[thelist] JavaScript on the desktop: Apollo samples

[John Dowdell]

liorean wrote:
> According to the FAQ the Apollo JavaScript engine is based on WebKit
> (meaning JavaScriptCore, which is to my knowledge still interpreted
> and not bytecode compiled). Is there a reason Adobe didn't choose to
> use an engine building on the high performant Tamarin engine?

Sorry for the delayed reply... the CS3 launch has played hob with my 
reading schedule this week.... ;-)

Yes, many HTML engines were considered before finalizing on WebKit... 
writing an Adobe browser would have offered control but would have 
increased costs to content developers, so using a popular existing 
engine was preferred... Opera is small and mobile but wasn't "open"... 
Gecko is philosophically similar but wasn't concise enough for this 
need... the judgment criteria are here:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:DeveloperFAQ#Why_did_Adobe_choose_WebK

The donation of Adobe's ECMAScript engine to the Mozilla Foundation (as 
the Tamarin Project) occurred about the same time, and was driven by the 
same people... there are good relations all the way around, but Apollo's 
unique needs drove the choice in HTML rendering engines.

jd




-- 
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
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