ANNOUNCEMENT: The Future of Epiphany (edit: the Gnome web browser)

“(…)This single back-end will be * WebKit *.

We see several advantages in WebKit. These include:

* The WebKit APIs. The API has been designed from the ground up, and
feels like any other GObject based API. A two-way GObject bindings to
the web page’s DOM, and to JavaScript is in development;
this will allow us and our Extensions to access the DOM directly, which
hasn’t been possible before in Epiphany in either C or Python.
* WebKit uses Gnome technologies directly. Similarly to Gecko, it uses
Cairo for graphics, and Pango for the rendering. On top of that, it uses
libsoup for the network layer, and GStreamer for the <video> and <audio>
tag support in HTML5.
* Starting in time for Gnome 2.24, WebKit/GTK+ will implement a
6-month release cycle synchronised with the Gnome release schedule.
* We feel that WebKit has the momentum, and can bring more developers
to both Epiphany directly and the Gnome platform by extension.
WebKit/GTK+ already has more people working on it than are working on
either GtkMozEmbed or the Epiphany gecko back-end.
* WebKit is a better match for *other* uses in Gnome, e.g. as a HTML
widget in Yelp, in Devhelp, and as an editor in Evolution replacing
GtkHTML.
We will propose WebKit as an approved external dependency for Gnome.
In case that we are unable to complete this development in time for
2.24.0, we will delay the new Epiphany to 2.26. For this end, we will
maintain the gnome-2-22 branch in a state that allows us to potentially
make the 2.24.0 release off of that branch.”