Adobe Flash Player 10 For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Adobe Flash Player 10 For Linux

Adobe has announced the first pre-release of Flash Player 10, which is their forthcoming next-generation solution that is under their open Flash specifications. Flash Player 10 delivers new 3D effect capabilities, custom filters and effects, advanced text layout, an enhanced drawing API, and visual performance improvements...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjQ3Nw

[fhuberts]

Phoronix: Adobe Flash Player 10 For Linux

Adobe has announced the first pre-release of Flash Player 10, which is their forthcoming next-generation solution that is under their open Flash specifications. Flash Player 10 delivers new 3D effect capabilities, custom filters and effects, advanced text layout, an enhanced drawing API, and visual performance improvements...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjQ3Nw

and again no 64 bit support
this is getting tiresome

however, since they released the spec I hope that the OSS implementation quickly catches up.

[apaige]

This is one of the things that annoys me the most with closed source software: their authors/companies rarely communicate about touchy subjects pertaining to their product. No news on a 64-bit port.

There are a lot of jerks in the Free Software world, but at least they tell you to shove your enhancement request you know where.

[DeepDayze]

Relax...this is a prerelease. Perhaps if they are prodded enough, they'll release a 64 bit version

[apaige]

With all the complaining that's been going on over at http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/, you can be sure the blog's author would have mentionned it.

[MU_Engineer]

Relax...this is a prerelease. Perhaps if they are prodded enough, they'll release a 64 bit version

I highly doubt it. A beta program is supposed to be feature-complete and just looking for bugs, so I wouldn't know why they wouldn't want to put a 64-bit Linux version out there for testing if they had one.

Looks like we're all going to have to keep using nspluginwrapper. Well, at least it's better than having to use a browser chroot like you do for the JRE plugin.

[DanL]

Well, at least it's better than having to use a browser chroot like you do for the JRE plugin.

Have you tried OpenJDK? http://openjdk.java.net/

[audi100quattro]

The penguin.swf post mentions performance improvements and the release notes say it won't work with compiz.

Anybody tried it with nspluginwrapper? I couldn't get 9.0.124 to work with it properly, still using 9.0.115.

[apaige]

Gnash is the only viable alternative for me. Not much works though.

[Tares]

As for me FP10 crashes FF like every few pages o_O back to the 9 ;-)

[audi100quattro]

As for me FP10 crashes FF like every few pages o_O back to the 9 ;-)

Is that using nspluginwrapper?

[sloggerKhan]

So this version is supposed to use hardware acceleration if you aren't using desktop compositing.

Well, I deactivated desktop effects on ubuntu and the thing is still clearly using CPU rendering.

Any ideas about how it's detecting compiz/compositing desktop effects?
Is uninstalling compiz the way to go about testing this?

[Aradreth]

So this version is supposed to use hardware acceleration if you aren't using desktop compositing.

Well, I deactivated desktop effects on ubuntu and the thing is still clearly using CPU rendering.

Any ideas about how it's detecting compiz/compositing desktop effects?
Is uninstalling compiz the way to go about testing this?
Disabling the composite extension in x.org would probably be the easiest way to check.

[Thetargos]

Disabling the composite extension in x.org would probably be the easiest way to check.

My thoughts exactly.

[etymxris]

I'd be interested in seeing what the proportion of x86 to x86_64 users are. I'd imagine that more linux users are on 64-bit versions by now. If that's the case, then only releasing a 32-bit client makes no sense.

Also, maybe I'm missing something, but if an app like flash is difficult to port to 64-bit, they're doing something wrong.

[Xanikseo]

I can see MAJOR improvements in performance. I can now watch full screen videos without watching a slide show and games play MUCH smoother.

Great :)

[urfe]

Xanikseo, what graphic card and which drivers? What about desktop compositing?

[oyvind]

Flash 10 + FF3 = not so good for stability. I'm seeing lots of crashes, been running this combo for a few hours (32bits, 'buntu-Hardy). Guess I should go and report som bugs.

