Apple Announces New "Safari" Browser

In kicking off the Macworld Expo
keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled
a new Macintosh web browser named
Safari. Jobs
said the browser was
"based on standards", "works with any Web site", has much-improved
performance over IE (page-loading speed is "three times faster",
JavaScript performs twice as fast and it launches "40% faster" - comparisons
to Netscape 7.0 shows similar performance gains on the Macintosh platform).
The KDE connection: "[f]or its Web page
rendering engine, Safari draws on software from the Konqueror open source
project. Weighing in at less than one tenth the size of another open
source renderer, Konqueror helps Safari stay lean and responsive.
"
The good news for Konqueror: Apple, which said that it will be
"a good open source citizen [and] share[] its enhancements with
the Konqueror open source community
", has today sent all
changes, along with a detailed changelog
, to the KHTML developers.
Congratulations to the KHTML developers for this recognition of
their outstanding efforts. Update @22:34: Dirk Mueller has
posted
an interesting mail from the Safari engineering manager as well
as his response. Hats off to collaboration!

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Comments

by Jon (not verified)

Konqueror just got a massive update from some apple developers?

by RJ (not verified)

... and what's more this browser ROCKS big time !!!!!

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

And here i thought Apple Sucked, just when they do something that makes me mad they turn around and use my favorite browser code in Safari, never thought i would say this but kudos to Apple. KDE guys bust out the champagne you guys deserve this recognition, your product was always superior to GNOME and I have been saying it for years.

by re (not verified)

>> your product was always superior to GNOME and I have been saying it for years.

And many KDE users are still the same trolls as they used to be..

Does it ever stop?
(heck, this article doesn't even have _anything_ to do with desktop wars?)

by ac (not verified)

The original troll is Miguel de Icaza on the KDE lists! You reap what you sow...

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

We can be trolls on our own lists, the only trolls are GNOME users who come in here and try to bring down the achievements of the KDE group. I wonder how many flame letters Apple has got tho from the Mozilla developers for choosing Konqueror as its standard for its new browser, I can see it now. In retaliation for Apple choosing KHTML and KJS Mozilla will no longer be developing a port of its browser for OS X.

As for the desktop wars, KDE hyas already beaten GNOME on ease of use, GNOME 2 still has some quirks i dont like but hey keep trying maybe you guys will eventually get it right.

by re (not verified)

>> the only trolls are GNOME users who come in here and try to bring down the achievements of the KDE group

Have you ever heard of the word 'generalization'?

I sad 'many KDE users are still the same trolls as they used to be' while you're saying that _all_ Gnome users are trolls...

That's quite a difference.

And I'm definitely not browsing this site to bring down the achievements of the KDE group, I've got better things to do.
Unfortunately the trolls (both the Gnome/KDE ones) don't seem to. :|

I wonder why they're doing it actually.
Do they expect that Gnome users will use KDE instead because they're saying it's better?
(I'm not going to argue about which DE is better btw, everyone has their own choice)

by Brad (not verified)

Get a life both of you!

by Paul Crowley (not verified)

Hey, is there any reason KHTML couldn't be made to work for Gnome, the way Galeon brings Mozilla to Gnome?

I don't know who would work on such a politically loaded project, but if the engine is better, why not use it? If it can be ported to Aqua and OS X it can surely be ported to Gnome...

by Biswa (not verified)

I actually proposed something like this a few months back and there was some discussion over it. We did this before for gtkhtml (it was a port of the original khtml code used in KDE 1.x). But in the end, it was felt that it did not offer compelling advantages over Gecko, which is improving in terms of speed and footprint all the time.

You can read the discussion here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/2002-September/msg00059....

Rgds,
Biswa.

-------------------------------
Hey, is there any reason KHTML couldn't be made to work for Gnome, the way Galeon brings Mozilla to Gnome?

I don't know who would work on such a politically loaded project, but if the engine is better, why not use it? If it can be ported to Aqua and OS X it can surely be ported to Gnome...
----------------------------------

by glenalec (not verified)

Yes, Apple has moved a notch or two back up from the bottom of my opinion today.

by Fredrik C (not verified)

Just one more evidence of KDE programmers extraordinary skill, enjoy your fame you deserved it!

