The *real* first KHTML browser on Windows

Monday, June 25. 2007

The real first KHTML browser on Windows

There's been a lot of hubbub lately about Safari being released on Windows, which is based on WebKit, which is based on KHTML, and how it'll beat Konqueror as the first KHTML-based browser on Windows.

Then you hear this other camp firing back about Swift, whose homepage proudly declares "The First KHTML Browser for Windows."

However, I'm here to set the record straight. To the best of my knowledge the first KHTML-based browser on Windows is ThunderHawk, which appears to have been using KHTML under-the-hood since at least 2004 and probably at least 2002.

Yes, it's a WinCE/Windows Mobile browser. But it's still Windows.

Posted by Jeff Mitchell in jefferai at 17:35 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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freak!

#1 adrian on 2007-06-25 20:48 (Reply)

Sadly, Swift is moving away from KHTML and going for Gecko.

(And I don't really see the point of building one more browser on top of Gecko, but that's another story).

#2 manu on 2007-06-26 00:17 (Reply)

How odd. Because there's nothing special about Swift other than that it's KHTML-based. So without that there's, well, nothing.

#2.1 Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:29 (Reply)

You should ask Simon Hausmann aka tronical about his konqueror embedded port in 2001 or so.

Ciao, Marcus

#3 Marcus Meissner on 2007-06-26 03:43 (Reply)

Ahh, so I might be wrong here...then again I'm not sure how long ago ThunderHawk was first released. I do also know that supposedly Konqueror was on Windows as a Cygwin package, but since that's almost more of emulation rather than native I didn't really consider it.

#3.1 Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:31 (Reply)

And for desktop windows, there's Swift: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(web_browser)

#4 Eike Hein on 2007-06-26 05:51 (Reply)

Clearly you did not read the second sentence.

#4.1 Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:30 (Reply)

slightly out topic :

I think the free community would have better profited if KHTML was under the GPL.

When a library provides a significant unique capability, releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost: it obliges companies to release their fixes under the GPL too. (See [2] for "why to not use the LGPL for libraries"). And KHTML is a multi-million dollar project.

I know that Apple releases back its changes. However they did not do that as openly from the beginning on. They do not release all Safaris code back, only webkits code. And if they decide to stop to do so...then the WebKit adventure is finished.

Commiters comes and go all the time.

Finally, I also think that Apple should give credit to the developers of KHTML. Nowhere on their homepage KHTML is mentioned. They also do not mention it on their great conferences.

[1] http://www.apple.com/de/safari/
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

#5 Daniel Beck on 2007-06-26 05:56 (Reply)

Well, their conferences are not so great then are they?

Apple has a pretty poor reputation in the security community, and as far as I know in the open-source community too (how many fixes have they given back to FreeBSD? Apache? Perl? Bash? Postfix? Samba?)

In fact, in my experience they only have a good reputation with style-conscious consumers...

#5.1 Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:34 (Reply)

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