[_txf_]

I love the fact that it is available for "Ubuntu OS " :rolleyes:

even when not taking its meaning literally I fail to see how they support ubuntu when you can't get debs of the packages

[Xanikseo]

Xanikseo, what graphic card and which drivers? What about desktop compositing?
I have a GeForce 8600gts with the 171.06 driver. I am not using compiz (don't have compositing disabled in xorg though). I do however notice that things are slower with compiz, like the old flash player 9 speed.

[puntarenas]

I do however notice that things are slower with compiz, like the old flash player 9 speed.
I can confirm this, using a 8800GT and Compiz there is no chance to watch flash movies fullscreen in a decent way.

That being said would be enough to call this new player rubbish again, but it is even worse. It still crashes Firefox quite often, which I believe is related to PulseAudio introduced to Ubuntu with Hardy Heron:
firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/192888)

:(

[oyvind]

I can confirm this, using a 8800GT and Compiz there is no chance to watch flash movies fullscreen in a decent way.

That being said would be enough to call this new player rubbish again, but it is even worse. It still crashes Firefox quite often, which I believe is related to PulseAudio introduced to Ubuntu with Hardy Heron:
firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/192888)

:(

First thing I did after installing Hardy Heron was to kill off PulseAudio. Using Flash 10 + FF3 with pure ALSA is also very crash-prone, unfortunately. But it's a beta, after all ..

[Kano]

It crashes very easyly when you try to watch videos fullscreen. Therefore I use now 9 again.

[audi100quattro]

hmm... nspluginwrapper says:

m-q plugins # nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins.old/libflashplayer.so
*** NSPlugin Viewer *** ERROR: /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins.old/libflashplayer.so: cannot make segment writable for relocation: Permission denied
nspluginwrapper: no appropriate viewer found for /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins.old/libflashplayer.so


I'm doing this as root, and it works for flash 9 (same file permissions, same location). Anybody see anything different? I shouldn't expect it to work any better in 64-bit than it does in 32-bit anyway, given all the crash reports.

[Svartalf]

I can confirm this, using a 8800GT and Compiz there is no chance to watch flash movies fullscreen in a decent way.

That being said would be enough to call this new player rubbish again, but it is even worse. It still crashes Firefox quite often, which I believe is related to PulseAudio introduced to Ubuntu with Hardy Heron:
firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/192888)

:(

It's got little to do with PulseAudio. I had several Gutsy boxes without it and I'd get crashes and hangs all the time with Flashplayer 9.

[jlward4th]

If you are having problems with Flash Player on Linux or have feature requests please go submit those:
https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Also, in case you are wondering about the lack of 64bit support, you can help make it happen! Check out my blog for details:
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2008/05/16/where-is-64-bit-linux-support-for-flash-player/

-James

[deanjo]

If you are having problems with Flash Player on Linux or have feature requests please go submit those:
https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Also, in case you are wondering about the lack of 64bit support, you can help make it happen! Check out my blog for details:
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2008/05/16/where-is-64-bit-linux-support-for-flash-player/

-James


Same Adobe crap, honestly, Adobe is probably the most pathetic company for fixing bugs. Only Adobe can put out a plug-in that can't even render their bloody website correctly.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c316/deanjo/SameFnBugSinceVer7.jpg

Still no 64-bit support despite it being out for 7 years. They use obsolete frameworks and then point fingers at Apple. They bring out a non-native x86 OS X version of CS2 despite having YEARS of advanced notice of Apple intent and never bring out a native binary for CS2 on the OSX86. Instead they screw people over by making them purchase a CS3 upgrade just so they can run it natively AND STILL BUILD IT ON A DEPRECIATED FRAMEWORK!

I really truly hope silverlight becomes the new web standard. At least it's open and truly crossplatform and already supports 64-bit.

[Redeeman]

I highly doubt it. A beta program is supposed to be feature-complete and just looking for bugs, so I wouldn't know why they wouldn't want to put a 64-bit Linux version out there for testing if they had one.

