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"."

Comments

Let me know when its free to use

[CrazyJim1]

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.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[Kaamoss]

Sorry, but I gotta side with CrazyJim here on this one. I never use the browser on any of my phones just because the data service charge is so high. I'm sure it makes sense for some people but deffinitly not for most. it's not the same as asking an isp for a reuter and not exspecting to pay for bandwidth because the primary reason for use of a phone is to make phone calls. I think a lot of people have lost site of this and confuse their phones for instant messaging, camera, web browsing toys and not a device to place a call. But that's just my 2 cents.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[faedle]

On my carrier, I get unlimited data usage and only 300 minutes of "anytime minutes". My PalmOne Treo is an IMing, SMSing, SSHing computer that just happens to have an expensive-to-use phone attached to it.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Wither KHTML?

[squiggleslash]

I wonder if it'd be worth the Konqueror people taking WebKit/etc and porting it back to KDE, rather than trying to keep up with WebKit in KHTML when the latter is obviously having problems because of slight architectural differences.

This way the three groups, Nokia, KDE, and Apple, will be working on making one browser engine perfect, rather than working on two very similar systems that, really, have no major advantages over one-another.

Symbian has little relationship with OS X/OpenStep. It strikes me if this was easy for Nokia to do, it should be architecturally reasonable to port it to a KDE environment.

Re:Wither KHTML?

[m50d]

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.

Re:Wither KHTML?

[jellomizer]

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.

That's quite strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I had thought WebKit had some nontrivial tyings into Cocoa. Is WebKit that neatly separable from Cocoa? Does it use qt internally still?

Re:That's quite strange

[Elwood P Dowd]

1. Yes, they meant WebCore not WebKit
2. There's a bit of mailing list activity from people working on porting WebKit (and the internal qt-alike), and the Apple folks have been encouraging.

Dunno who's doing the work, because I'm not watching CVS or bugzilla or nothing. It sounds like they'll merge the existing GTK Webkit port first. Some dude says he's going to pound on it 'till it compiles in Windows and swears he'll keep it up for a year. Dunno who these people are, so I don't know how much salt to take anything with.

But the notable thing is that the Apple employees are down with WebKit getting ported to Windows, and that would imply that they will try to keep that port maintained.

Mildly offtopic, but interesting, right?

hmmmm.

[Kaamoss]

So dosn't that mean that the Nokia 60 browser is opensource too? Wonder where I can get the source code or if they'll bother to provide it. If anyone finds a link to it let me know.

Re:hmmmm.

[oever]

It is required! The code for the _library_ must be provided. The code linking to it may stay undisclosed.

Re:hmmmm.

[Coryoth]

Of course Nokia has apparently taken webkit and built the GUI for it using GTK+. The result is GTK-WebKit, which has indeed been open sourced - you can find it here. I have no idea how much of their browser that contains, but at the least it is an HTML renderer and basic GUI, which should get you the better part of the browser whole.

Does a GTK+/KHTML browser count as cross desktop cooperation, or a mutant bastard offspring created by third party mad scientists?

Jedidiah.

Hmm

[Payalnik]

I do suppose Opera has more experience in fitting web pages to small screens. Have they made it better?

Re:Hmm

[kaarlov]

Nokia ships lots of phones with Opera as a web browser. See http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/

If Nokia is serious with their own KHTML-based browser for their phones, it could be major financial blow for Opera Software.

Re:Hmm

[kaarlov]

Yes they do. According to Opera Software's first quarter earnings, they get three times more revenue from licensing their browser for various pocket devices, than from selling the desktop version for Windows and Linux.

How long...

[Fermatprime]

How long until Cringely announces the details of the upcoming Apple/Intel/Nokia merger?

Return the favor?

[DeepFried]

Maybe they can return the favor by being more Mac friendly in their desktop and sync software rollouts.

I have recently "discovered" the series 60 platform and I am really pleased with it. I was so happy with it that I was able to dump my Treo for a 6620. Finally, a real multitaksting smartphone alternative (non-msft). It's the best thing since sliced bread. Now if they could just give OS X some love.

Minimo

[brolewis]

What happened to the minimo project? I thought that Nokia was supposedly funding this project for use on its phones. Is this an apparant shift or just a bad memory on my part?

Re:Minimo

[jp10558]

I think Nokia just want's lots of choice for browser on their phones, as they also tend to include Opera on the series 60 IIRC.

It's very spiffy

[Kyro]

This has been out for a while, i've been using gtk-webcore for the last two months on my Slackware box.
you can get it from here and there's lots of other interesting tidbits of information on that site.

Gtk+ WebCore

[mukund]

Gtk+ WebCore seems to be made at Nokia.

Wrong...WebCore, not WebKit

[xeno314]

How hard is it for the submitter/editor to catch this one? WebKit doesn't even appear in the press release...

Good

[pherthyl]

This is great news. The more people using KHTML based browsers the better for website compatibility. I think having 3 browser engines around with non-insignificant market share would be great.

Tabs?

[tivoKlr]

Does it support tiny little tabs across the top of the browser screen? Then it'll be the total "killer app" ;-P

Re:That's exciting

[SpamJunkie]

Ironically, Nokia is the only phone manufacturer with a sane software interface.

I thought this too until I started to do some serious research. My aging nokia needed to be replaced and the new nokias turned me off for the same reason: horribly deformed keypads and general ugliness. Even though I was afraid of giving up the familiar interface I checked out some alternatives.

To my surprise Sony Ericsson has really usable phones. I had discounted them because their phones lack dedicated answer/hang up keys, but they're actually quite good. Add on the fact that they don't make you do gymnastics to dial a number and I was sold.

But why?

[Gilesx]

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?

Re:But why?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

They did gave a large handout to Mozilla. And they do use, and will be using Opera as a browser in their phones. The reason why they are spreading their money and resources is to increase competition. By having three camps developing browsers for phones you get more competition, more innovation and more choices. In other words Opera can't rest or it will soon find itself phased off. The other reason I think is that they want to speed the development of phone browsers in case MS would come up with better phone browser. And we all know that they won't be selling their browser with out their OS. And finally, we are talking about Nokia research here. They are wonderfull in spending and investing money in start-ups and new technologies. It really is pennies to them. Actually they get much more back, because of publicity and maybe more positive view in the minds of developers. Just my 10 cents.

Re:WebCore port could be more...

[iluvcapra]

I seem to remember Dave Hyatt setting us straight on that one. The iTunes Music Store does not use WebCore or WebKit to render its pages.

Just why, I couldn't guess. It seems like a natural application for it.

Re:Animated .GIF bug?

[wubboy]

Who the hell wants animated Gif's anyway? I'd Call that a feature.