- cross-posted to:
- sandrolinux
- opensource
- firefox
- cross-posted to:
- sandrolinux
- opensource
- firefox
New gecko based browsers are rare nowadays but this one is especially unique to me because it is more than just “firefox with tweaks” like a lot of the ones I’ve come across. The UI is different, it’s working on custom settings, a new more powerful sidebar, a new theming system, and potentially IPFS/Dat support further down the line. It’s very early in development but it’s still impressive as it is.
Blink isn’t a fork of WebKit, it’s a improvement of WebKit, like WebKit is a improvement of KHTML from KDE. Gecko was a trademark of Netscape, first called NGLayout and was adopted by Mozilla in 1998 until today. The underlying problem is that there has not been a development of a new engine for 20 years and all the ones that were there have fallen by the wayside, because they cannot adapt to new web formats. The only ones left, aside from some rudimentary engines in the Text Browsers, are Blink, Gecko, and perhaps a while longer WebKit, before becoming completely obsolete. Safari is already in the benchmarks in performance and compatibility with IE.