Rob Isaac is a New Zealand-based developer, technical analyst, and consultant. After the news that Google would be creating its own, Chrome-specific version of the Webkit browser rendering engine, called Blink, Isaac created this “translation” of Google’s developer FAQ for Blink. This FAQ was originally published on his website.

1 Why is Chrome spawning a new browser engine?

The WebKit maintainers wouldn’t let us attack Apple directly, by changing WebKit in ways that would make it perform badly on OS X and iOS.

Because they share a rendering engine, developer effort to ensure Chrome compatibility currently benefits Apple platforms for free. To prevent this, we must make Chrome and WebKit behave differently.

1.1 What sorts of things should I expect from Chrome?

Nothing yet. This is a political move, not a technical one.

However, while the Chrome user interface will not change in any significant way, we will be silently overwriting all existing installations of Chrome with our new rendering engine without your knowledge or consent.

1.2 Is this new browser engine going to fragment the web platform’s compatibility more?

Yes.

We intend to distract people from this obvious problem by continually implying that our as-yet unwritten replacement is somehow much better and more sophisticated than the rendering engine that until yesterday was more than good enough to permit us to achieve total dominance of the Windows desktop browsing market in less than two years.

This strategy has worked extremely well for Netscape, Microsoft, Apple and us in previous iterations of the browser wars, and we firmly believe that everyone in this industry was born yesterday and they will not recognise this for the total bullshit it so clearly is.

1.3 Hold up, isn’t more browsers sharing WebKit better for compatibility?

Yes. See 1.

1.4 How does this affect web standards?

We have sufficient market share on the desktop that a few months from now, we will be in a position to unilaterally dictate them.

We hope to leverage this control to achieve the same dominance in mobile eventually.

1.5 Will we see a -chrome vendor prefix now?

No. See 1.4.

1.6 So we have an even more fragmented mobile WebKit story?

Yes.

We encourage you to adopt Chrome on Android for your mobile browsing needs.

1.7 What’s stopping Chrome from shipping proprietary features?

Nothing.

1.8 Is this just a ruse to land the Dart VM or Native Client?

We’ve decided to avoid discussing unpopular topics like those for the time being.

1.9 What should we expect to see from Chrome and Blink in the next 12 months? What about the long term?

We have a direct strategic interest in destroying Apple’s mobile platforms because their lack of participation in our advertising and social ecosystems does not benefit our long term goals. You should expect Chrome and Blink changes in the short term to be focused in this direction.

In the longer term, we aim to have sufficient control over the installed base of web browsers to dictate whatever conditions we consider most appropriate to our business goals at the time.

1.10 Is this going to be open source?

Not really.

While you can certainly read the source code, we’re fully aware that actually tracking and understanding a modern HTML renderer is extremely difficult. In addition, the first changes we will make are intended specifically to break compatibility with WebKit, so the only organisation with sufficient resources to track our changes will no longer be able to do so.

In practice, this allows us to call the project “open” while simultaneously ensuring Google will be the only effective contributor to the Chrome and Blink source now and in the future. We’ve had enormous success co-opting the language of open source in the past to imply our products are better, and we aim to continue with that strategy.

1.11 Opera recently announced they adopted Chromium for their browsers. What’s their plan?

Opera have such a tiny market share that they have no choice other than to follow whatever strategy Chromium adopts. In this case, it means they will adopt the Blink renderer as quickly as possible.

1.12 Why is this is good for me as a web developer?

It isn’t. Our primary goal is to use your development efforts as leverage against our competitors. See 1.9.

photo credit: nitot via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

I’m not sure this is what they meant when they said design is now mobile first. Google has taken the widely loved new look in its iPhone and iPad app straight to the web — the mobile web, that is.

The new look is clean and simple, and much more usable — in my humble opinion — than Gmail’s web app for mail.

But this isn’t just my opinion of it:

“[It's] much more usable now,” engineering student Filipe Werneck said. “And I must say that the redesign of the web app is very welcome and brings color consistency between desktop and mobile.”

But you can’t please everyone, apparently.

Windows Phone is not included in the release, probably because the Windows Phone browser is based on the Trident rendering engine, and just about everyone else (Android, iOS, Opera) is on or moving toward the Webkit rendering engine. But it means that Windows Phone users are forced to use WAP to access Gmail in a browser on their devices — a very 1997 experience.

Other complaints include that Microsoft Exchange support was dropped (old news), and yet another responder to Google’s announcement post said, “Yeah, but the Contacts page still looks like it was developed by Fred Flintstone.”

Visit gmail.com in a mobile browser on your iPhone, Android smartphone, BlackBerry, or even a Kindle to check it out.

photo credit: opacity via photopin cc

Which essentially means that everyone is using WebKit except for Microsoft and Firefox. And that the fat lady is not singing for the end of Opera’s improbable browser journey.

In fact, far from it.

Those 300 million users count people on traditional PCs, smartphones, TVs, and tablets. They probably also count me, as I open up Opera once a week or so to manage a corporate Twitter account. Stat Counter’s global browser stats say that people using Opera drive about two percent of internet usage, and, according to Opera, its users are growing faster than ever.

“On the final stretch up to 300 million users, we have experienced the fastest acceleration in user growth we have ever seen,” Opera CEO Lars Boilesen said in a statement. “Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market.”

Opera just recently shipped Ice, a new mobile browser that loses buttons, menus, and tabs, and relies entirely on touch gestures. Ice uses WebKit, which was unique for Opera browsers at the time, but not for long.

