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Google's "Blink" rendering engine
Google has announced
that it is forking the WebKit rendering engine to make a new project called
Blink. "Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than
other WebKit-based browsers, and supporting multiple architectures over the
years has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium
projects. This has slowed down the collective pace of innovation - so
today, we are introducing Blink, a new open source rendering engine based
on WebKit."
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Coincidence? Posted Apr 3, 2013 22:21 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] It's the third LWN story in a row mentioning an HTML rendering engine.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 3, 2013 22:32 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> so today, we are introducing Blink, a new open source rendering engine based on WebKit.
"Based on WebKit" seems to indicate that this too will be written in C++. Any mention of Go is conspicuously absent from the press release.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 3, 2013 22:40 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Well, yes. They're basically evolving the WebKit in Chromium in a different direction, so it's not going to suddenly totally change language. This is surely, surely not related to the fact that Google and Apple have moved from being best buddies with shared board members to being direct competitors...
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 5, 2013 20:31 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
I think it's more that Google is wed to V8 while WebKit is wed to JavaScriptCore. Supporting both meant that there was an abstraction layer which prevented using a JS DOM implementation. My reading of the relevant threads gives me the impression that WebKit will be doing so as well now that JSC can be assumed.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 3, 2013 22:41 UTC (Wed) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
Yep. It's a fork, they are starting from WebKit like WebKit started from KHTML.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 5:28 UTC (Thu) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link]
Hopefully, this will reduce complaints about a "WebKit monoculture".
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 8:22 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Not really. It's always been an "oligoculture", where a few semi-compatible rendering engines are based on the Webkit codebase.
Web developers has always had to test against both Safari and Chrome, and both in mobile and desktop versions, since they have completely different feature sets, different css prefixes, and are built from different versions of Webkit.
The change here seems to be that Google drops a lot of Safari-specific stuff from their Webkit tree. That change was expected long ago, since Apple stated that upstream will be based around Webkit2 (which is pretty much Safari-only). Apple has never been a very considerate upstream. Something similar happened around CUPS where Linux distributions have to keep forks going.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 12:12 UTC (Thu) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link]
Saying that Webkit2 is Safari-only is not very close to the truth: Apart from chromium I can't think of a single actively maintained port that is still webkit1-based, whereas there are multiple webkit2 ports that are very much alive (even if they are having problems collaborating with Apple efficiently).
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 12:28 UTC (Thu) by bawjaws (guest, #56952) [Link]
Any thoughts on whether those projects are likely to want to move to Chromium/Blink, and whether Google will want them to?
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:06 UTC (Thu) by sumC (subscriber, #1262) [Link]
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 21:14 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
In fact the timing suggests this is not a coincidence. One possibility is that Google was coordinating this in secret with Opera, so that when the Blink fork was announced it would not be just Google going alone but Google + Opera. Better PR.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 5, 2013 8:10 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You are reading too much into this. Such things don't happen overnight. Decision to create fork most likely brewed for a long time - in fact it was a de-facto situation already (Chromium uses WebKit1 while most other direct WebKit users use WebKit2) - thus when Opera decided to join Chromium world it was probably already more-or-less decided. Which means that Opera was notified about creation of fork in advance but probably had nothing to do with decision itself.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 17:14 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link] Yes, it's complicated.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 16:55 UTC (Thu) by obrakmann (subscriber, #38108) [Link]
I just have to share this: http://prng.net/blink-faq.html
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 18:53 UTC (Thu) by alvieboy (subscriber, #51617) [Link]
Good laugh, thanks.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 4, 2013 19:43 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
So in paragraph 1 they say that the changes google will make to webkit will make it run badly on OS X, and then in paragraph 1.1 they say that they won't make technical changes because it's a political move? Yeah, that makes sense. Not.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 5, 2013 8:46 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
Fairly lame Apple fanboy BS / SPAM. Not everything revolves around their favorite company/religion.
And not even slightly funny.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 5, 2013 12:24 UTC (Fri) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
Silly article. Apparently someone is unhappy with this development.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 5, 2013 12:28 UTC (Fri) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]
"We have a direct strategic interest in destroying Apple's mobile platforms."
The general public shares that interest, so it seems this thing is good for everyone.
Go Google!
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 1:26 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
LWM.net ain't Slashdot. Your comment (the link that you posted, with scarce comments that doesn't show if you share its view), if it wasn't meant earnest, was not funny, enlightening, intelligent, civilized, or professional, either. If it was earnest, please tell us, so that we can ignore you in the future.
While you should continue to pay your subscription, please be assured that we won't take offense if you stop posting this kind of comments and stop trying to lower the quality of discussion on this site.
Thank you.
Sincerley,
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 5:57 UTC (Sat) by KSteffensen (subscriber, #68295) [Link]
You take yourself way too seriously. Lighten up!
While the OP may not have been constructive in any technical sense it was a good joke.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 8:38 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
> it was a good joke.
No, not at all. It wasn't a joke - if you look at the guy's Web site you'll see that he's Apple-centric, all relevant IT posts revolve around Apple, OS X, iOS, and iTunes. It was not good either, FWIW.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 9:22 UTC (Sat) by obrakmann (subscriber, #38108) [Link]
FWIW, I didn't even look at the guy's site (still haven't and won't), I got the link from elsewhere.
Personally, that post tickled my funny bone, and I also think that, as much as I love Google and wish them all the best, there's at least some truth to the statements. I do not buy that the fork has been made for technical reasons alone. I also think that the move makes sense, from a competetive standpoint.
Having said that, I will disregard your advice on what I am allowed to do and what I am not, which, frankly, I find way beyond appropriate.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 10:54 UTC (Sat) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
Do whatever you want, just take your "I just have to share this:"-links elsewhere, you probably like Facebook, so that might be the appropriate site.
Google's "Blink" rendering engine Posted Apr 6, 2013 19:43 UTC (Sat) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
That post was very silly and not funny. It had not place on LWN.
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