

Greetings from the Safari team at Apple Computer (2003) - thealphanerd
http://lists.kde.org/?m=104197092318639

======
terhechte
I still remember watching the Keynote and expecting Gecko and then they had
KHTML. I'd played around with Konqueror before, on various Linux
distributions, and wasn't overwhelmed by its standards support (or quirks mode
support, after all this was 2003). But Safari really enhanced it, and was so
damn fast.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
As an early user of Chimera/Camino, Phoenix/Firefox and Safari, the way I
recall it was that KHTML was _too good_ at standards, hence causing practical
problems with actual web content which was built for IE. (A big part of
Mozilla's energy at that time was in evangelizing websites to actually use
standards and not block them for no reason, but they'd also done a lot of
reverse engineering)

I also vaguely remember David Hyatt saying that they (edit: and by they I mean
the Safari team that he'd moved from Mozilla to join) had taken some component
from Gecko though I can't remember the details and his old Surfin Safari blog
at <http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt> seems to have been superceded by the
Webkit team's Surfin' Safari blog and it now just gives a broken redirect.

------
niggler
Wow, the original submission which linked to this article
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041354>,
[http://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the-
wo...](http://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the-world/)) is
#1 and this submission is #4

~~~
thealphanerd
There were quite a few links in that article. I found this email of particular
interest and importance.

~~~
nailer
+1 There's still far too many people in the tech community who seem to think
that WebKit was created from scratch by Apple who just felt like being
generous by making it Open Source.

------
tephra
Here's what the safari webpage looked like at the time if anyone is
interested.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20030108173656/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030108173656/http://www.apple.com/safari/)

~~~
thethimble
Wow, Apple actually praising Google? 2003 seems like a _long_ time ago.

~~~
vvhn
The CEO of Google was on Apple's Board of Directors till 2009. I'm guessing
2008 was the year which relationship soured.

~~~
rahoulb
After Android changed from being Blackberry-like to being iPhone-like, Eric
Schmidt stopped attending Apple board meetings where the iPhone was discussed
due to conflicts of interest.

I'm sure that this is where Steve Jobs' "Android is stolen" idea comes from.

------
lobo_tuerto
"Also, we'll be sending you another email soon which details our changes and
additions to KHTML and KJS. I hope the detailed list in that email will help
you understand what we've done a little better."

Interesting, anyone have a handle on this list?

------
rmccue
Watching the keynote video, I see "CCS 1 and CCS 2" as two of the supported
standards. Is this meant to be CSS, or am I missing a standard somewhere?

~~~
mcpoulet
Do you have a link to that video ? I didn't see that on the video I watched
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZNXQujgXw>).

~~~
rmccue
It's just after the end of that video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13n98rSaYp4&t=66m47s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13n98rSaYp4&t=66m47s)

~~~
mcpoulet
Oh, thanks !

------
jheimark
I am surprised at how heavily the number of lines of code factored into the
decision to choose KHTML. It makes sense that a smaller codebase is much
easier to jump into, and usually means cleaner architecture, but I didn't
expect to see it addressed as such an important factor.

~~~
pavlov
At the time the minimum RAM requirement for Mac OS X was only 128 MB. WebKit
was to be a system component, so it would be active in memory much of the
time. Under these circumstances every MB of code counts, so it's easy to see
why the leaner codebase of KHTML was found appealing.

However, I think there was also the psychological factor of Mozilla's
reputation at the time as an open-source quagmire. The Netscape 4 code they
had inherited was deemed unmaintainable, and so Mozilla started over with a
rewrite that many thought was too complex and tried to reinvent everything
under the sun (e.g. it contained a version of Microsoft's COM). Mozilla turned
out fine eventually, but back in 2002 this wasn't quite so obvious.

~~~
toyg
> _Mozilla turned out fine_

Not exactly. There's a reason WebKit saw wild adoption by all sorts of
projects, while Gecko adoption stagnated. The Mozilla codebase is still too
complicated for most people.

~~~
mistercow
Arguably, though, even if Gecko's code base were taken down to be smaller and
easier to use than WebKit (and I have no idea how it actually compares today),
it would be at a tremendous disadvantage because so many projects _have_
incorporated WebKit.

If I want to use WebKit in a new project today, I can find a ton of people
online who have done so in the past and use their experience to get me through
it. If I want to use Gecko in a new project, I will have a considerably
smaller amount of outside experience to lean on.

------
rwinn
So when did KHTML become WebKit?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
It didn't. KHTML and Konqueror are being developed independently from WebKit.
WebKit itself has very little KHTML code left, anyways.

<http://khtml-konqueror.blogspot.com>

[https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde-
baseapps/repositor...](https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde-
baseapps/repository/revisions/master/show/konqueror)

------
worldsayshi
Apple willingly releasing open source stuff feels rather counter to some of
their other philosophy. (still)

~~~
rahoulb
Back in those days, Apple was all about open-source - I still have an OSX 10.2
(Jaguar) box somewhere where the main headline is about Apple and open-source.

(Just found this: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenf/5393674266/>)

I guess there's still a lot of open-source in OSX, but they don't need to
shout about it now that they are no longer the underdogs.

~~~
eps
I think they were just trying to piggy-back on BSD reputation as stable and
mature system, so they played the buddy-buddy card. Once OS X settled in its
place, this was no longer needed, so the open source love faded.

~~~
pretoriusB
It's not like the open source itself or the open source love thrived anywhere
else in the Desktop anyway...

------
hayksaakian
OK I get it, a lot of work went into safari. Do we need weekly top posts
evangelizing this?

Two next to each other at that?

~~~
rys
If you know of better content that the community would like to read about
instead, please submit it.

------
lessnonymous
Please don't turn HN into Reddit and start karma whoring. This post belongs on
the other one that made you go looking for this email.

~~~
jsmeaton
It was posted as a comment in the other link also.

