Blink (browser engine)

Free and open-source browser engine of the Chromium project

"Blink (software)" redirects here. For the SIP client, see Blink (SIP client). For other uses, see Blink (disambiguation).

BlinkDeveloper(s)| The Chromium Project

|

Initial release| 3 April 2013; 11 years ago (2013-04-03)[1]
Repository|

* chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/third_party/blink/

Written in| C++
Type| Browser engine
License| BSD and LGPLv2.1
Website| www.chromium.org/blink/

Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the free and open-source Chromium project. Blink is by far the most-used browser engine, due to the market share dominance of Google Chrome and the fact that many other browsers are based on the Chromium code.

To create Chrome, Google chose to use Apple's WebKit engine.[2] However, Google needed to make substantial changes to the WebKit code to support its novel multi-process browser architecture.[1][3] Over the course of several years, the divergence from Apple's version increased, so Google decided to officially fork its version as Blink in 2013.[1][3]

Blink's name was influenced by two factors: the implication of speed, and a reference to the non-standard blink HTML element,[4][5] which was never actually supported by Blink.[6]

By commit count, Google was the largest contributor to the WebKit project from late 2009 until the fork in 2013.[7] One of the first changes of the new fork was to deprecate CSS vendor prefixes, including WebKit's; experimental Blink functionality is instead enabled on an opt-in basis.[8]

## See also

[edit]

* Free and open-source software portal

* Comparison of browser engines
* V8, the Chromium JavaScript engine

## References

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1. ^ a b c Barth, Adam (3 April 2013). "Blink: A rendering engine for the Chromium project". blog.chromium.org. Retrieved 12 March 2024.
2. ^ Fisher, Darin (5 September 2008). "Chrome <3s WebKit". blog.chromium.org. Retrieved 12 March 2024.
3. ^ a b Bright, Peter (3 April 2013). "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Ars Technica. Conde Nast. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
4. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (3 April 2013). "Google Forks WebKit And Launches Blink, A New Rendering Engine That Will Soon Power Chrome And Chrome OS". TechCrunch. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
5. ^ Shankland, Stephen (3 April 2013). "Google parts ways with Apple over WebKit, launches Blink". CNet. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
6. ^ Kobie, Nicole (7 August 2013). "Firefox 23 finally kills "blink" tag". PC Pro. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
7. ^ Siracusa, John (12 April 2013). "Hypercritical: Code Hard or Go Home". Hypercritical.co. Retrieved 15 June 2013.
8. ^ "Blink Developer FAQ". The Chromium Projects. Retrieved 22 October 2014.

## External links

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* Official website

* v
* t
* e

Browser engines

Active (comparison)|

* Blink
* Gecko
* Goanna
* WebKit

Maintained|

* EdgeHTML
* Flow
* MSHTML
* NetSurf
* Presto
* Servo

Discontinued|

* KHTML
* Mariner
* Tasman
* Tkhtml

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