Blink (web engine)
Blink is a web browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project[2] by The Chromium Project with contributions from Google, Opera Software ASA, Intel, Samsung and others.[3][4] It was first announced in April 2013.[5]
Engine
It is a fork of the WebCore component of WebKit[6] and is used in Chrome starting at version 28,[7][8] Opera (15+),[7] Amazon Silk and other Chromium-based browsers and frameworks.
Much of WebCore's code is used for features which Chrome implements differently (such as sandboxing and the multi-process model). These parts were removed from the Blink fork, which made it simpler, and gave greater flexibility for adding new features. The fork will also deprecate vendor prefixes; experimental functionality will instead be enabled on an opt-in basis.[9] Aside from these planned changes, Blink currently remains relatively similar to WebCore.[8] By commit count, Google has been the largest contributor to the WebKit code base since late 2009.[10]
Blink's naming was influenced by the non-standard presentational blink HTML tag, which was introduced by Netscape Navigator, and supported by Presto and Gecko-based browsers until August 2013.[2][11][12]
Frameworks
Several projects exist to turn Chromium’s Blink into a reusable software framework for other developers:
- Since version 4.4 of the Android operating system the WebView component is based on Blink instead of WebKit.[citation needed]
- Chromium Embedded Framework is widely used in software by Adobe Systems,[13][14] streaming media services such as Spotify,[15][16] video game services such as Battle.net and Steam,[17] etc.[18]
- In the Qt 5 framework the WebEngine module supersedes the previous QtWebKit module.[18][19]
See also
References
- ^ "Log of /releases/28.0.1463.0/DEPS".
- ^ a b Lardinois, Frederic (2013-04-03). "Google Forks WebKit And Launches Blink, A New Rendering Engine That Will Soon Power Chrome And Chrome OS". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
- ^ "Contents of /trunk/src/AUTHORS". chromium.org.
- ^ "Google, Opera Fork WebKit. Samsung Joins Firefox to Push Servo". infoq.com. April 2013.
- ^ "Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project". The Chromium Blog. Retrieved 3 April 2013.
- ^ "Which webkit revision is Blink forking from?". blink-dev mailing list. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
- ^ a b "Blink". QuirksBlog. April 2013. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ a b "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Ars Technica. April 2013. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ "Blink Developer FAQ". The Chromium Projects. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ^ Siracusa, John (2013-04-12). "Hypercritical: Code Hard or Go Home". Hypercritical.co. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
- ^ Kobie, Nicole (2013-08-07). "Firefox 23 finally kills "blink" tag". PC Pro. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
- ^ Shankland, Stephen (2013-04-03). "Google parts ways with Apple over WebKit, launches Blink". CNet. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
- ^ Hallgrimur Bjornsson. "Introducing HTML5 extensions". Adobe Systems.
- ^ "Adobe Edge Animate Team Blog". Adobe Systems.
- ^ "Open Source @ Spotify.com".
- ^ "CEF integration".
- ^ "Chromium Embedded Framework".
- ^ a b "Developer diary: Creating a desktop client for Conclave". 10×10 Room.
- ^ "Qt WebEngine Overview". Qt Project.