Looks like we're all going to have to keep using nspluginwrapper. Well, at least it's better than having to use a browser chroot like you do for the JRE plugin.

or maybe we are should not be using totally crappy crap closed plugins which are the worst slower piece of garbage ever created, and does not run into these issues?

I know i dont.

[Svartalf]

I really truly hope silverlight becomes the new web standard. At least it's open and truly crossplatform and already supports 64-bit.

Screw that... We just need people to work at providing the standards compliant support (funny...there IS a standard out there for this stuff, and it's NOT Flash or Silverlight...) for things like SVG, etc.

[deanjo]

Screw that... We just need people to work at providing the standards compliant support (funny...there IS a standard out there for this stuff, and it's NOT Flash or Silverlight...) for things like SVG, etc.

Until there is good professional supporting developer tools for those it's all a pipe dream (at least until the popular browsers are 100% compliant with those standards)

[StringCheesian]

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, guys.

I for one appreciate:
1. the presence of somebody from Adobe here
2. that the Linux version was released promptly

I'd like to thank everybody at Adobe for the above.

I really truly hope silverlight becomes the new web standard. At least it's open and truly crossplatform and already supports 64-bit.
Yeah right. Many developers have only ever worked in a predominantly Microsoft environment and check their code by bouncing it off Microsoft's implementation. If Moonlight (the Linux implementation) differs in even the slightest way from Silverlight (even if it's just a little stricter about the standard) it will be alien to such developers and will face the same uphill battle that Firefox did in getting web devs to write portable standards compliant code.

Now contrast that with the way Adobe and Sun are so careful to make sure Flash Player and Java are as identical as possible between operating systems. It's more foolproof for developers who don't know or care about other platforms and portability. And therefore better for Linux and Mac users.

Since 9 was released, all the Flash I've encountered on the internet has worked perfectly on Linux. Given Microsoft's history and the imperfect level of compatibility between .Net and Mono, I don't think it's realistic to expect the same with Silverlight.

[deanjo]

Now contrast that with the way Adobe and Sun are so careful to make sure Flash Player and Java are as identical as possible between operating systems. It's more foolproof for developers who don't know or care about other platforms and portability. And therefore better for Linux and Mac users.

How the heck can you say that Adobe and Sun are careful to make sure that they are compatible across OS's? Do you see 64-bit plug-ins from either one? Limiting usage to 1 specific architecture is NOT portability. When flash and java plugins work flawlessly in native architecture then and only then can you say they are more foolproof. They haven't even been testing it against Webkit which is being utilized by every next gen browser (FF4, Epiphany, Konq, Safari and more). If adobe truely wanted to help out they would be better off helping out the swfdec project which can run natively without ugly wrappers.

As far " will face the same uphill battle that Firefox did in getting web devs to write portable standards compliant code.", sorry dude your wrong on that part. FF did not try to get webdevs to follow standards compliant code as their own browser did not follow W3C compliance. FF is still trying to achieve that compliance in their browser and finally decided that it was easier to drop their own implementations in the gecko engine and join the WebKit movement which does offer that.

[StringCheesian]

How the heck can you say that Adobe and Sun are careful to make sure that they are compatible across OS's? Do you see 64-bit plug-ins from either one?
So what if Flash limits you to 32 bit? It's still better than being limited to Windows.

As far " will face the same uphill battle that Firefox did in getting web devs to write portable standards compliant code.", sorry dude your wrong on that part. FF did not try to get webdevs to follow standards compliant code as their own browser did not follow W3C compliance.
I refer to breaking web devs away from IE 6's nonstandard box model, the way more web devs had to start testing their code against multiple browsers instead of just IE before Firefox could make serious inroads - stuff like that. There are going to be similar problems with Silverlight.

[etymxris]

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c316/deanjo/SameFnBugSinceVer7.jpg

Does gnash and that that other free player have this issue? I always thought it was a problem with the way Firefox handles plugins.

