There's probably more experience with Webkit, and given that its already integrated with Qt, it makes sense to go that route. Plus, Symbian and S40 both use Webkit-based browsers, and so this makes for easier porting of WRT and other tech between them.

Hopefully, Nokia will unifiy the engine, controls, and UI across these platforms. This move would make a lot of sense for them.

For Mozilla, it would be a good play as well, as they'd get to play a good bit more with making the browser-as-a-platform, and work out the usability of Weave on OSS and closed systems.

ARJWright: So you think it would actually be better for Mozilla if the Gecko-based browser in Maemo/MeeGo was replaced with a Webkit one? That's an interesting view.

I can see what you mean, though. By offering the Firefox-branded browser to MeeGo as a separate product, Mozilla can have much more control over the experience.

Even though it turned out to be false, you did, over a year ago.

you haven't tried webkit with n800. It was unbelieveable at the time the first patches appeared to itt. It was blazing fast compared to OS2008 microb....

daperl: good memory! And good catch!

As long as it's not remotely close to the Symbian browser and like the MicroB I don't care if they even use Internet Explorer's engine!

We've had two for quite some time now: gecko for the browser (OK, and maps in Fremantle) and gtkhtml for everything else (email, rss etc). Seems to me like webkit will take the place of the latter as a somewhat lightweight engine embeddable in whatever app needs it.

If using webkit to render pages improves performance on the same level that Chrome/Safari have demonstrated over Firefox, I'm all for seeing that checkerboard/grid pattern less.

AFAIK WebKit support is built-in Qt, so considering Harmattan is Qt based, they have no choice of not supporting it.

But that does not necessary mean, that the browser will be WebKit based. Let me explain a bit Maemo browser architecture.

MicroB is not N900 web browser.

N900 web browser is called... Browser.
It's a high level component providing the UI for the web browsing. The rest is provided by EAL - Engine Abstraction Layer - which is remote-controlled by browser with D-BUS calls. EAL is a component (a daemon in Maemo 5) that provides the web browsing engine. The default EAL provided in N900 is Mozilla Gecko based and is called MicroB.

This architecture allows for easy engine replacement - either by Nokia, the OEM or the user.

I don't know whether that architecture will be used in MeeGo, but I hope so. This will allow the freedom of choice - not leaving you with "the one" chosen by the manufacturer.

I always (in general, on different computers) use lots of different web browsers. On my N800 I preferred Opera. On the desktop I use several at the same time.

However, on all these devices, I've found that it's best to have a gecko/mozilla-based browser readily available, because at some point it's the only browser that may work properly at certain sites, often important ones. Sometimes it's a silly as getting through the login-page of networks that require you to enter a user and code before you can access it.

So go webkit, that's fine, but please someone leave us with a backup mozilla/gecko-based browser, just in case..