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Reminder to switch browsers if you haven't already!


  • Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
  • The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
  • Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
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[-] grue@lemmy.world 25 points 5 months ago

There are effectively only two web browsers: Chrome and Firefox. Literally everything else, aside from some really niche things that can't render modern webpages, is a fork of one of those two that uses the same rendering engine.

[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Not to toot the kagi Horn, but they are talking about releasing thier webkit based Orion Browser on Linux. Ive been following that one closely since it has firefox extension support.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I mean, if folks really want something like that, I'd say they shouldn't have let KDE's KHTML (which is what WebKit was forked from) die. But as I've said elsewhere in this thread, KHTML→WebKit→Blink are related and thus fail to combat Google's web hegemony the way that Gecko (Firefox) does.

[-] breakingcups@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I've become very skeptical of anything Kagi, wishing they'd just focused on making one thing good instead of getting distracted by mediocre AI and a browser they can't realistically support while their search is still subpar. Illusions of grandeur.

[-] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Iirc the browser is older than their search engine. If anything that is their og product

[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, wtf is he/she talking about there :)

[-] QuestionMark@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

What about Apple's WebKit? Does it count?

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 21 points 5 months ago

You mean KHMTL, born in KDE's Konqueror. That spawned WebKit (Safari), that spawned Blink (Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc). The whole thing then finally came full-circle when Konqueror dropped KHTML due to lack of development, now you have the choice between WebKit and Blink (via Qt WebEngine).

Then there's Gecko (Firefox) and Servo which had a near-death experience after Mozilla integrated half of it into Gecko but by now development is alive and kicking again. Oh and then there's lynx, using libwww, tracing its lineage back straight to Tim Berners Lee.

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

No, they don't mean KHTML. KHTML is an ancestor of WebKit and Blink, but WebKit forked from it over 2 decades ago. They meant WebKit.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They also didn't mean lynx and yet I mentioned it. How come? Might the distinct possibility exist that I used the opportunity to draw a wider picture, and "you mean X" has to be understood as internet brain-rot rhetorics, not literally?

Just a suggestion.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Nope, it doesn't count. The only reason Safari/WebKit isn’t considered a fork of Chrome/Blink is that Chrome/Blink is a fork of Safari/WebKit instead.

[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 3 points 5 months ago

I'm sure they've diverged enough for it to be pretty significant compared to the Chromium browsers

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They've been separate for over a decade, and even before that they were heavily customizing it. They're cousins, but absolutely not close enough at this point to be considered the same.

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

So it wasn’t, like, forked hard enough that now after the years it counts as a different browser? Expect it to render pages ‘n’ stuff pretty much like Chrome?

[-] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I admit, I haven't really looked into it. It's possible Apple implemented new HTML/CSS/JS standards independently, but it's also possible that Apple continued to backport Google's changes. Unless they had a business goal of being independent (or NIH syndrome) I would guess that they'd do mostly the latter, but you'd have to go read the code to know for sure.

They are definitely still more related to each other than either is to Gecko (which is to say, not related at all), though.

[-] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

haha Safari would like a word.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

What word? I spoke the truth: there are only two rendering engines. The only reason Safari/WebKit isn't considered a fork of Chrome/Blink is that Chrome/Blink is a fork of Safari/WebKit instead.

[-] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I deleted my original comment before you replied because I am not really in the mood to defend this but the OP was talking about the pain of developing for different browsers and I don't care what is a fork of what, this is a fact: Chrome, Firefox and Safari all render differently and have to be catered to individually.

Also, Safari, between desktop and mobile, has 30% of the market to Firefox's 8%.

I don't LIKE it, but there are "effectively" three, not two, rendering engines.

[-] ricdeh@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

It's about browser architecture and not silly names ("Safari", "Firefox", "Chrome"). The point is that there are only two actual variants.

[-] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

Not when you have to make a web app render identically in them, which is what the OP was about.

[-] Deway@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

No, you still have three rendering engines. WebKit and Blink are different. Since the second is an (old) fork of the other one, they are similar but far from being the same. They are pages that work in one but not the other, even if you change the user agent.

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

That's...not true at all.

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

And safari, although it's a cousin/uncle to Chrome at this point.

Not that I use it, but still.

this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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