WebKit Ported to Qt 4



arrangement with the other WebKit contributors.


Anyone wishing to join the effort should contact the developers on the



The KDE hackers haven't been shown to write good code despite insisting on perfection. . .Which is it? :-p

By sundher at Thu, 2006/07/13 - 5:00am

Are there other tools like Gnustep possible to get integrated in order to reimplement the full Apple API in KDE. This would mean that we could use native Apple Webkit and could leave development to Apple.

By gerd at Wed, 2006/07/12 - 5:00am

We NOW can do that. Webkit is frontend independent. We just need to maintain this Qt frontend, which should be really simple.

By blacksheep at Sun, 2006/07/16 - 5:00am

hello guys,
I am a newbie, and like newbie I like to read the commit-digest, can someone explain to me the meaning of BUZZ, and what is the difference between trunk and brunch, I know that the stable version is KDE3.5.X and the developpement one is KDE4.

and for the next kde ( aka kde4) are you going to split at last the file manager from the web browser( konqueror)


By morphado at Wed, 2006/07/12 - 5:00am

Where did you read the word BUZZ? Buzz is usually used to express that a lot of noise is made around something.

trunk is the latest and greatest of something in development.
branch (I guess you didn't mean brunch) is a, well, development-branch of something else. For example, in KDE we have a branch for KDE 3.5.x and KDE 3.4.x while KDE4 is developed in trunk.


"Buzz" is the name I give to a rating that I generate from several components, including commit activity, mentions on webpages, and short-term news and discussion (eg. blogs). These are added together to produce the score. Of course, the scores are not completely scientific, and are meant as a way to measure "popularity" relative to the other calculated scores.


p.s. Glad to hear that you enjoy reading the digest. :)

By Danny Allen at Wed, 2006/07/12 - 5:00am

..well, subject says it all. Are they funding developers? Do they activly work on Unity? Or are they just taking what comes out of it...? Neither of these?

By Psychotron at Wed, 2006/07/12 - 5:00am

It is entirely a KDE project right now. If we use this library in KDE, it will be a joint effort with Apple, Nokia, and others.

By George Staikos at Wed, 2006/07/12 - 5:00am

Apple won't of course take what comes out of this because they couldn't care less about a Qt frontend for Webkit. But this will end up benefit them as well cause we can now ditch KHTML in favor of Webkit and focus on only one codebase.


call it unity, call it ksafari or kafari, but please release some new browser using WebKit. I don't know if its a good idea for KDE to switch from KHTML. but its definitely a good idea to bring a new WebKit based browser for Linux, BSD and Windows.


By Mathieu Jobin at Fri, 2006/07/14 - 5:00am

I would call it TourBus. Less exotic than a Safari, but available in more places ;)

By carewolf at Fri, 2006/07/14 - 5:00am


By superstoned at Sun, 2006/07/16 - 5:00am

Konqueror will be ported to WebKit. No new browser will be made.

By Michael at Sat, 2007/12/08 - 6:00am

Incorrect in multiple ways.

By SadEagle at Sat, 2007/12/08 - 6:00am

Konqueror is "my" browser for ages now, using it every day. I am developing web apps using konqueror first, checking other browsers later. I am convinced by its good-naturedness. I have seen other browsers fail in obscure ways, even firefox, even safari, where khtml just works fine. Note, this is addressed to khtml, not kjs.

Devs out there, keep up the good work, but don't mess things up, please. From a user's perspective, I have the impression that khtml is just fine as it is, but javascript and dom needs to catch up. So it seems as though merging with webkit is too radical as a cure. Issues can be pin-pointed quite precisely and they are already in the bugs database, I think. Don't pull out the merge sledgehammer as "the next logical step".

By micha at Mon, 2006/07/17 - 5:00am

The few big things that make it hard is:
Rich text editing, which is very hard and something WebCore has
The same bugs as WebCore, we are assumed by websites to act the same or not detected at all. We need to be detected and support the same bugs as what we are detected as.

By carewolf at Tue, 2006/07/18 - 5:00am

"WebKit is a derivative of the KHTML engine developed by Apple Computer Inc."

This sentance is badly worded - it makes it sound like Apple wrote KHTML. Isnt this more correct? :

"Apple Computer Inc's Webkit is a derivative of the KHTML engine developed by KDE programmers"

Just my 5c...

By Tim Sutton at Mon, 2006/08/14 - 5:00am

Since Oct-23 2006 Unity is no more on branches/work (deleted on commit 598456), but it has been imported on the official Apple repository! See http://webkit.org.
Congratulations to everyone involved, big things can now happen. ^_^

By epo at Sat, 2006/10/28 - 5:00am

This is a fabulous development! We have a large Qt based app that runs on Linux (GNOME) and Mac OS X, and we're looking for a solution to embed a webbrowser in that app. I'm wondering if Unity/WebKit is the answer. Specifically:

- Can Unity run on a Linux GNOME desktop? If so, does it require running a bunch of KDE services as root first (I've compiled everything up under GNOME but am having troubles running testunity), and

- Can you use the new WebKit sources to embed a webbrowser in a Qt app on Mac OS X?

If there's a more appropriate forum to ask these questions then just let me know! Thanks.


By Martin Reddy at Fri, 2006/11/03 - 6:00am

> Can Unity run on a Linux GNOME desktop?

Any Qt or KDE program can run on a GNOME desktop, so why wouldn't a program using Unity?

> If so, does it require running a bunch of KDE services as root first

KDE never requires any service to be run as root

> If there's a more appropriate forum to ask these questions then just let me know!


By Kevin Krammer at Sat, 2006/11/04 - 6:00am