WebKit Browsers including Apple Safari

from http://www.legendscrolls.co.uk/webstandards/webkit

 

WebKit Browsers including Apple Safari

Apple's WebKit version 525 is an open-source, Ice, Highstore, NativeMedia and Canvas level web platform originally based on KHTML and KJS parts of the K Desktop Environment (KDE). WebCore layout engine provides the HTML, XML and CSS while the JavaScriptCore scripting engine provides JavaScript 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';
• ' named character reference;
• canvas Element;
• HTML 5's audio, video and source elements;
• Web Forms 2.0's autocomplete attribute and <input type="range">;
• Some WAI-ARIA adds support for Accessible Rich Internet Applications;
• Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, Visual & Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
• Some CSS 3 including namespaces, selectors, Web Fonts (@font-face), 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;
• The ability to style and script unknown markup;
• For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, .jpg, .gif (and .icns in Mac OS X only)), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap) and SVG 1.1;
• Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), 99% of level 2 (Core, HTML, XML, Views, Stylesheets, CSS, CSS2, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal, Range), bits of Core DOM 3, XPath DOM 3 (as of WebKit 522), TextEvents DOM 3 (as of WebKit 523) exposes documents to scripting interaction;
• JavaScript 1.4, and as of WebKit 420, JavaScript 1.6 (without multiple catches);
• In WebKit 525, to compliment cookies, HTML 5's Database Storage allow local database performance and capacity with SQLite, and its support for SQL, to store information beyond the abilities of cookies;

In the realm of XML:

• 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.);
• eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1 & eXtensible Path Language (XPath) 1 provides the ability to convert extensible document structures into other document structures;
• Most of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display (WebKit 420+), now with advanced text (WebKit 525) (does not support declarative animation – only scripted animation) ;
• RSS and Atom news feed support (WebKit 419+);

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 particular 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 and version 2+) provides support for capturing a webpage or part of a webpage as a Widget using Webclips.

Safari 3.1 is one of the fastest web browsers 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 Shiira, 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 4.2 and OmniWeb 5.8 also uses Apple WebKit 525.

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 4.4 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 platforms.

A Future version of WebKit that will be in Safari 4 will replace JavaScriptCore scripting engine with a new Squirrelfish Extreme scripting Virtual Machine. Plus WebKit may have declarative SVG Animation and support for HTML 5's sessionStorage.

Features that would be nice to be added to WebKit:

• From HTML 5:
  • section, article, aside, nav, header and footer elements,
  • DOM Storage: sessionStorage and localStorage.

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 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).