Also, in case you are wondering about the lack of 64bit support, you can help make it happen! Check out my blog for details:
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2...-flash-player/
Is Adobe waiting for the Mozilla guys to finish before they start, or will everything work once the Mozilla guys get their shit sorted out?

Anyway, it seems that progress is being made. Anyone have an idea on the ETA for 64-bit flash on linux? It's been several years already so I'm not holding my breath.

[deanjo]

So what if Flash limits you to 32 bit? It's still better than being limited to Windows..

Where is the problem with that? Well for one it means I have to install it on a 32/64 bit hybrid system which adds more bloat and forget about even trying to get it to run on other hardware such as Sparc and PPC systems.

If I had a dime for every time a browser/sound system/desktop update broke flash......

[Aradreth]

]To be honest I'm fine not having flash on my install aside from youtube most flash sites/ads just annoy the hell out of me. I don't want a website using 10% of my CPU, especially when I'm on a laptop running of the batteries. The sooner flash & silverlight die the better in my opinion.

Anyway, it seems that progress is being made. Anyone have an idea on the ETA for 64-bit flash on linux? It's been several years already so I'm not holding my breath.
by the time it's released gnash will probably have become a much better implementation. They are currently waiting on an open source project to be port to x86_64 apparently. Why they don't get one of the developers they having working on the project to port it I don't know.

[d2kx]

I'll have to agree, I like YouTube, but other than that I hate Flash and hope HTML5 will replace it. Stage 6, as a video portal, was really nice and was working well with VLC, but now that it's closed, there's only Google Video and YouTube left.

[apaige]

Once upon a time videos used to be embedded directly, allowing different software to be used with their own plugins (VLC, mplayers, etc...). I assume people started using Flash on their websites because it would be "simpler" for most people. Well, for me, it's made things only worse.

[justin9376]

I am using Flash 10 At the moment with the latest ATI Drivers in ubuntu, and all videos play full screen perfectly now, whereas with version 9 it is like a slideshow. I also have compiz on with all effects turned on. It flickers like mad, if it is showing a video in part screen, put full screen i have no complaints. If i turn Compiz off, then it is perfect full screen and windowed mode. Much better than version 9. BBC Iplayer is now perfect!!!!.

Socket 939 AMD Motherboard
AMD 4200+ Dual core Processor
2GB Ram
1600Pro ATI AGP Graphics Card.
Latest ATI Drivers
Firefox 3.0b5

[deanjo]

I'd be interested in seeing what the proportion of x86 to x86_64 users are. I'd imagine that more linux users are on 64-bit versions by now. If that's the case, then only releasing a 32-bit client makes no sense.

Also, maybe I'm missing something, but if an app like flash is difficult to port to 64-bit, they're doing something wrong.

Well if downloads of a distro breakdown could be used as a rough estimate, opensuse 10.3 / 11.0 breaks down to about 50% 32-bit 45% 64-bit 5% PPC

Maybe Michael can give us some browser stats breakdown taken from this site to get a bit more of a global perspective.

[deanjo]

A bit off topic, but if anybody wants to try the 64-bit build of Opera, here is the link. It's not listed on opera's download page. Took me a while to find it.

ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/950b2/final/en/x86_64/
and for freebsd
ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/unix/freebsd/950b2/final/en/amd64/

[apaige]

Wow, I always thought Opera was 32-bit only.

[d2kx]

The latest stable Opera is 32-bit only (9.27). Opera 9.5 will have 64-bit builds, too.

deanjo's build is the Beta 2 which is not the latest build. This one is the latest:

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-1962/x86_64-linux/

[deanjo]

The latest stable Opera is 32-bit only (9.27). Opera 9.5 will have 64-bit builds, too.

deanjo's build is the Beta 2 which is not the latest build. This one is the latest:

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-1962/x86_64-linux/

Dammit, now I have to uninstall the previous rpm. Thanks for making more work for me on a Sunday. :p

[apaige]

Odd, it links to Qt3, not Qt4…

[d2kx]

There's a new Opera 9.5 build every week. It should be fine to install the new RPM's over the old ones without uninstalling at first.

