I feel I owe this blog post to Chris being that I’ve been cited as one of the catalysts for some in the GNOME community aligning themselves with WebKit. Not that I think that is bad that there is competition in the browser market (competition is one thing but a line in the sand is just counterproductive here) but my original intent was merely to ask what are our priorities and what projects would align closer to those priorities.
In any case it was reported on Slashdot that according to an article at Dot Net Perls, Firefox is now one of the most efficient browsers when it comes to memory usage. This meshes with the internal tests Mozilla was doing and Chris blogged about. It was one of my main gripes with Firefox when using the XULRunner and Gecko engine as the basis for an embedded browser. At the time I was a bit nonplussed as the work that was being done to make Firefox better revolved around blaming and removing important libraries instead of fixing the root causes.
If the data is to be believed (and be transferable to Linux as the tests were run on Windows) then it does point to significant improvements in Firefox and I thank the Mozilla community for listening and dealing with the issues head on. Software is hard and we shouldn’t turn our backs on a friend of the Linux community even when they might not be walking lock step with us. The flip side is Mozilla does need to be concious of the needs of downstream developers and not use its market position as bludgeon to get its way. To that end there are still the issues of a stable embedded API and better platform integration. I hear those are being worked on so hopefully it won’t be an issue going forward.
Again I would like to thank the Mozilla community for putting out a great browser that is a serious competitor with Internet Explorer. I would also like to thank the Mozilla Foundation for helping fund accessibility work in GNOME. By working with each other instead of butting heads, as happens every once in awhile, the ecosystem grows and benefits both communities.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]
Thanks for your kind words, John! Really it’s a credit to our community and all the people who brought the love to Linux. The wonderful GTK+ people who did all the theme stuff (that WebKit is now using, as a matter of fact) to the Tango guys who did all the icons and everyone else who pitched in a tested. It was a good cycle for Linux.
Our next cycle should be even better. We’re attacking other areas of performance, will add more developer features and with a focus on mobile + embedding we’ll be closing even more gaps. It’s going to keep getting better.
Comment by Christopher Blizzard — June 24, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
Given that the issue in hand is webkit vs. xulrunner for GNOME (an environment principally used on Linux, and barely at all on Windows), the figures cited are fairly useless. A comparison of Firefox, Epiphany-gecko and Epiphany-webkit on a Linux system would seem to be rather more to the point. I believe Safari’s crappiness on Windows is well known and does not really reflect much about Webkit itself.
Comment by Adam Williamson — June 25, 2008 @ 12:44 am
“Safari’s crappiness on Windows”
You seem to be getting defensive. I haven’t even gone into the issue of webkit vs. xulrunner other than stating there is one. The main point was to say I had criticized Mozilla in the past and they came around and really fixed the issues, not just peppered over them. They deserve praise for this as well as all the work they have done for Open Source. Like it or not Mozilla is the most successful Open Source project to date.
Now back to the webkit vs. xulrunner issue. As I indirectly said, competition is a good thing. You yourself are however drawing a line in the sand by reacting to praise of a competitor with a dismissal of the results gathered by the test in question. Sure the data isn’t one to one but it is an independent test that verifies the results that have been coming out of Mozilla itself. Given the claim and verification I can confidently conclude that the Mozilla team is doing a great job pushing performance.
I don’t think I concluded that WebKit sucks so your comment doesn’t reflect much of really what is important to talk about. Please do run those tests and get independent confirmation. Then there is something interesting to talk about instead of reactionary BS that further splits the communities.
Comment by J5 — June 25, 2008 @ 1:26 am
While this is cool, as a KDE user I can’t help but hate mozilla’s guts.
Comment by Lucian — June 25, 2008 @ 3:34 am
Does this mean epiphany-gecko will stick around? I for one would prefer that it did.
Comment by foo — June 25, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
foo,
Probably not unless someone makes an effort. Understandably there is bad blood between the Epiphany team and Mozilla. For a long time they tried to work with the gecko engine but it kept changing APIs and then Epiphany lost the fight happening in many distributions which decided that Firefox would be the browser of choice. They felt, rightfully so, that Mozilla only cared about their own project and even worse, their own project on Windows.
However late, this is a changing attitude at Mozilla from what I have seen. There are still issues to be resolved as in any complex relationship but at least they are trying to meet us half way. On our part we can not just toss away the support of such a successful project and we do need to also listen to their issues. That is not to say we should not look at alternatives just that we shouldn’t burn bridges along the way.
Comment by J5 — June 25, 2008 @ 2:52 pm