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Nokia Develops a New Browser on Apple WebKit
Althazzar writes "Nokia has built a new browser for their Symbian system based on the WebKit open source project from Apple, released last week. "Apple is pleased to assist Nokia in creating their new Series 60 browser based on the same KHTML open source technology that powers Apple's Safari"."
I have a built in web browser in my phone, but I never fired it up because it has fees that go along with its use.
God spoke to me.
But not nearly as exciting as it would be if Nokia would make a Series 60 phone that didn't have gnome-sized buttons or have them arranged in strange, unnatural ways.
Why can't Nokia make a decent Series 60 phone?! To boot, they're all ugly as sin.
I want Series 60, especially if it has a decent browser on it. But all the Series 60 phones are wonderful pieces of technology with garbage physical interfaces. It's so sad, considering how usable some of their lower-end models are.
Ironically, Nokia is the only phone manufacturer with a sane software interface.
WebKit doesn't meet KDE's coding standards. They're quite strict, in order to keep a clean codebase, wheras Apple has rushed features in to a certain extent. Also, KHTML is integrated into KDE, and a large part of the difference between it and WebKit is that Apple have done a lot of work to remove that integration (and add their own). I suspect the reason Nokia are using WebKit is it is mostly de-integrated. Porting to KDE would just mean adding all the integration back in. (kparts, kwallet, etc.). Not too much work, but pretty pointless because the result would be very similar to KHTML.
I am trolling
So you saying the KDE people are producing a lesser project because they rather sacrifice features, correct behavior, and speed for clean code? perhaps they should reevaluate their levels.
No no no.
The KDE people are producing a project which is not as absolutely maximal as it could be today in order to prevent maintainance problems later.
Or rather, APPLE is sacrificing potentially the future quality of their project to improve the quality of their project today.
Yeah maybe you sometimes need to put in an ugly fix to get it to work right. But you are not a large multinational software project with many contributors.
Apple can maybe get away with what they're doing because they do not rely to any degree on volunteers and so can do things like just throw a bunch of engineers at webkit someday in the future and say "refactor this to code standards, lackeys!". KDE does not have that luxury.
The first thing that came to my mind was the new dashboard widgets in Tiger. Remember, Dashboard widgets are written in Javascript, CSS, XML, and HTML. Each Widget is actual a webcore instance if my understanding is correct (or it's one big web core window). Couldn't be that difficult to make it work on this browser. And if you have seen the number of widgets out there (I was just @ WWDC), it is pretty amazing. And a lot of them would be perfect for cell phones. Just something to chew on...
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
Am I going senile here, or is this the same Nokia that gave a large handout to the Mozilla corporation?
This move just doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever to me, as if you believe the rumours, they had some kind of gecko based browser already up and running. All I can assume is that it just didn't cut the mustard.
Anyone know any more about this?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Problem. You have to fix a program. You have 2 hours to fix it, if you are over 2 hours you are fired. The clean version of making a function more adaptible will take 3 hours to do. Vs. Copying and pasting the fuction and altering the bits and pieces and give it a simular name dostuff2(int x,int y, float z).
Time it takes to code in reallife is actually an issue. If you spend to much time then you go over budget, when you are over budget then your job quality is in question, when your job quality is in question there is a hire chance of getting fired. These are real factors that are not taught in Computer Science, because in the virtual world people have endless time to write their code and make it optimised, and clean. In real life, If it takes you twice as long to write a program that is 25% faster. It is usually cheaper to buy a computer that is twice as fast then pay for optimised code. Also with the cost of repairing bad code vs. writting clean code from the start If the tradeoff of fixing code will simular amount of time as it does writting clean code you get the advantage of spreading the money over a longer period of time alling more time to invest money and make more.
Real life sucks doesn't it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You have to remember that many of the KDE developers are paid by Trolltech. And part of their job is to keep KDE locked into Qt
Trolltech uses KDE as a showcase, in order to sell proprietary Qt lock-in licenses. While KDE may use Qt under a GPL license, for proprietary software developers, allowing themselves to become locked in to proprietary Qt is the only way to create software that is fully integrated with the KDE desktop environment.