[deanjo]

Odd, it links to Qt3, not Qt4…

Here is a little thread on the QT4 issue.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=231322

[Aradreth]

I am using Flash 10 At the moment with the latest ATI Drivers in ubuntu, and all videos play full screen perfectly now, whereas with version 9 it is like a slideshow. I also have compiz on with all effects turned on. It flickers like mad, if it is showing a video in part screen, put full screen i have no complaints. If i turn Compiz off, then it is perfect full screen and windowed mode. Much better than version 9. BBC Iplayer is now perfect!!!!.

Socket 939 AMD Motherboard
AMD 4200+ Dual core Processor
2GB Ram
1600Pro ATI AGP Graphics Card.
Latest ATI Drivers
Firefox 3.0b5
http://po-ru.com/diary/bbc-iplayer-fix-hacked-again/
iplayer without the need for flash thanks to the iphone. The fact that the BBC made an iPhone client before a linux client is a bloody disgrace.

[deanjo]

http://po-ru.com/diary/bbc-iplayer-fix-hacked-again/
iplayer without the need for flash thanks to the iphone. The fact that the BBC made an iPhone client before a linux client is a bloody disgrace.

Considering that the iPhone's growth rapidly outpaces linux adoption I'm not surprised.

[Aradreth]

Considering that the iPhone's growth rapidly outpaces linux adoption I'm not surprised.
The iPhone doesn't sell as well over here as it does in the US because of the lack of 3G and you forgot to take into consideration that not many people will be using a phone to watch TV shows it's just not convenient and costs a lot (bandwidth for a phone is expensive...) unless your using a wifi connection at which point you might as well use a PC.

[apaige]

I don't know if it's Opera or Qt or both, but 2D performance is MUCH better with it than with Firefox. As a test I move the pointer quickly up and down over Tom's Hardware main list of latest articles. With Firefox 3.0rc1 and the latest x86_64 nvidia beta drivers, there's a very noticeable lag, and CPU usage is high. With Opera, there's no lag and very little CPU usage.

I'm not too keen on spending the time required to configure Opera to my liking, but if the next nvidia driver release doesn't improve Firefox' 2D performance, I *might* switch to Opera.

[Kano]

How about trying FF 2.0?

[apaige]

Meh, I'm not going back to *that*. :-p

[deanjo]

The iPhone doesn't sell as well over here as it does in the US because of the lack of 3G and you forgot to take into consideration that not many people will be using a phone to watch TV shows it's just not convenient and costs a lot (bandwidth for a phone is expensive...) unless your using a wifi connection at which point you might as well use a PC.

It sells well enough that O2 is sold out. I really doubt that linux has had 300,000 switchers in the same period. Plus with the refresh of the iPhone coming soon there will be another surge in sales.

[deanjo]

I don't know if it's Opera or Qt or both, but 2D performance is MUCH better with it than with Firefox. As a test I move the pointer quickly up and down over Tom's Hardware main list of latest articles. With Firefox 3.0rc1 and the latest x86_64 nvidia beta drivers, there's a very noticeable lag, and CPU usage is high. With Opera, there's no lag and very little CPU usage.

I'm not too keen on spending the time required to configure Opera to my liking, but if the next nvidia driver release doesn't improve Firefox' 2D performance, I *might* switch to Opera.


Opera has traditionally always killed FF in performance.

[Aradreth]

Meh, I'm not going back to *that*. :-p
If you use software that is a RC you have to expect that it wont run was fast as stable software as it usually hasn't been optimised yet.

[Aradreth]

It sells well enough that O2 is sold out. I really doubt that linux has had 300,000 switchers in the same period. Plus with the refresh of the iPhone coming soon there will be another surge in sales.
True linux wouldn't have had 300k people switch in the same period but the number of people that would want to use the iplayer on linux probably still out weights the number that want to use it on the iphone. Anyway they should have just made it crossplatform from the start. They haven't even released a mac client to my knowledge and you can't tell me there are more iphone users then mac users.

