Wake3, a Silicon Valley stealth-mode startup, reportedly has developed a Windows Mobile version of WebKit, the open-source HTML rendering engine used by Apple in its Safari Web browser. "WebKit for Windows Mobile" is said to be available now to device manufacturers, wireless operators, and enterprises.
While best-known for its use in the OS X, iPhone, and Windows versions of Safari, WebKit is also employed by Adobe, which based its AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) web development toolsuite on it. Originally derived from the HTML rendering engine used in the KDE project's Konqueror browser, WebKit now targets "Web 2.0" features such as asynchronous Javascript (Ajax), and has a smaller footprint than most alternatives.
WebKit running on a Windows Mobile device (Source: Wake3)
Apple has touted Ajax as a way of adding applications to the iPhone, and it's likely that WebKit for Windows Mobile will allow many of these to run on Windows Mobile devices. Although Wake3 has as yet provided no further details, CTO Daniel F. Zucker -- formerly senior director of technology for Access, which is well known for its own mobile web browser -- delivered a position paper to a Workshop on Mobile Ajax, held by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) last month.
Zucker wrote that, "Mobile Ajax is different from desktop Ajax. Devices have less memory and less processing power. Yet still, there is a great opportunity to harness Ajax for mobile and leverage the web browser as the primary application container to deliver compelling content and services across a range of devices and platforms."
In related news, Trolltech announced earlier this month that it will integrate the WebKit rendering engine into its Qt 4.4 cross-platform application framework for embedded and mobile devices. The company also announced Qt/WinCE, a version of the framework that's claimed to run on Windows CE 5.0 and 6.0, and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.
Availability
Wake3 had not responded to WindowsForDevices.com's request for further information by the time of writing, nor have links to download the product been provided. However, the YouTube video embedded above is available on the company's website, here.
