WebKit 2 and Firefox Lorentz Going ‘Out of Process’

“Browser vendors are always trying to improve the stability of
their platforms. One key approach being adopted by multiple browser
vendors is to take plugins out of the regular browser process and
isolate them. The benefit of out-of-process plugins is that if a
plugin, say Adobe’s Flash for example, crashes, the entire browser
won’t crash.

“Backers of the open source WebKit rendering engine, which is
used by Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and RIM’s upcoming new
browser for Blackberry, are now testing out new out-of-process
capabilities in WebKit2. Mozilla is out this week with Firefox
Lorentz Beta which includes out-of-process plug-ins as well.

“”WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split
process model, where the Web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout,
etc) lives in a separate process,” Apple developer Anders Carlsson
wrote in a mailing list posting. “This model is similar to what
Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have
built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing
other clients to use it.”

Complete Story