Web Browsers And Packages

Release: 2008-05-11
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WebKit Browsers including Apple Safari

Apple's WebKit version 525 is an open-source, Layout Level web content rendering engine originally based on KHTML and KJS parts of the K Desktop Environment (KDE). WebCore layout engine (based on KHTML) provides the HTML, XML and CSS while the JavaScriptCore scripting engine (based on KJS) provides JavaScript and DOM support. The improved Webkit provides cutting-edge, web-standards support available for web browsers and web-enabled applications. WebKit 525 supports:

• HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 4.01;
• HTML 5 'Subset';
• Web Forms 2.0's autocomplete attribute and <input type="range">;
• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 with Namespaces & partial XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI) (does not support PI's alternate attribute);
• eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0, 1.1 (without Ruby Annotation) and Basic 1.0 (Earlier Webkit (419): did not support XHTML named entities beyond XML's built-in five.);
• Most of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display (Webkit 420+), now with advanced text (Webkit 525);
• canvas Element;
• HTML 5's audio, video and source elements;
• eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1 & eXtensible Path Language (XPath) 1 provides the ability to convert extensible document structures into other document structures;
• RSS and Atom news feed support (Webkit 419+);
• Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, most of Visual & Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 and some CSS 3 including namespaces, selectors, Web Fonts, Multiple Background Images and the opacity property for full gradient transparency. Plus some -webkit- properties such as -webkit-border-radius, -webkit-box-sizing and Webkit 525's new CSS Animation support. Provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
• Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), 99% of level 2 (HTML, XML, Views, Stylesheets, CSS, CSS2, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal, Range) and XPath DOM 3 (as of Webkit 522), TextEvents DOM 3 (as of Webkit 523) and JavaScript 1.4 adds advanced user interaction;
• For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap) and SVG 1.1;
• As of WebKit 420 JavaScript 1.6 (without multiple catches);
• In Webkit 525 to compliment cookies, HTML 5's DOM Storage (sessionStorage and localStorage) allow local database performance and capacity with SQLite to store information beyond the abilities of cookies

provides an excellent platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

WebKit will process native XHTML with the 'text/xml', 'application/xml' and 'application/xhtml+xml' MIME Types. But browsers using Webkit 419 and under such as Safari 1 and 2 do not understand the XHTML named entities beyond the original five built-in XML entities <, ", &, ' and >. It will show errors for those other entities and then process the webpage as usual with those other perticular characters missing. Web browsers based on Webkit 420 and higher such as OmniWeb 5.5, including WebKit 523 (iCab 4 and Apple's Safari 3), do support the XHTML named entities.

Version 3 and higher of Safari for Mac and Windows provides the ability to resize various form controls. For Mac OS X.5 Leopard, iPhone and iPod Touch (January 2008 upgrade) provides support for capturing a webpage or part of a webpage as a Widget using Webclips.

Safari 3.1 is the fastest web browser for the Mac and Windows for Markup, CSS and JavaScript performance. Plus for Web Authors you can enable the 'Develop' Menu in the Advanced Preferences Tab to use the Web Inspector to view syntax coloured source code of webpages, stylesheets and scripts; view the webpage as a full Document Object Model and applied styles lists. Features an error console, a network timeline to see how long a webpage, image, stylesheet and script took to download; also a useragent string switcher and can pass the webpage to other installed web browsers. These are not add-ons but all built into Safari 3.1.

WebKit is used in Apple's flagship web browser, Safari. Other web browsers that use WebKit include OmniWeb since version 4.5 (Webkit 85) for Mac OS X (Version 5.5, using WebKit 420, has problems loading XML Documents but is fine with XHTML). OmniWeb 5.6 uses Webkit 522 and has no problems. iCab 4 also uses Apple Webkit 523.

Apple Safari 1 (Webkit 85) is included with Mac OS X.3 Panther, Safari 2 (Webkit 419) is in OS X.4 Tiger and Safari 3 (Webkit 523) is in OS X.4.11 Tiger and OS X.5 Leopard.

Safari 3.1 (Webkit 525) is available for Mac OS X.4.11 Tiger, OS X.5.2 Leopard, MS Windows XP and Vista.

Apple Webkit has also been ported to mobile platforms such as from Nokia and has been ported to Trolltech's QT 4.3 cross-platform programming platform providing Webkit support for KDE 4 and there is also a GTK+ port that at least Epiphany can make use of. Apple's Webkit has become one of the most popular cross-platform web rendering engines.

Features that need to be added to Webkit:

• From Web Forms 2:
  • <input type="email">,
  • required and pattern attributes for <input>,
  • required, pattern and maxlength attributes for <textarea></textarea>.

Webkit 525 passes the Acid 2 Test which tests Cascade Stylesheet (CSS) support. More about the Acid 2 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).
Webkit 525 also clocks 74 or 75 out of 100 from the Acid 3 Test which tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

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