of IE were ahead of the PC versions in terms of engine capability, even though the version numbers were further behind.
IE on the Mac ended up being Microsoft's abandoned redheaded stepchild.My recollection was at the very end, MS basically stopped working on IE for about a year or so before Apple tossed it out - they only left it in due to contractual reasons. However my memories of it were not pleasant. Compared to Windows versions, IE for Windows was faster and supported lots of things that IE for Mac did terribly.
ActiveX is not an Internet Explorer technology; it is a Windows technology.... Heck, it never did and probably never could support ActiveX - really big back in the day. To this day its still exclusive to Windows IE. I wasnt really trying to compare versions numbers to imply that they were the same thing, just to point out that their Windows browser had much more development into it.
Anyhow, its dead now.
I'm probably one of the few that completely ignores Safari on my Mac. I think the very first thing I did when I got my Mac was download Chrome. I think that was the only thing I used Safari for, lol. Chrome is what I was used to coming from a PC, as that's all I used. I didn't feel like having to re-learn a new browser on top of having to learn a new OS as well. I knew Chrome, I knew how to use it. So if anything, it was something I was already familiar with while trying to get used to a whole new OS. I just love Chrome's extensions like Adblocker and YouTubeDownloader.
I also have Firefox installed, but I rarely use it. Only for ripping video clips off the internet.
The only time I use Safari is when I'm using my iPhone or iPad. Mainly because I don't have much of a choice.
Here are the latest stats on which browser is getting the most action. Keep in mind though, IE gets a lot of its boost from government computers in the States.
United States: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-monthly-201112-201205
Worldwide: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201112-201205
It's not quite correct to compare version numbers in this case because IE for Mac used a completely different rendering engine than the PC version. In fact, in many ways, the Mac versions of IE were ahead of the PC versions in terms of engine capability, even though the version numbers were further behind.
At any rate, probably another reason Apple wanted to create their own browser is that the Mac version of IE in the early days of OS X, while decent, still looked and felt very Classic Mac OS-ish; it was a Carbon app and not very pretty, and even felt kind of bloated (though still not as bad as Netscape Navigator's later years). MS might have balked at rewriting IE in Cocoa, particularly when their Office apps needed the same treatment and were probably a lot more profitable.
Strictly speaking, WebKit did not exist until Apple branched an earlier project, called KHTML, and called their branch WebKit.
More recent versions of IE could earn a Most Improved award, at least, but at any rate, "best browser" is subjective. I myself don't use it much. There are different tools for different fools.
Chrome got a boost in its early days simply by having the Google name attached to it; there were (and still are, sadly) lots of Google fanboys who make us Apple guys look downright sane by comparison.
WebKit is the open source HTML and JavaScript engine project that Apple created. If you think in terms of Safari, it's WebKit that handles taking HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other files downloaded from the internet and turning them into a web page, but it doesn't handle things like downloading the file, creating browser windows or tabs, saving bookmarks, etc - those things are done by other libraries, by the operating system, or by Safari itself.
Since WebKit is open source, other groups outside of Apple can and have used it to build their own browsers, Chrome being the most popular on the desktop, though there are others; I'm using my personal favorite, OmniWeb, right now, and one called Midori is popular among the lightweight Linux crowd. WebKit is also better-suited to being adapted for mobile devices than Mozilla, the engine Firefox uses, which is why WebKit-powered browsers now ship with every major smartphone operating system except Microsoft's.