webkit

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WebKit Features for Safari 26.6
2 months ago
- Safari 26.6 adds a compileOptions parameter to WebAssembly.compileStreaming() and instantiateStreaming(), enabling the use of JS String Builtins with streaming compilation.
- The release includes eight bug fixes across CSS, networking, service workers, web extensions, and WebRTC.
- CSS fixes address issues with the ic length unit scaling, fixed-position elements with position-area, and CSS zoom interactions on iPad.
- Networking fix resolves an issue with deleting partitioned cookies via WKHTTPCookieStore.
- Service worker fixes ensure automatic unregistration for registrations with missing main or imported scripts.
- Web extension fix prevents accumulation of service worker registration database files on Safari launch.
- WebRTC fix corrects ICE candidate gathering failure with iceTransportPolicy: 'relay' on macOS Sequoia.
- Safari 26.6 is available on iOS 26.6, iPadOS 26.6, visionOS 26.6, macOS Tahoe 26.6, macOS Sequoia, and macOS Sonoma.
Safari Technology Preview 248 Released
2 months ago
- Accessibility fixes include VoiceOver navigation with hidden="until-found" and dynamic aria-labelledby updates.
- CSS improvements cover color component interpolation, progress() no-clamp option, and several bug fixes for selectors, animations, and preloading.
- JavaScript now supports BigInt Math methods like BigInt.pow and BigInt.sqrt.
- Media fixes address control rendering, subtitles in fullscreen, video frame chroma offset, and stream playback issues.
- Rendering fixes include repainting for composited elements, scroll height padding, and drop-shadow updates.
- SVG fixes improve SMIL animations, text paths, length unit conversion, and attribute handling.
- Security patches fix Content Security Policy errors, navigation checks, and parsing issues.
- Web Inspector improvements include private field inspection, breakpoint fixes, color picker accuracy, and cross-origin iframe support.
- WebDriver adds support for Digital Credentials API simulation.
- WebRTC fixes include AudioSession management and deferred configurationchange events.
Orion Browser by Kagi
2 months ago
- Orion is a privacy-focused web browser built on WebKit, offering native speed and compatibility with Chrome and Firefox extensions.
- It is available on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Linux (beta), and Windows (alpha), with features like zero-telemetry and support for Kagi services.
- Orion is user-funded through Orion Plus subscriptions or a one-time lifetime license, avoiding ads and third-party deals.
Concurrent JavaScript: It can work (2017)
2 months ago
- SharedArrayBuffer enables concurrent access in JavaScript, allowing for multi-threaded programming.
- A strawman API proposes adding threads, locks, condition variables, and thread-local variables to JavaScript for full concurrency.
- Implementation in WebKit involves segmented butterflies for wait-free operations and transition-thread-locality inference to minimize overhead.
- Performance goals include no regressions for non-concurrent code, linear scalability, and sensible memory model semantics.
- Concurrency interacts with the DOM by restricting access to main-thread-only objects but allowing limited concurrent accesses to global properties.
- The proposed scheme relies on 64-bit systems and aims to keep overhead minimal for most property accesses.
An Update on Igalia's Layer Based SVG Engine in WebKit (Reducing Layer Overhead)
2 months ago
- LBSE was bootstrapped upstream from 2021 to 2022, adding support for SVG building blocks.
- Work paused and resumed in 2023-2024 with Wix support, implementing advanced painting features like clipping and filters.
- LBSE aims to share rendering machinery with HTML/CSS to inherit performance improvements, unlike the legacy SVG engine.
- In 2026, Igalia invested in LBSE development to prove performance and attract partners for embedded UI.
- LBSE initially gave every SVG renderer a RenderLayer, which was wasteful but allowed rapid prototyping.
- After a pause, correctness fixes were made, including text rendering, filter issues, and crash resolutions.
- Performance is key: conditional layer creation was introduced to remove unnecessary layers, improving memory and per-frame overhead.
- Layers are now created only for intrinsic reasons like opacity, clipping, 3D transforms, while 2D transforms on leaf elements don't require layers.
- Transformed containers still need layers to maintain correct compositing for ancestor transforms.
- Conditional layer creation broke composited paint order, a problem to be addressed in a future post.
Abject Praise
2 months ago
- Apple's Safari/WebKit engine lags behind competitors like Chrome and Firefox in Web Platform Tests (WPT) pass rates, feature implementation, and improvement speed, despite Apple's massive revenue from web-related deals.
- Safari's slow release cycle and underfunding contribute to persistent bugs, fewer features, and lower conformance, forcing web developers to work around limitations and driving users toward Apple's App Store for a 30% cut.
- Apple's anti-competitive practices, including blocking more capable browsers on iOS, socialize costs across the ecosystem, extract profits, and hinder web progress, while marketing efforts distract from these issues.
- Blink/Chromium's development process emphasizes developer feedback, quality, and public iteration (e.g., via Origin Trials), aiming for interoperability and solving real problems, despite criticism and leading in features.
- The gap between Safari and competitors is evident in areas like CSS, HTML, networking, and new features (e.g., Temporal API), with WebKit having thousands of unique test failures and slower improvement rates.
- Apple's behavior mirrors past monopolistic tactics (e.g., Microsoft's IE), prioritizing control and profit over investment, which harms users, developers, and overall web innovation.

webkit

WebKit Features for Safari 26.6

Safari Technology Preview 248 Released

Orion Browser by Kagi

Concurrent JavaScript: It can work (2017)

An Update on Igalia's Layer Based SVG Engine in WebKit (Reducing Layer Overhead)

Abject Praise