Discussion
Twenty five years ago today I started the #Safari and #WebKit projects at #Apple Computer.
Which means Safari is now old enough to rent itself a car. But let's not speculate about my age.
I'm still sad I can't use Safari on my Windows PC. Alas, I lost the battle to keep it there. But at least WebKit's DNA seeded or influenced most browsers we use today.
And I'm proud of that impact. Along with the wonderful team I built who made it all happen. Here's to another 25, friends.
Cheers. 🥂😊💖
@lisamelton What an absolute legend! 👏🏼❤️
@lisamelton i ran safari on a windows pc at the height of the browser wars.
I still use safari today just on my iphone
@MedeaVanamonde Thank you so much! 😊🥰💖
Liking & Boosting from Safari on my MBP. 😊
@mookie As was written in the scriptures!
Seriously, thank you. 😊💖
@lisamelton 🍾 woohoo bravo... although was always disappointed/sad it didn't then result in a stronger improved KHTML engine but ended up killing it instead. ☹️
@ivor Thank you! And same. Killing KHTML and KJS development was never my intent.
@lisamelton @ivor with the latency of releasing source code after binaries, dropping snapshots without commit history, and no corporate funding for it's developers, KHTML didn't have a realistic chance to keep up.
@RichiH This is why I pushed hard to make WebKit a for-real Open Source project. Because we were seeing this happen to the people we respected.
It took awhile, but I finally got Bertrand Serlet, VP of Engineering at the time, to agree to it. Unfortunately, it was likely too late.
Myself, and many of the core team, had been contributing to Open Source projects for years, so this was especially painful.
Hell, I was on the team that took Mozilla Open Source.
@lisamelton @RichiH yeah thanks, I appreciate your honesty and comments. ❤️ personally I was involved in khtml only in a tiny contribution and really late in the day, it would have been great to have been able to do more.
@lisamelton congrats! time certainly flies. what's your take on today's @Vivaldi and the need for another engine outside US borders?
@flyingpenguin There's a definite need for everyone that values privacy and safety to move away from dependence on U.S. technology.
I think Vivaldi is a fine choice, but I'm personally moving away from Chromium-based browsers because of Google's decision to finally go through with hobbling ad blockers like the uBlock Origin extension.
Right now, my default browser on Windows and Linux is Firefox.
@lisamelton @flyingpenguin @Vivaldi
I can’t find it now, but Vivaldi said that they cut those parts out of the code base when merging. They don’t just adopt the full Chromium. So every ad blocker will work in Vivaldi.
@lisamelton @marc_eu @flyingpenguin what we said, two years ago, is that we would maintain it for as long as it was available in Chromium. We initially expected to drop support in June 2025, but since Google kept postponing it, we've been able to still have it this far.
Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to maintain this ourselves. Thi is one of the reasons why we have a built-in adblocker, to minimize dependency on extensions that can suddenly (or not so suddenly) disappear. Our adblocker won't be affected by these changes, but mv2 extensions won't work much longer.
@Vivaldi @lisamelton @flyingpenguin
"we don't have the resources to maintain this ourselves"
Understandable, but then I agree with Lisa, that using Chromium will be a problem. Now it's ad-blockers and in the future: .... ?
I now also understand why @kagihq did choose WebKit for it's Orion browser on macOS, Windows and Linux.
@lisamelton @marc_eu @Vivaldi @flyingpenguin
I assume they're doing something similar to Brave and maintaining a small list of Manifest V2 plugins. Could be wrong. That said their own tracker/ad blocker is pretty good (as is Brave's) and thankfully not at the whims of Google.
@lisamelton Appreciate your take! I totally am with you on the move from Google, yet they're propping up Firefox too, so I'm eagerly watching @Vivaldi to see if they can get any leverage while dependent (like Firefox, I suppose). @jon has me impressed so far. I'm also sensing how critical infrastructure budget and commitment changes the calculus. My quick back of napkin estimate is just 50 million/Eur per year, but you're the expert and know far better, so that is why I was curious.
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/papers-please-who-does-your-browser-engine-actually-belong-to/
@flyingpenguin Oh yeah,
@jon is a good guy and someone you can trust.
It's just that I, personally, need a complete ad blocker solution with the dumpster fire that the Web has become. And I can't do that with Chromium.
As for Firefox sucking on the Google teat, that is very true. But the first thing I do whenever II install Firefox is change the search engine to noai.duckduckgo.com.
I really do want Vivaldi to succeed though!
@lisamelton @flyingpenguin @jon @Vivaldi
Have you tried Pihole for ad blocking? It's a lifesaver.
@lisamelton I saw you on stage at a WWDC talking about Safari, saying that the team wouldn't merge any PR that negatively impacted render speeds, IIRC. You were the first trans technologist I saw on stage! I hadn't started yet but seeing you up there made a difference. Thanks. <3
@CoralineAda You are very welcome and I'm so glad I could make a difference! 🤗🥰💖
And, yes, I was both renowned and cursed for my zero regression policy regarding performance. 😊
@lisamelton Well Epiphany or GNOME Web uses WebKit
@lisamelton thank you for you service 🫂😘💜
Congrats.
I had some gripes with Safari in the '10s. It always seemed to blocking powerful modern progressive web apps somewhere every time you tried. Very limited localstorage implementation, difficult manifest handling over online states, limited SVG support, very, very, very late support of webRTC.
I always had the nagging suspicion this was by design to keep people paying the app store tax.
@d4v Thank you so much for being such a loyal defender of Safari! 🤗💖
@lisamelton I didn’t know there was a Safari for windows
@cubeofcheese It was only actively developed for a few years starting in 2007.
@lisamelton Thank you and your team for Safari, which has been my primary browser for very many years. ❤️
@jeridansky Awwww, thank you so much! 😊🥰💖
@lisamelton thanks for your hard work.
Happy anniversary
@lisamelton Now if we can just re-instil the notion of any changes must make the app faster…
Thanks again, for all the amazing work. :-)
@octothorpe Indeed! And you are very welcome. 😊💖
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@lisamelton sadly Apple completly abandonned it, when we see how it evolve today it's more a, maintenance (add the new tech they must), and change the gui time to time.
but optimisation is missing, with all other engine outpacing it speed.
hope one day it come back on many other platform (linux, windows) and apple finally start to inject thing into it that is not maintenance gui change or AI