When Apple adopted KHTML for Safari, the first thing Apple did was to reorganize the KHTML code into logical layers, in order to separate out the Qt interface code. That way, Apple was able to replace the Qt interface layer with their own Aqua interface layer for OS/X.
Nokia then took Apple's layered KHTML code, known as Webcore, and created a GTK interface layer.
As any good software developer can tell you, that sort of code layering is useful, because of the flexibility it provides. If used throughout KDE, for example, it would allow KDE to be easily ported, beyond Qt, to multiple other GUI environments, such as GTK, Aqua, Windows, Mozilla's XUL, QNX's Photon, and so on. KDE could become the most open, most cross-platform, and most widely used desktop environment outside of Windows.
But, as I said, it wouldn't be in Trolltech's best interest, so it's probably not going to happen. I expect KDE will continue to be held back by Qt's licensing restrictions, which is a shame.
Wow... one wonders how you've remained unmodded down by the KDE zealots. Anyone pointing out the fatal flaws in that desktop and strategy are usually "-1, Don't want to listen" in seconds.
No matter how many times you tell them this, they still won't listen. They still continue to make ridiculous claims that KDE is technically superior, or has a better architecture than other desktops... all of which is complete fantasy. KDE is a dependency nightmare. It's poorly engineered, and most of its code is shockingly badly written. tha idiot m50d can be found on every KDE story (and most GNOME ones too) making ridiculous claims and idiotic statements about how KDE r00lz. It never occurs to him that thw work done on webkit made it *better* than KHTML -- not only at passing ACID tests, but from a pure software engineering standpoint.
Far from being a healthy project, KDE is totally dependent on TrollTech, it's health as a company and goodwill (don't bother mentioning the FreeQt agreements, they aren't worth the bandwidth used to email them). And these days, KDE is being badly left behind by GNOME.
After using a S710a for a little while, I found these little glitches...
1. Use it closed. Open the switchblade. Notice that it's upside down now? WTF?
2. Microphone is in the front of the phone. Hold it against your face. Nobody can hear a word you say. You MUST either hold it away from your face or use a BT headset. Genius move there, when they easily could have put it on the bottom.
3. Volume controls are lacking for many functions. There is no way to turn down the deafening camera sound, or to adjust many other sound volumes.
4. Up and down arrows on side don't control volume when not on a call. That's just retarded.
5. Buttons are on the part of the switchblade that moves. So if you use it sometimes-open, sometimes-closed, half the time a button is in one place, half the time it is in another. This makes is very difficult to learn where a button is.
6. Data usage is enormous. I looked through the Cingular online menus and... used up my entire (paltry) 500 KB data allotment. I never actually got any data; just looked at the options.
7. Menus are clumsy. For example, you have to cruise for ever to try to find a picture you recently took. It is easier to open the camera, go to View, then close the camera. Stupidly, that is much easier than following the menus.
8. General comment on switchblade form factor... DUMB! You get all the disadvantages of a wand and a flip. The screen is always exposed, so likely to scratch; yet you have to open it to use the buttons. Extra fun when you are using it closed and need to press a button... slide it open, and the friggin' button is upside down above the screen.
Those are the only flaws I can recall, but I only used it briefly.
Still think it's a good phone?
But your point about Americans buying habits is well taken. We'd rather get a free phone and get stuck into an enormous monthly contract for crappy service than actually pay dollars for a phone. We'll fall for any gimmick except a genuine good deal.
But that said, it is still almost impossible to get a really good phone in the U.S. without going through a very shady reseller.
which is exactly the opposite of what Nokia just said about KDE code in this article. good job!
You mean, in the PUBLIC RELATIONS release? Oh my... they said nice things in a P.R. article. Oh, and thanks for snipping that out of context: KDE is a dependency nightmare... ask Apple how many man-months it took them to sort out KHTML.
The rest of your message is well upto your usual standards: Vague nonsensical assertions about Red Hat's position with GNOME being the same as TrollTech and a, frankly, bizarre mention of Microsoft.