[platform-swt-dev] SWT Browser - Chromium vs Safari [Was: Browser WEBKIT

[Scott Elcomb <psema4@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all.  I'd like to follow up on an old post (Jan '11) - specifically:

<http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/platform-swt-dev/msg07195.html>

"The cross-platform API exposed by WebKit is much more core than the
one from Gecko, so each platform requires its own WebKit port
(basically a layer)  that bridges the gap between this core
functionality and embedding apps like SWT.  There isn't a
cross-platform WebKit api that would actually be useful to expose to
SWT clients, so consequently there isn't something comparable to
JavaXPCOM available.  As an example of this cross-platform difference,
SWT has a completely different implementation of WebKit.java for each
supported window system, whereas its Mozilla.java class is shared
across them.

Chrome also uses WebKit, but it implements its own port on top which
is different from the win32 port provided by Apple (even when running
on Windows).  So SWT's Browser implementation cannot embed WebKit from
a Chrome installation.  To do so would require Chrome's WebKit port to
commit to providing a stable API for embedders, and SWT would then
have to do another implementation from scratch.  This work is not
currently planned."

It appears that the ChromiumEmbedded project is making good progress
(now with Windows, Mac OS-X and Linux support*) and I'm wondering if
SWT will be able to leverage those gains?


Best,
- Scott.


* See "Notable Changes" at <http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/>

-- 
  Scott Elcomb
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