[deanjo]

They haven't even released a mac client to my knowledge and you can't tell me there are more iphone users then mac users.

lol, not yet, but soon. The iPhone's adoption rate is dwarfing the adoption rate of the iPod during the same time period after the products release. You have to also remember that the iPhone client works on the iPod Touch as well.

[apaige]

If you use software that is a RC you have to expect that it wont run was fast as stable software as it usually hasn't been optimised yet.
Ahem, it's a Release Candidate, it's as "stable" as it's going to get. The developers themselves say RC1 will be the definitive version unless a major bug is found.

To their credit, rc1 fixes some 2D performance issues that were still there with beta 5 (hovering hypertext links on wikipedia for instance was very slow). And btw, the opera build I just tried is a beta, not even RC material.

[Aradreth]

lol, not yet, but soon. The iPhone's adoption rate is dwarfing the adoption rate of the iPod during the same time period after the products release. You have to also remember that the iPhone client works on the iPod Touch as well.
I didn't remember the client worked on the touch but as far as how well you think the iphone is selling in the UK you are sorely mistake, they are currently sold out because O2 isn't receiving more (leading to the speculation about a 3G version) and googling "iphone sales UK" or the like will give you tons of sites talking about it not selling well. The UK market wants phones with 3G if you pay that sort of money not a phone using an old slower standard.

[Aradreth]

Ahem, it's a Release Candidate, it's as "stable" as it's going to get. The developers themselves say RC1 will be the definitive version unless a major bug is found.

To their credit, rc1 fixes some 2D performance issues that were still there with beta 5 (hovering hypertext links on wikipedia for instance was very slow). And btw, the opera build I just tried is a beta, not even RC material.
bugs != optimisation
And FF3 is a major version change unlike opera which means it'll have more problems (see KDE4). I agree that opera tends to whip FF but some of the differences you are experiencing will become smaller/non-existence.

[apaige]

I don't know what you're talking about. In all likelyhood, RC1 will be released as 3.0 *as is*. It also fixes a lot of performance issues that FF2 had, so going back is not an option. If performance improves with future revisions, great.

[Aradreth]

I don't know what you're talking about. In all likelyhood, RC1 will be released as 3.0 *as is*. It also fixes a lot of performance issues that FF2 had, so going back is not an option. If performance improves with future revisions, great.
I didn't realise that they wanted to release it after just one RC I though they where going to spend some time improving the performance. Whoops.

[deanjo]

I didn't remember the client worked on the touch but as far as how well you think the iphone is selling in the UK you are sorely mistake, they are currently sold out because O2 isn't receiving more (leading to the speculation about a 3G version) and googling "iphone sales UK" or the like will give you tons of sites talking about it not selling well. The UK market wants phones with 3G if you pay that sort of money not a phone using an old slower standard.

O2 still sold out their allotment, @ the end of Dec they had sold 190k of them, in the middle of April they O2 and Carphone cut the price to clear out the remaining lot. The figures hold water. Yes, I agree the UK wants 3G and there are a lot of people holding off purchasing one until a 3G version is available. When / if that comes around you will see a resurgence in sales.

[deanjo]

I didn't realise that they wanted to release it after just one RC I though they where going to spend some time improving the performance. Whoops.

Not many projects consider poor performance a show stopper. Heck with mozilla's track record (ie memleaks in FF2) some performance tweaks may never arrive in FF3 especially since FF4 is pretty much a complete start from scratch project now that they are switching to WebKit.

[dashcloud]

Heck with mozilla's track record (ie memleaks in FF2) some performance tweaks may never arrive in FF3 especially since FF4 is pretty much a complete start from scratch project now that they are switching to WebKit.

Since when did Firefox decide to move to WebKit for version 4? That's huge news, the kind that would be splashed everywhere. This is the first place I've heard of it.

