QtWebKit

QtWebKit is a web browser engine integration for the Qt application framework. It provides a portable wrapper around the WebKit rendering engine, enabling Qt applications to display and interact with web content through components such as QWebView, QWebPage, and QWebFrame. It supports standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, exposing WebKit’s rendering, scripting, and DOM capabilities through Qt APIs.

Origins of QtWebKit lie in bringing WebKit’s capabilities to Qt-based applications. It was developed as a separate module in the Qt ecosystem and was maintained by the Qt Project and its contributors, with collaboration from the broader WebKit community. The module was available for Qt 4.x and continued into early Qt 5.x releases, offering features like JavaScriptCore integration and WebKit’s rendering pipeline within the Qt environment.

Development status and current role: QtWebKit has been superseded for new development by Qt WebEngine, a Chromium-based web rendering engine that is now the recommended option for embedding web content in Qt applications. Active development and official support for QtWebKit within the Qt project have waned, and it is no longer featured as the primary web backend in recent Qt releases. Some platforms or distributions may still provide a QtWebKit module or community-maintained forks, but these are not considered current, actively supported backends for modern web standards or security updates.

Impact for developers: For new projects requiring embedded web content, QtWebEngine is the advisable path, offering modern HTML5 features and better performance. Existing QtWebKit applications may require porting to QtWebEngine, which typically involves API adaptations, such as replacing QWebView with QWebEngineView and updating related web-related code.