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Why no projects use Firefox as a base and prefer Chromium instead? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Before you come at me with stuff like Librewolf, Waterfox and IceCat; those don't count. They are just tweaked Firefox distros with mostly basic low level changes. Not every Chromium browser is super unique either, but I feel like there are more differences between them then there are with Firefox distros. Why is that? Why there aren't different browsers that use Firefox's engines but provide a different UX?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (6 children)

This is probably not an answer to your question but apple faced such a decision 20 years ago already...and picked khtml/kjs over the firefox engine gecko back then because:

When we were evaluating technologies over a year ago, KHTML and KJS stood out. Not only were they the basis of an excellent modern and standards compliant web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open source projects.

...

...How did we do it? As you know, KJS is very portable and independent...

( https://marc.info/?l=kfm-devel&m=104197092318639&w=2 ) (Sorry, it's a long time ago, best post I could still find from that time..but why they picked khtml over gecko was discussed extensively back then)

Of course I have no real clue (and firefox changed the engine in the meantime) but a project based on a portable library in the first place then forked into chrome/blink might have something to do with people finding it easier to integrate in their solutions than an engine specifically written for a single browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

So the portability is a factor, understood. Thank you for takig the time to answer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

I would say so..but please don't take my word for it. It's really not like I have a clue. It's just what I gathered.

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