As you may have already seen, Google has launched a new web browser for Windows PCs called Chrome. It's based on the WebKit open source browser engine, which is also used as the browser engine in the Symbian S60 browser and OS X Safari browser. That means WebKit now powers the default browsers on Nokia, Samsung and Apple smartphones as well as Macintosh computers, and Google is taking it onto Windows PCs as well. Is this game over for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer?
Read on in the full article.
If Chrome does take off on Windows PCs, that may make life easier for S60 users as well. Sites written to work well on Chrome should also work well on S60, because both the S60 browser and Chrome would be using the same engine.
Nokia have already hedged their bets, instead of cooperating to make Webkit better they've opted to to make Firefox work with Qt.
Tzer2 wrote:If Chrome does take off on Windows PCs, that may make life easier for S60 users as well. Sites written to work well on Chrome should also work well on S60, because both the S60 browser and Chrome would be using the same engine.
Sadly that is not the case, because Chrome is Webkit based many of Nokia's sites won't display correctly, cause they don't display correctly in either the S60 or Safari webkit based browsers.
Google pratically own firefox so it will be interesting!
Google do NOT own Firefox, but it is highly interesting that they picked Webkit rather than Gecko as their browsing engine.
However, Gecko is heading to mobiles and I doubt it will be long before we see a S60 version of Firefox released, so no, this in no way spells the death of Gecko.
Plus, Gecko is used in far more than just Firefox!
Steve - you forgot one on the list: KDE's (a popular desktop environment on Linux and other *NIX systems) default browser Konqueror also uses some of WebKit. Well strictly speaking it uses KHTML, but Webkit is derived from KHTML (Konqueror predates Safari, S60 browser and any other derivatives)
But it certainly is interesting how what was once a niche rendering engine compared to Gecko & IE's one (I'm not sure of the name - think it might have been "Trident" though) is now spreading quite rapidly.
Sadly that is not the case, because Chrome is Webkit based many of Nokia's sites won't display correctly, cause they don't display correctly in either the S60 or Safari webkit based browsers.
I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make. People don't buy a device to look at the manufacturer's website. 😊
The point I was making was that if sites are written to display correctly on Chrome, then they're more likely to display correctly on S60 and Safari too because they all use the same rendering engine.
The more people use a rendering engine, the more support there will be for that engine among web designers. That's how Chrome could benefit S60 users.
However, Gecko is heading to mobiles and I doubt it will be long before we see a S60 version of Firefox released, so no, this in no way spells the death of Gecko.
Presumably an S60 version of Firefox wouldn't be the default browser though?
The reason Internet Explorer has done so well is mainly because it's bundled with Windows, as people tend to use whatever comes with the hardware.
A WebKit-based S60 browser is bundled with all new S60 devices, and all new OS X devices (including Macs and the iPhone), so WebKit is arguably already the IE of the smartphone world.
Nokia have already hedged their bets, instead of cooperating to make Webkit better they've opted to to make Firefox work with Qt.
That's not quite the whole story.
Nokia recently announced they would be integrating a WebKit-based browser into their Series 40 phones too, which make up the vast majority of Nokia's sales, and about 30% of all mobile phone sales. Series 40 alone could bring in about 350 million new WebKit users every year.
If WebKit becomes the standard web browser over the next few years, Nokia's in a very good position because they've already deployed it on their smartphones, they're going to deploy it on their normal phones, and it would be fairly easy to bring to the internet tablets too.
I think people are missing the main point here. The real significance of Chrome, and by proxy of WebKit (as that is the Chrome renderer) are the functional improvements, most notably and importantly that of the V8 Javascript engine and the second big significance is that Chrome and it's parts are open source.
What this means is that those improvements that are applicable to a mobile device (noting that some are desktop focussed) can be fed back into webkit and/or onto mobile devices. Again, the most notable being the javascript engine.
One thing that's easy to see is how slow a mobile web browser is in processing a page before and during display, compared to using exactly the same connection via the phone tethered to the laptop to display the same page on the laptop - i.e. it's the mobile browser (/phone) that is lacking, not the connection. Having lightweight, improved rendering and javascript engines, on the same mobile hardware, should do much to improve performance - and thus usability and uptake of the mobile web, web apps, widgets etc etc.
Early reports show that, on Windows PCs, Chrome is 5 times faster (at rendering and javascript) than Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than IE 8 (the latest).
Alex
phonething.com
I have to disagree with those speed reports somewhat.
Having tested Chrome all last night and today on Windows XP and Vista, it's not 5 times faster than Firefox 3, not at all. OK, it *may* be slightly faster, but it's only slightly, and of course this difference is negated when you take into effect the extra functionality that you use within FF3.
I won't argue as much about IE8 though - yes IE8 is in beta, so it's likely to get faster as it matures, but it's (IE in general) still a horribly SLOW browser! I find it roughly 2 to 3 times slower than FF3 at the same tasks.
On the plus side for Chrome though, it renders better than Safari does (which also uses Webkit)!
stuclark - you're just one person disagreeing with those speed reports... 😊
I'm using both the official tests at http://code.google.com/apis/v8/run.html and my own random use tests on real world sites. My running the official tests indicate Chrome around 8 times faster than FF3 and my real site tests make Chrome feel at least several times faster than FF3.
I suggest the discrepancy is local to your system(s) as plenty of other users are testifying to how quick it is.
More importantly, it's 56 times faster than the current most deployed version of IE (v. 6) - this is Google's claim and my tests agreed.
We want this sort of speed improvement in Nokia Browser - on both S60 and S40 - that's the real point here 😊
Tzer2, the point I am making is that considering Nokia's S60 V3 phones all feature a Webkit based browser, you'd think they would make sure that their own websites displayed correctly in them.
Take a look at http://europe.nokia.com/index.html using the browser on your phone if you need an example.
As you said "sites written to work well on Chrome should also work well on S60, because both the S60 browser and Chrome would be using the same engine", shame Nokia can't write theirs correctly.
Comments about making sites more Chrome/Gecko/Webkit "compatible" are ill informed and are a reminder of the bad old days of the web when websites would display would banners or messages saying "This site is best viewed using IE X.x" or "This site is best viewed using Netscape Y.y".
Both websites and browsers should simply stick to the standards and everything will be hunky-dory (in theory).
And the number one barrier to web browsing is the mindless use of flash (yes I'm looking at you Nokia). Flash has to be to be the worst thing ever to be inflicted on the web (or maybe it's IE).
i am not a technical guy. A non techie using a smartphone to do lot of tethering and mobile browsing. What is in store for me. Will it enable me to open multiple browsers on my phone at the same time like opera mobile? Will it have the same rendering of pages as on a laptop? Will it replace the need to open particular sites with laptop as it is the case currently?
Bottomline is, what happens to my mobile browsing experience?
The main reason that speaks for WebKit wasn't named yet. It's the same reason Apple choosed a few years back KDE's KHTML as base; the very good design. This clean design does allow fast integration into own products, building extensions rather fast, using different toolkits like Skia (Chrome) or Qt (Nokia), performance and fast reaction to a fast moving market.