Gtk vs ViewsGtk

Benefits of ViewsGtk

• Better code sharing. For example, don't have to duplicate tab layout or bookmark bar layout code.
  • Tab Strip
    • Drawing
    • All the animationy bits
    • Subtle click selection behavior (curved corners)
    • Drag behavior, including dropping of files onto the URL bar
    • Closing behavior
  • Bookmarks bar
    • drag & drop behavior, including menus
    • chevron?
• Easier for folks to work on both platforms without knowing much about the underlying toolkits.
• Don't have to implement ui features twice.

Benefits of Gtk

• Dialogs
  • Native feel layout
  • Font size changes (e.g., changing the system font size will apply to our dialogs)
  • Better RTL (e.g., https://crbug.com/2822 https://crbug.com/5729 https://crbug.com/6082 https://crbug.com/6103 https://crbug.com/6125 https://crbug.com/8686 https://crbug.com/8649)
• Being able to obey the user's system theme
• Accessibility for buttons and dialogs (but not for tabstrip and bookmarks)
• A better change at good remote X performance?
• We still would currently need Pango / Cairo for text layout, so it will be more efficient to just draw that during the Gtk pipeline instead of with Skia.
• Gtk widgets will automatically “feel and behave” like Linux. The behavior of our own Views system does not necessarily feel right on Linux.
• People working on Windows features don't need to worry about breaking the Linux build.