Browser Engine Choices

[citkane]

Here are my thoughts on the choices for GBW browser engines, and some room for discussion.

MsWebview2

This Windows only engine is well integrated into the Windows system, official MS project with support, easy to install and will be a de-facto familiar API for seasoned Windows only developers. For these reasons, it was considered a must-have for GBW.

Chromium

The Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is the only root project to offer a singular cross platform API. This offers the GTK app developer total portability. A must have for GBW.

Webkit

While Webkit is theoretically a cross-platform browser engine, it is very focussed on Mac and Cocoa. There is an official Linux port for GTK usage, but compiling on Windows is reputed to be tricky, and not supported. GBW would like to offer the same ubiquitous portability for Webkit as for Chromium, but the fragmented Webkit landscape requires further research and thought.

Webkit Options:

• WPE - a lightweight port, aimed at embedded and low-consumption computer devices
• Webkit - root project, aimed at Mac Cocoa
• WebkitGtk - Linux port

Gecko

This Mozilla browser engine has no supported API for embedding. A number of previous official projects to provide this are no longer supported or maintained. The latest project to provide a Gecko embedding API is Servo. It is at an experimental stage, but is worth keeping an eye on for future integration.

Other interesting things to keep an eye on

• LadyBird - new, independent FOSS browser engine at experimental alpha stage.

[Zacharymk1213]

Webkit

My sponsor was thinking of trying to port Webkit to Windows but ultimately decided this to be a much too complicated endeavour hence the pivot to CEF.

[citkane]

@Zacharymk1213
CEF is not necesarrily the best option for Chromium, and may carry the baggage of it's own framework and API abstractions which are focussed on off-screen rendering and signal mapping back to GTK. Worth firstly looking at:

• Compiling Chromium on linux with the gtk-4 flags, and see if that gives us the same type of result as WebkitGtk6 (a GTK4 ready embeddable widget)
• Most lightweight way to compile Chromium on Windows/Mac to give us a binary library without Chrome (the browser UI bits), while providing us with a browser API.