A full Android port of the WebKit browser-layout engine for rendering web pages has been promised by Google's development team, meaning the mobile 
market can look forward to an authentic Chrome browser experience.
The web software currently running on Android-powered devices -- simply called "Browser" -- only shares some of the code found in WebKit. Google's Android developers said Monday they hope to change that by working more closely with the WebKit developer community to bridge the gap.
Google also issued an update Monday that fixes 11 security flaws in the company's popular Chrome web browser.
WebKit already is embedded in the Chrome, Safari and Amazon Kindle browsers. Chrome is based on the open-source Chromium browser, which is a separate and more recent fork of WebKit than the current Android browser.
Converging the two projects is good news for developers, said Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. It means Google will be more efficient with its R&D, with a more unified browser-development effort.
"For developers, it is great to see one set of features and one set of tests for applications on Android, Chrome OS, Google TV, and the desktop Chrome browser," Hilwa said. "When this will happen is not quite clear, but the sooner the better."
Easier To Write Web Apps
The move also is required to make Android more congruent with the Chrome OS, "so I suspect we will hear more about that," Hilwa said. "In the end, this will make it easier to write web applications."
On the other hand, the work to accomplish all these tasks has only just begun, noted Android developer Andrei Popescu in the WebKit Dev forum. "[We] plan to start by setting up a webkit.org 'build bot' that will compile Chromium's DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and tool chain," Popescu wrote. "We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this."
The first two steps will be to remove all current Android-specific code from WebKit and contribute a build bot to aid in long-term maintenance, noted Google Chrome team member Peter Beverloo. Unlike a prior effort toward an Android port of WebKit, which stalled for a variety of reasons, this time Google's developers say they are fully committed to completing the work.
"Having a build bot up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task," Popescu wrote. "At the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android port."
Chrome Bug Fixes
Meanwhile, Google issued an update for Chrome 13 on Monday that fixes 11 security flaws in the company's popular web browser, of which two exclusively for Windows machines were rated "critical" and "medium," respectively. The other nine vulnerabilities were rated "high" -- including four "use-after-free" bugs that enable hackers to exploit a region of the machine's memory with undefined content.
The use-after-free pointer flaw can be exploited to cause a computer to crash or cause data corruption. Still, all Chrome users receive automatic updates, so no additional action is required to ensure that a browser is up to date with the latest release.
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