[deanjo]

Since when did Firefox decide to move to WebKit for version 4? That's huge news, the kind that would be splashed everywhere. This is the first place I've heard of it.

My bad, I was thinking of Konq and Epiphany

[Aradreth]

O2 still sold out their allotment, @ the end of Dec they had sold 190k of them, in the middle of April they O2 and Carphone cut the price to clear out the remaining lot. The figures hold water. Yes, I agree the UK wants 3G and there are a lot of people holding off purchasing one until a 3G version is available. When / if that comes around you will see a resurgence in sales.
When/if the 3G version comes out they will sell like hot cakes that I can agree on. I honestly didn't realise after the poor initial launch that the sales picked up I don't think many sites reported/I don't pay enough attention.

[Thetargos]

My bad, I was thinking of Konq and Epiphany

Actually there is a rumor that FF4 will move to WebKit and QT4 instead of GTK. There is somewhere a quote from a Mozilla developer saying "I'm surprised we kept Gecko alive for as long as we have" or something to that effect, implying the move to WebKit, some say it is not such a good idea to have more than one Open Source web rendering engine. Now WebKit has proven to be advancing rather well and seems to be quickly becoming the open source web rendering standard. As far as QT over GTK, I'm not 100% sure about that, but about the switch to WebKit, it seems like a no brainer, IMO.

[Aradreth]

Actually there is a rumor that FF4 will move to WebKit and QT4 instead of GTK. There is somewhere a quote from a Mozilla developer saying "I'm surprised we kept Gecko alive for as long as we have" or something to that effect, implying the move to WebKit, some say it is not such a good idea to have more than one Open Source web rendering engine. Now WebKit has proven to be advancing rather well and seems to be quickly becoming the open source web rendering standard. As far as QT over GTK, I'm not 100% sure about that, but about the switch to WebKit, it seems like a no brainer, IMO.
http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/05/06/well-isnt-that-qt/ is where I think the QT rumours are coming from as people don't read it all the way through and go of yelling firefox is changing to QT.

[Thetargos]

I didn't see that post before and only caught the phrase on some other blog/web-forum. I didn't give the rumor much credit (as easily discarded by the blog you point to) simply because of the amount of work that would imply. Thanks for pointing me to the source, though.

[deanjo]

Actually there is a rumor that FF4 will move to WebKit and QT4 instead of GTK. There is somewhere a quote from a Mozilla developer saying "I'm surprised we kept Gecko alive for as long as we have" or something to that effect, implying the move to WebKit, some say it is not such a good idea to have more than one Open Source web rendering engine. Now WebKit has proven to be advancing rather well and seems to be quickly becoming the open source web rendering standard. As far as QT over GTK, I'm not 100% sure about that, but about the switch to WebKit, it seems like a no brainer, IMO.


That's what I recall as well, but be damned if I can find that link anymore. BTW that wasn't the blog I recall seeing it on.

*Edit* Found it, then I looked at the date. http://blog.loxal.net/2008/03/firefox-switches-to-qt4-framework-and.html

[Kano]

You believe everything that was posted as april fool, do you ;)

[Thetargos]

Is it only me who thinks that to call WebKit "Apple's" is wrong or what? In the end, WebKit started as KHTML, the HTML rendering for KDE, IIRC, then used by Safari and THEN switched its name WebKit (or did I get things wrong?), so Apple actually adopted KDE's implementation. Not the other way around.

[Kano]

Yes, but I think KDE 4 can use webkit too now. So it comes back to KDE this way.

[Thetargos]

Merely a name change, not the underlying implementation or technology ;)

[deanjo]

WebKit was a fork off of KHTML and evolved into it's own separate project with Apple submitting back code into the KHTML project but alot of that code would no longer work in KHTML. KHTML is still used by Konq but as of KDE 4.1 you will have a choice of engines for Konq, KHTML or WebKit eventually with WebKit replacing KTHML. KDE 4.1 will also have Webkit in Plasma allowing items such as Apple dashboard widgets.