
Thread beginning with comment 348944
Does it really matter?
by elsewhere on Sat 14th Feb 2009 17:58 UTC
Member since:

If Chrome's choice of GTK upsets anyone, there is the freely available option to not use it. Since it's going to be open, I'd frankly prefer that the DE's take a look at the goods and incorporate the good parts into their own native browsers. Google is probably hoping for downstream contributions to various front-ends, but there's nothing to say that downstream can't work with the Chrome backend and collaborate with upstream.

KDE already comes with Webkit integrated now. Just from playing with the Arora browser I can see a remarkable improvement in rendering and consistency over KHTML. If Chrome can help point the KDE or Nokia team to providing a low-footprint browser that's high on performance and low on bloat and extras, and with much better compatibility that the poor, beleaguered KHTML Konqueror I'm currently using, I'd see that as being much more valuable to the KDE/Qt community.

Gnome is already moving towards webkit as the standard backend for epiphany, and they would have a similar opportunity to offer a lightweight but powerful native browser for their userbase.

Personally, I block google cookies as it is so I can't see myself trusting Chrome regardless of the toolkit it chooses (I know, tinfoil hat and all that). But if it can help provide some real competition for Firefox, help further adoption of webkit without fracturing it, and help lead to performance improvements with things like javascript to improve the overall browsing experience, then it's a good thing all over.

Of course, that a lot of ifs...

Reply Score: 4