CODEWITHSUNDEEP
webkit
morgancodes
morgancodes

Reputation: 25265

Is WebKit gaining any traction in non-web applications?

I spoke to the boss of a major music software company a few years ago. He told me that if they were going to start again from the ground up, they might look at WebKit for their UI. This totally surprised me. But I'm wondering if other folks are thinking and acting this way. Is webkit working its way in to truly non-web software?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 332

Answers (3)

nym
nym

Reputation: 430

Anything you can do on webkit can be wrapped as an application easily with PhoneGap or other tools.

For example, store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com could be wrapped as an OSX app, an Android app, and still act as a regular website very easily.

Also: https://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/source_webkit.shtml

Upvotes: 0

NoBugs
NoBugs

Reputation: 9496

RealPlayer, iTunes, and many other applications are using it, so are some non-"web" apps such as desktop widget programs:

http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Applications%20using%20WebKit

Designing "web-apps" with HTML/Webkit UI is beneficial for Mobile users, since many devices have Webkit built in. Even if it is currently only used on a PC, you would have the possibility of hosting it on the web or local network later, with less work to convert it.

Upvotes: 1

Michael Ekstrand
Michael Ekstrand

Reputation: 29090

Gwibber, a Gnome twitter client that ships with Ubuntu, uses WebKit for displaying timelines (although it uses normal GTK+ widgets for the surrounding UI).

I would consider WebKit a viable option for many pieces of UI, particularly if the program shell exposes appropriate hooks into the surrounding platform to do things like launch a real browser or hook in to system notifications. You run the serious risk, however, of building an application that doesn't fit well in the UI conventions of the user's operating system.

It's not WebKit, but building a UI on a rendering engine is essentially what Mozilla does - Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. are built in XUL rendered with Gecko.

Upvotes: 0

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