Chromium announces new open source rendering engine project Blink

WebKit makes the web go ’round, and yet it is soon to be joined by a new kid on the block: Blink, which was announced on Chromium’s blog earlier today. Says Chromium, the decision to create a new rendering engine “was not an easy” one, but ultimately good will come from it. Developers don’t need to worry, as the announcement reassures that little will change for them during the initial rounds of work.

As pointed out by Chromium software engineer Adam Barth, Chromium utilizes a multi-process architecture that differs from that of other WebKit browsers, with the multi-architecture support leading to a slurry of ever-increasing complexity that serves as a sort of ball-and-chain on the ankle of innovation. Blink, which will be open source, aims to solve this issue and provide, by proxy, a boost in innovation.

Aside from that, optimistic attitudes tout the upcoming rendering engine as a possible boost to the “open web ecosystem” as a whole, although it is acknowledged that introducing a new rendering system has the potential to significantly impact the Internet, and developers could eventually have more work on the coding end of things.

According to Barth, the initial work will concentrate on getting rid of digital clutter, including the removal of about 7,000 files and 7 build systems, which will total in excess of 4.5 million lines of code. This will result in vast internal architectural improvements, but won’t bring much change to web developers. Guidelines have already been posted regarding interoperability, standards, and other such related items.

[via Chromium]