A brief analysis of the origins of Chrome and WebKit

Http://www.3lian.com/edu/2012/05-25/28803.html

The wave of the internet has never ceased, and surfboards used to surf the web have been becoming more sophisticated. There have been three browser wars since people entered the internet era. The protagonist of the first browser war is IE and Netscape, and finally ie with the huge body of windows to push down the Netscape; the second browser war Netscape Bath fire heavy Biochemistry as a fire fox Firefox, a bite of IE body a chunk of fat; is the Firefox and IE is lingering at the time, suddenly out of thin air to kill a chrome--from the rich and powerful Google's young man suddenly grew up an extra Jingzhuang, the string of momentum ferocious, chasing two elder jiao panting.

Chrome is pounding two seniors

This chrome is exactly what kind of character, can develop such a magic, in just a few years to become a major Internet browsing mainstream, market share overtook Firefox do not say, even in a short period of time over the Microsoft Empire's IE, the formation of the Third World three-point browser war pattern?

Chrome has beaten Firefox in market share

The pedigree of Chrome

Out of curiosity, a lot of people gossip about the origins of Chrome, and then discover that the WebKit is hidden behind Chrome's name. A friend who studies the browser should also be able to more or less smell WebKit's name. WebKit originated from KDE open source project, flourished in Apple's Safari project, it has a lot of innovation, in recent years the popular HTML5 and CSS3 trends are not related to WebKit. WebKit small, flexible but very powerful, and open source code, won the industry favorite. From the browser on the Nokia S60 to safari on the expensive iphone, we can see the webkit figure.

Webkit (left) and Safari logo, a look on the fate of the deep

Google has never been a company with a sense of smell, and WebKit's excellent nature has attracted the eye of the Internet syndicate. Google released a beta version of Chrome in September 2008, and Chrome was unveiled. Chrome uses the WebKit code to inherit the WebKit's excellent typesetting engine, rendering the page incredibly fast.

The first beta version of Chrome

Since Chrome uses WebKit's source code and WebKit's typesetting engine, can we assume that Google just added a shell to the webkit to make chrome?

The genetic mutation of chrome

Chrome is WebKit's vest, which is inaccurate. In fact, WebKit is composed of two parts, part of which is the WebCore typesetting engine, which parses the HTML language and CSS framework, and the other part is the Jscore JavaScript execution engine, which executes the page JS script. Chrome just inherited the WebCore part of WebKit, using Google's proud "V8" engine on the JS engine, greatly improving the speed of script execution, which is why Chrome is so fast.

WebKit including WebCore and Jscore

Not only that, chrome also encapsulates a layer of webkit on the WebKit glue,chrome that only calls the WebKit Glue layer to use the WebKit component. At the same time, Chrome source code and WebKit also have a very big difference, Google WebKit source code re-comb, make the code more readable, compile more efficient, and have their own open source project--chromium.

Chromium and Chrome: prototypes and finished products

Now that you mention chromium, here's a talk about the difference between chromium and chrome. I do not know when it began, popular with such a statement--chrome open source. This is wrong. Chrome is not a free software or open source code. Even with Firefox, Chrome is closed-because it doesn't offer the same high-level app interface as Firefox, which makes chrome less free to extend and customize the interface. What does chrome say about open source software?

Firefox is very open

This is mostly because people confuse chrome with chromium. Although the name is very similar, the icon interface function is similar, also belong to Google, but in fact, the two really different. Chromium is a free software that follows the BSD license open source and developers can use the chromium source code for development. We can think of chromium as the open source program Google opens for Chrome, chromium equivalent to Chrome's experimental open-source version. There are also subtle differences between the two, and Chrome has more widgets than chromium, such as PDF readers, Flash player, and Google update.

Chromium (left) and chrome

In short, chromium is an experimental project and Chrome is a commodity. Developers can only use the code that is open source chromium, not the closed source of Chrome. If you hear someone say that a browser based on the chrome kernel, speed is very fast! This time we should know that this browser actually uses the chromium kernel.

Popular chromium

Currently using the chromium core of the famous domestic browser has 360 speed browser, Sogou browser, the World window browser speed version, and so on, a lot. But we found that although the chromium kernel is popular with browser makers in China, the more primitive webkit are almost irrelevant. Why is this?

People are more interested in chromium

Of course there is a reason for that. As mentioned earlier, Google's WebKit code to re-comb, chromium code readability and compilation efficiency is much higher than WebKit. Compared to the chromium code, the WebKit code is comparable to the heavenly book, which is much more difficult to develop. WebKit This is not what you want to do, you can get it. Not to mention chromium V8 JS engine than WebKit jscore more efficient, easy to use and powerful things do not need it.

Given the large differences between chromium and WebKit, we should not simply assume that Chrome/chromium only has a vest on WebKit. Give Google's engineers some applause, because of their excellent and hard work, there is an excellent browser kernel in the world.

A brief analysis of the origins of Chrome and WebKit