This week Apple’s open source WebKit codebase thats powers nearly every relevant web browser and engine in use today, such as Safari and Chrome has turn 10 years old. Its was originally derived by Apple from the Konqueror browser’s KHTML software library to be used within Apple’s Safari browser.

The WebKit origins began back in 1998 as the KDE project’s HTML layout engine KHTML and KDE’s JavaScript engine (KJS). The name and project ‘WebKit’ were created in 2002 when Apple created a fork of KHTML

WebKit is the layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages and provides a set of classes to display web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited.

More information about WebKit is available here.

Source: Apple Outsider : Macgasm