WebKit

Today we would like to announce that WebKit is the first browser engine to fully pass Acid3. A while back, we posted that we scored 100/100 and matched the reference rendering. Now, thanks to recent speedups in JavaScript, DOM and rendering, we have passed the third condition, smooth animation on reference hardware. Here is a [...]

Just three months ago, the WebKit team announced SquirrelFish, a major revamp of our JavaScript engine featuring a high-performance bytecode interpreter. Today we’d like to announce the next generation of our JavaScript engine - SquirrelFish Extreme ... [More] (or SFX for short). SquirrelFish Extreme uses more advanced techniques, including fast native code generation, to deliver even more [...] [Less]

Cameron Zwarich is now a qualified WebKit Reviewer. Cameron has been doing amazing work on the JavaScript implementation and was one of the core developers on the new bytecode engine. He has also branched out into other areas of the code and squashed bugs of all varieties. Please join me in congratulating Cameron on his [...]

“Hello, Internet!” WebKit’s core JavaScript engine just got a new interpreter, code-named SquirrelFish. SquirrelFish is fast—much faster than WebKit’s previous interpreter. Check out the numbers. On the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, SquirrelFish is ... [More] 1.6 times faster than WebKit’s previous interpreter. SunSpider runs per minute Longer bars are better. What Is SquirrelFish? SquirrelFish is a register-based, direct-threaded, high-level bytecode engine, with a sliding [...] [Less]

The latest browser market share data is in, and Safari has hit 6.22%, breaking 6% for the first time. Last month’s share was 5.81%, so this is a significant increase. It was only nine months ago that Safari broke 5%. Safari market share has now almost tripled from 2.14% in June 2005, when the WebKit [...]

It’s that time of year again! If you are a Mac OS X developer, a browser hacker, a web developer, or just someone with an interest in cool technology, then come have a drink and some snacks, and meet WebKit contributors from Apple and around the world. This event is open to anyone who is [...]

Security is a top priority for the WebKit project. As contributors to the project have grown, it has become apparent that we need a process for safely reporting security vulnerabilities to the WebKit project in addition to the process for reporting vulnerabilities to Apple. Today, we are announcing a new mailing list for [...]

WebKit now supports reflections in CSS. Continuing the trend of using adorable baby photos to make features appear more impressive, let me introduce Kate again. A reflection is a replica of the original object with its own specific transform and mask. The box-reflect property can be used to specify the specialized transform [...]

WebKit now supports alpha masks in CSS. Masks allow you to overlay the content of a box with a pattern that can be used to knock out portions of that box in the final display. In other words, you can clip to complex shapes based off the alpha of an image. Here is a [...]

Google has released the list of students they will be sponsoring to work on WebKit as part of the Google Summer of Code this year. Congratulations to all of the students. We look forward to working with you closely this summer! Thank you again to all the great students who applied! Unfortunately we [...]