Google Open-Sources Chrome For iOS (venturebeat.com)

Google has uploaded its Chrome for iOS code into the open-source Chromium repository. In other words, Chrome for iOS has now been open-sourced like Chrome for other platforms, letting anyone examine, modify, and compile the project. From a report: Chromium is the open-source Web browser project that shares much of the same code as Google Chrome, and new features are often added there first. Google intended for Chromium to be the name of the open-source project, while the final product name would be Chrome, but developers have taken the code and released versions under the Chromium name. Eventually, many browser makers started using it as a starting point; Opera, for example, switched its browser base to Chromium in 2013. Since its inception, Chromium was a desktop-only affair. That changed in May 2015 with the open-sourcing of Chrome for Android.

Comments

Now if only

[wbr1]

Someone will port Android to Apple phones.......

Re:Now if only

[Neuroelectronic]

How about sovereignty to any phone? Killer feature of the millennium.

Re:Now if only

[saloomy]

malware follows marketshare. Keep F-Droid quiet if you want it to stay that way.

Re:Now if only

[SeaFox]

Someone will port Android to Apple phones.......

You mean now if someone would only port iOS to other handsets?
Why would I want to buy an overpriced iPhone to run a mobile OS already available on so many other options, like phones with better screens, longer lasting batteries, user replaceable batteries, and headphone jacks?

Re: Now if only

[cyber-vandal]

How do you know?

Fake News Headline.

[Anonymous Coward]

They released Chromium for iOS. They didn't open-source Chrome.

Does it really matter?

[DontBeAMoran]

As far as I know, all browsers on iOS must render using iOS' built-in Webkit.

Re:Does it really matter?

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can do whatever you want if you build it yourself and install it on your own iPhone / iPad.

Of course, if you've only got the free developer certificate - I believe you'll need to recompile and reinstall it every seven days.

Just a skin

[thegarbz]

So Google posted a few bitmaps and a menu scheme as a front end to Safari? Why bother. A browser is nothing without it's rendering engine.

Re:Just a skin

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Bookmarks, incognito mode, a bunch of UI things.

The base browser on BlackBerry used webkit. But it was so painful for many reasons - how you zoomed, how you got pages, how you dealt with tabs. It was very painful

Re:Just a skin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention spying on the user and sending data to Google. They love it when you sync your history, forms, and passwords. Safari alone doesn't do that for them.

Actual repo link

[SuperKendall]

Since it's not in the summary here is the repo link.

Re:What does this mean for Widevine?

[omnichad]

It means that Chromium and Chrome are not 100% identical - same as any and all proprietary code in Chrome (such as patent-restricted codecs). Bad headline, as I'm sure they released "Chromium" source.

See for yourself

[SuperKendall]

I would say yes, but I have been working in Objective C for a long time now - if you can read C, Obj-C should be even more readable. I feel like ObjC makes things much clearer with named labels and naming conventions. An example from the Google source:

[self.browsingDataRemovalController
    removeIOSSpecific-IncognitoBrowsingData-FromBrowserState:otrBrowserState
    mask:removeAllMask
    completionHandler:completion];

The dashes (-) in there you can ignore, that particular named parameter was freaking out the Slashdot lameness filter.

The code is just passing three params to the self.browsingDataRemovalController method call.

Nope

[SuperKendall]

malware follows marketshare.

That hasn't been true for iOS since inception. It's not just marketshare but weakness of the system.

So,

[BitztreamNotARealNam]

How's life in the hypocrite lane?