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KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project.
Built on the then new KPart framework, it was introduced with KDE2 in 2002, for use in the new Konqueror file and web browser which replaced the monolithic KDE File Manager. Written in C++ and licensed under the LGPL, it supports HTML 4, CSS 1 and 2, DOM and JavaScript. In an attempt to render as many pages as possible, some extra abilities and quirks from Internet Explorer are supported, even though they are not part of the HTML standard definition.
KHTML is fast, but currently less error tolerant than the Gecko layout engine, its main open source rival and core of the Mozilla browser.
The engine was adopted by Apple in 2002 for its Safari web browser. Apple publishes the source code for up to date versions of their version of the KHTML engine (WebCore) on their developer website, as well as submit patches for their changes back to the KDE project. However the exchange of code patches between the two branches of KHTML is not easy and it is not clear if the different code bases will ever converge. One of the reasons for this is that Apple worked secretly on their version of KHTML for a year before making their fork public. Apple also tends to submit their changes in large patches that incorporate a great number of changes, in some cases leaving code to do with future feature additions barely documented, making it difficult for the KDE developers to sort through and incorporate the changes. However the KDE project has managed to incorporate a number of changes that have added features and improved KHTML's rendering speed.
KHTML based applications
WebCore based applications
External links
- Web Browser (http://www.konqueror.org/features/browser.php) - list of KHTML features on Konqueror site
- KHTML - KDE's HTML library (http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/kdeqt/kde3arch/khtml/) - definition from developer.kde.org
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