Firefox Says No to WebKit
Techtree News Staff, Sep 10, 2008 1922 hrs IST
Gecko suits them just fine
Firefox, as most of us know is based on the Gecko rendering engine. When Google's Chrome was launched using the now popular WebKit engine, two of the world's most popular rendering engines came face to face. Although WebKit has been in use for quite a while with Apple using it with its Safari browser, it's only when Chrome was launched that the two rendering engines went head-to-head -- partly because Safari and Firefox have never been targetted at each other. While Firefox was busy targetting IE users, Safari was the favorite amongst Mac users where it is still a hot favorite.
The adoption of WebKit seems to be much faster than that of the good ol' Gecko's. In the near future, the much awaited Android OS will come bundled with a WebKit powered browser. With two of the most innovative web companies opting for WebKit, will this sound the death knell for Gecko? Will Mozilla adopt WebKit as well, in the not too distant future? It's pertinent to note that Apple had rejected Gecko at one point of time owing to the use of XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model) and XUL (XML User Interface Language) -- both powerful component systems that enabled Gecko to become highly modular but at the same time, more complex.
Well Mozilla, for now seems in no hurry to do so. In a recent interview with friends at Ars Technica, Mike Shaver, VP of Engineering at Mozilla said "The WebKit development model and fragmentation in the WebKit ecosystem would create serious challenges that make it unsuitable for Firefox". Additionally, with Apple being not overtly transparent with WebKit, (It was afterall derived from KDE by them!) Mozilla seems rather uninterested. Another factor bogging Mozilla is the extensive use of XUL, which incidentally is the reason for Firefox's impressive add-on support. That enough is a good reason for Firefox to stick with Gecko.
With Firefox 3, Mozilla also claims to have addressed many of Geckos weaknesses with numerous changes incorporated. In the near future, Gecko also seems all set to make its foray into the "Mobile web" segment where Mozilla virtually had no presence. The mobile project is known as the "Fennec" platform. With the massive engineering effort behind making Gecko stay afloat bearing fruit, and not to mention, a large developer community standing by Gecko, there still is quite of juice left in the old workhorse.
Source: Ars Technica
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