"Ben Goodger, Google's Chrome interface lead, has explained in
an email. It has also been revealed what toolkit the Linux version
of Chrome will use: Gtk+.
"The decision to use native user interface toolkits on each
platform has made it all the more difficult to deliver the Mac and
Linux versions of Chrome. Several people wondered why Google didn't
just use Qt from the get-go, which would've made the whole process
a whole lot easier. Goodger explains that Google "[avoids] cross
platform UI toolkits because while they may offer what
superficially appears to be a quick path to native looking UI on a
variety of target platforms, once you go a bit deeper it turns out
to be a bit more problematic." Your applications end up "speaking
with a foreign accent", he adds. In addition, Goodger claims that
using something like Qt "limits what you can do to a lowest common
denominator subset of what's supported by that framework on each
platform."
