Posted by TJ on 1/11/2013Tags: Fun, Linked, Opinion, Recommended ResourceSafari is released to the world

Everyone was clapping that Apple embraced open source. Happy, happy, happy. And they were just certain what was coming next. Then Steve moved a new slide onto the screen. With only one word, “KHTML” — six-foot-high white letters on a blue background.

If you listen to that video I posted, notice that no one applauds here. Why? I’m guessing confusion and complete lack of recognition.

What you also can’t hear on the video is someone about 15 to 20 rows behind where we were sitting — obviously expecting the word “Gecko” up there — shout at what seemed like the top of his lungs:

“WHAT THE ****!?”

KHTML may have been a bigger surprise than Apple doing a browser at all. And that moment was glorious. We had punk’d the entire crowd.

Don Melton has been posting some stuff about his time working on Safari and it’s awesome stuff. While I think Firefox and the Gecko layout engine sort of jumpstarted the browser revolution, Safari is still, despite some of it’s flaws, my current daily driver. My fall back browser is Chrome, which is also based on Safari’s WebKit rendering engine. Firefox is a very VERY distant third at this point. I also really enjoyed going back and watching Steve introduce Safari to the world in the Macworld 2003 Keynote. This was the beginning of Apple’s heyday.