Who said anything about KDE code being slow?

by Bart (not verified)

This is so revolutionary! Khtml on Macs! Does anyone have any idea how long it'll take before Linux people can see these changes in Konqueror at least in alpha or beta form?

by Datschge (not verified)

I'm expecting the merger of both sources to take not too much of time. I guess KDE 3.1 will be delayed again a little though. ;)

by thefrog (not verified)

Argg!! Don't make such funny expections.
Some developers might here them ):-

No, I think 3.2 is more reasonable, or may be 3.1.x.

by Gunter Ohrner (not verified)

Hey, KDE 3.1 is feature frozen since quite a few weeks (moths?) and currently at RC level. These changes will go into 3.2. (3.1.x is for translation, serious bug and security fixes only, as 3.0.x was.)

Greetings,

Gunter Ohrner

by Sheldon (not verified)

Probably KDE 3.2 at the earliest.

by Rob Kaper (not verified)

Some changes have already been committed to HEAD (what will be 3.2) and bugfixes are being backported to KDE_3_1_BRANCH to appear in 3.1.1. Since few of these improvements are grave bugs, I doubt 3.1 will be delayed, only showstoppers can do so now. No indication of a delay on the lists either.

by Dawnrider (not verified)

Did you say:

This is so revolutionary! Khtml on *E*Macs!

::grins::

(ref to all the many Emacs is large enough to be it's own OS jokes)

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

What they need to do is seperate the konqueror code from the base packages so we as developers can have a better structure, one of the problems I have now is that if i make any changes to theKonqueror code and recompile, something in KDE crashes It takes me forever to debug and find the problem., who knows maybe Apple will release Safari for Linux. I know im pushing the limits and probably a little bit of wishful thinking.

by Michael Collette (not verified)

> who knows maybe Apple will release Safari for Linux.

Or not. Apple, as much as I don't care for their stuff personally, does understand one vital concept that seems to get lost in the world of Linux. People flock to apps, not OS's. I've been hearing from just too many sources a very similar theme keep coming up. What can you run under Linux that you can't run under Windows? More specifically, what desktop style app would drive me away from Windows to Linux?

Ask a Mac user a similar question, and they'll come back with a stack of responses concerning a number of fairly recent Apple software offerings. They might even point out a few 3rd party apps that are Mac only. These are far more compelling reasons to use a Mac than anything that OSX itself brings to the table.

What seems to be happening far too often is that the really cool stuff developed for Linux gets itself a Windows port going. Yes, that app now enjoys a wider audience, but in so doing actually hurts the long term acceptance of a Unix desktop. As closed up as it sounds, I believe that some of the cooler applications out there need to code so specifically for a Unix environment that porting to Windows is made far more difficult.

Personally, the KDE desktop itself is a compelling reason to stay right where I'm at with FreeBSD. KMail jumps way up there as a killer app for me, as it's arguably the best mail client I've used to date. As compelling as these are for me, they aren't going to force a shift by themselves. These things are what keeps the user that has moved over.

Over this next year, the entirety of the Free software community needs to be able to answer the question of what you can do here that you can't do elsewhere. Arguments over price, security, and even stability just don't play with the desktop user like they do with the server administrator.

On the plus side though, I truly believe that this is the year where Microsoft will begin to feel the impact of KDE coming strong into their desktop market space. You think they're paranoid about the data center? Just wait until the end users start shifting! I can hardly wait for the priceless over-the-top reactions to come.

by Gunnar Liljas (not verified)

In the absence of /. ratings, I'd like to say:

Score:5, Insightful

by Terry (not verified)

But anything that incorporates Apple improvements is most welcome. The mention of sharing a backend common codebase is the real key to this budding relationship. Good work Apple and KDE developers !!!

by Jel (not verified)

> The mention of sharing a backend common codebase
> is the real key to this budding relationship

Yes.. I hope Apple's reply to that question will be as openly
published and reported as this has been so far. HINT, HINT. :)

by rob shaw (not verified)

try it on a dial up connection, then talk about how fast it renders. it's pathetic. stop fixing 3.1.x and release 3.2.

by ac (not verified)

I use it on dialup, it's great. Mozilla on the other hand is slow as molasses.

by rick (not verified)

Safari ist a great application and runs very fast under mac os x. congratulations for both developer groups, for KDe and apple!
mac os x makes realy fun!!!

by a.c. (not verified)