Over the course of the next year, most of Opera’s browsers will transition to the new engine, Opera’s chief technical officer, Håkon Wium Lie, said.

“It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”

Once that transition is complete, a majority of people will be using WebKit-based browsers — about 55 percent, according to W3 numbers. And presumably, that Opera will now be able to focus more on what makes its particular user experience different, rather than on building the foundations of its technology.

Which, as unlikely UNIX vendor Apple would be happy to tell you, is often a very smart way to go.

photo credit: cole007 via photopin cc

VentureBeat talked with Opera’s Jan Standal, vice-president of desktop products to get the skinny on all the latest features, and, perhaps most interestingly, on how Opera is competing in an increasingly tough browser market.

First, the new features.

Opera has always competed on speedy browsing, and that’s not changing now. With addition tune-ups for speed, including experimental hardware acceleration — using your graphics process instead of just your CPU to render web pages — Opera is doing its best to ensure clients have a fast web experience. Interestingly, since version 11 Opera has offered Turbo, compression technology developed for low-bandwidth mobile browsing, to desktop clients as well.

Opera 12 brings a new theming engine to the browser, offering a truly simple method to change the look and feel of the software you spend most of your day in. Halo fans: Master Chief is only one click away.

Perhaps more interesting to geeks and engineers, the new version of Opera enables control of your computer’s hardware without a plugin. For example, video capture has long been possible via Flash, but Opera is enabling it via HTML5.

“It’s part of a bigger trend,” said Standal. “We’re helping to evolve into a bigger app ecosystem. We have already added support for geolocation; in this version we’re adding support for HTML on the camera side.”

This allows cool effects such as being able to control a video game via your head motions, take pictures in the browser, enable advanced visual controls for software, or robust biometric authentication. Of course, many will just use the new functionality to take silly pictures and share them with their hopefully long-suffering friends:

Other updates include a sandboxing feature that allows the browser to continue operating when plugins crash, new language support, and better security notification.

The biggest question for Opera usually is, how can you compete against Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, or even Apple’s Safari? The W3schools browser stats show continued decline for Opera in this calendar year. But Standal had some good answers.

“Those are not good stats — Stats Counter is better, but still not perfect. Our trend over the past year is up.”

Opera currently counts 270 million users, including 60 million desktop users, 170 million mobile users, and the balance on smart TVs and other platforms. It is seeing growth in Android and on feature phones, in Asia, Africa, and South America, where it works with local telecoms and ISPs to bundle services and build revenue.

The good news includes Russia, where Opera has 25 percent desktop browser share, and 80-90 percent mobile browser share. And the desktop browser users are still growing at 15 percent annually, Standal said.

The new browser heavyweight contender, of course, is Google’s Chrome, which by some measures is now the most popular browser on the planet. Standal had some interesting things to say about competing with Chrome.

“Chrome is a new type of competitor — we’re used to competing with browsers that ship with the operating system — we’re used to being the alternative browser. Now with Chrome you have a different distribution channel. While Firefox grows organically, spreading from user to user, Chrome grows with very aggressive marketing, big billboards.

Chrome’s growth is completely linear — you can see it every day growing a little.  The good side is, more people now know what a browser is, that there are different options … and so Chrome is increasing our potential market.”

And in fact, ever since Chrome’s release, Opera has seen its downloads go up as well.

Opera was founded in 1994 and is based in Oslo, Norway. The company employs 800 people and had revenue of $47 million in the first quarter of 2012.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

While Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still the dominant Web browser, Google’s Chrome has been growing consistently, as is evident from a new report from NetApplications. The report shows that Chrome’s slice of the market more than doubled during the past year, from 4.63 percent in December 2009 to 9.98 percent in December 2010.

Browser market share is closely watched for several reasons: It’s seen as a sign of health for the Internet strategies of major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, as well as smaller operations like Mozilla and Opera Software. It also serves as a guide to developers on which browsers are worth catering to in building Web apps, since all of them have their quirks.

In the same time period, Microsoft’s IE browser was in a steady decline. IE had a 62.69 percent share in December 2009, but wrapped up 2010 with a 57.08 percent share, declining by over 5.5 percent.

Mozilla Firefox also took a bit of a hit, as its market share was 22.81 percent in December 2010, down nearly 2 percent from a year before. The open-source browser still hasn’t hit a 25 percent market share.

The other browser underdog that finished the year with a higher market share than it started with was Apple’s Safari, which had a 5.89 percent share in December 2010, compared with a 4.46 percent share in December 2009. Safari, originally designed only for Apple’s Mac computers, is now available for Windows, and Apple pushes users who download its iTunes store software to download Safari, too.

Opera, the browser made by the similarly named Norwegian software company, was flat at approximately 2.2 percent.

Once mighty, now all but forgotten and abandoned by its current owner AOL, Netscape has long since been relegated to having curiosity value only: Yes, it is still out there with a 0.78 percent market share.

Of all the different browser versions, IE 8 is dominates the scene with a 33.02 percent share. Microsoft’s upcoming IE 9, which is out as a public beta, has 0.49 percent.

Chrome is the youngest browser around, having been launched in 2008, and it has been making significant headway ever since, for example in the enterprise space. During 2009, the browser’s market share grew every month, with an insignificant lapse of 0.08% in July, before picking up speed again. And this won’t be the end of it: Chrome will surely continue its growth once the long-awaited and much-touted Chrome OS makes its official appearence.

[Photo credit: mayhem, homepage photo: Clive Darr]