Navigator
Explorer
Konquoror
Safari is only natural for exploring a conquerored land
They do have a sense of humour.

by anon (not verified)

ROTFLOL

by Jochen P. (not verified)

You forgot the Exploiter (IE5&6) between Konqueror and Safari :-)

by Jos (not verified)

Is Safari still so fast when you go in a Jaguar?

by Jesper (not verified)

Safari rocks so much in Jaguar that you get your rocks off!

by mac.zooks (not verified)

Safari is so fast on Jaguar, I may never get broadband! (Except that it's absolutely necessary for quality streaming A/V stuff)... I live in an apartment in South Dakota, and there are not many broadband options here I would want to consider. So pending further developments, it's nice to have Safari on my iMac - at least for loading web pages at nearly breakneck speed.

by vascodagama (not verified)

Safari means "journey" or "travel" in Kiswahili. For political incorrectness it isn't even in the same league as "Konqueror."

--Vasco da Gama

by gord (not verified)

So that would make Tourist the next browser :)

by Nicholas Shanks (not verified)

Tourist - that be iCab then...

by Roland (not verified)

With Apple's support, Konqueror/KHTML will make the step from unknown marginalized browser to established browser web designers check against.

Apple's changes, while not revolutionary will also make Konqueror better.

Great news.

Now if only KDE 3.1 would be out :-)

by Asdex (not verified)

> Now if only KDE 3.1 would be out :-)

Give them a few days so they can make Konqueror faster then Safari ;-)

by Justin Donnelly (not verified)

I don't think the importance of this can be underestimated. There was a point a year or two ago where it really looked like we were entering an era where web design was based on IE and IE only. From there it's only a hop, skip and a jump away from Microsoft eliminating the viability of Linux desktop. Only the most fanatical of the Linux faithful could stick with a platorm whose browsers can longer render the latest pages.

But with the recent success of Mozilla and now millions of Mac heads about to switch to a non-IE browser, the balance will shift back to standards-based web design.

This is really great!

by Paul McGarry (not verified)

I presume you mean "overestimated".

by Anonymous (not verified)

No, "Understated".

Perhaps.

by Justin Donnelly (not verified)

Oh... yeah. I meant "overestimated". Well, that really took the punch out of my post. =)

by kodiac (not verified)

actually overstated would work nicely.
I hope you are right about this ending the era of ie centric
web page design.

by Mario (not verified)

I think what you've said is very insightful!

by Sabin Densmore (not verified)

Web developers in my office are already downloading and testing, finding out what bugs to look out for (not many, so far) and getting ready for including Safari in the QA process. Well, okay, so at least *I* am ;). But seriously, we're moving out of the DOM1 world into DOM2, and khtml/Safari are great.

And I have to say, that the ChangeLog from Apple was very helpful in getting insight into how the browser has been put together.

Kudos to KDE and Apple.

sd

by germain (not verified)

Champagne !
This is extraordinary exciting...
Kudos to KDE and Apple, for
both their past and future shines !

by Moritz Moeller-... (not verified)

Too bad that these efforts were not coordinated from the beginning, because right now, the changes in safari-khtml look very massive (and impressive!), so basically this is a fork. I hope that the fork will be closed soon, though, maybe in time for KDE-3.2?

Congratulations to the great KDE developers, who beat Mozilla. We KDE users knew it all the time :-)

by Henry H (not verified)

well they wanted it to be secret and openly working together with the KHTML-team would've forced them to reveal themselves and open up a wormcan of whining for it to be released before they even got started. This is the way companies has to work on Opensource implementations when they start out..

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

Maybe this will change all that and other commercial contributors won't have to hide out in the woods and sneak code in.

by moor (not verified)

> Too bad that these efforts were not coordinated from the beginning, because right now,

This was because Safari was a secret* project. Jobs announces these "secret" projects every year at Macworld.

* secret as in rumors had been flooding the mac news sites that apple was working on a browser.. everyone expected it to be a Chimera-like browser, especially after Apple hired it's creator.

> Congratulations to the great KDE developers, who beat Mozilla.

It hasn't exactly "beaten" Mozilla, as khtml still has a long ways in the CSS department and other technologies (XHTML) to go to be on the level of Gecko. Of course, Apple's development efforts should go a long way to briding the gap (especially in CSS).