Surfin' Safari is the official blog of the team that works on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that powers Safari and just about any other app on Mac OS X that allows you to view web pages, such as NetNewsWire, iSale, RapidWeaver and many, many more. Heck, these days WebKit is going far beyond Mac OS X, as it's used by everything from MobileSafari in the iPhone to Safari on Windows and even some of Nokia's phones and other devices that can browse the web.
Unfortunately, as with any increasingly popular project, WebKit seems to be getting pressure from a lot of new angles to implement certain features and optimize for one use or another. Many people want WebKit to do things like support the same rich text editing widgets that Firefox does for sites like MySpace, forums and blogging systems, while others prefer to leave those features on the curb so Safari can remain the lean, mean browsin' machine it's known as.
In order to avoid getting drawn and quartered by the very constituencies they serve, the WebKit team has understandably announced a set of WebKit goals the team is aspiring towards. While some of these goals are pretty obvious, such as keeping things secure and easily hackable (after all, it's an open source engine), some of the goals are definitely written to help establish a few boundaries to help keep everyone on track and, ultimately, help people understand what WebKit is (and will be), as well as what it is not. For the sake of cutting down on sleepless nights and answering endless feature requests, I hope these goals make the proper rounds.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-26-2007 @ 4:30PM
macsterdam said...
What would make me happy is if it didn't gobble up my memory like there's no tomorrow. Safari & webkit nightlies can easily use up to 300 MB of real memory. If that isn't plain ridiculous, than what is. Compare that with the latest Camino. Not only is the latter faster, more compliant, it very rarely uses over 100 mb (still too much, but there you go!)
Reply
7-26-2007 @ 5:35PM
David Chartier said...
#1: Depending on usage, I can easily get both browsers to surpass 200MB and sometimes 300MB of memory usage. A lot differs between user's browsing habits (and a lot can affect usage like this), and with reports like this differing so much across the web, I tend to disregard stats like that more and more often lately. They all hog memory and are terrible at cleaning out cache. A simple command in Quicksilver to relaunch the browser typically solves the problem for me pretty quickly, allowing me to get over it and keep on browsing.
Reply
7-26-2007 @ 7:09PM
macsterdam said...
sure, browser habits have an effect on the ram the various browsers use. Since I'm the one doing the browsing, which is amazingly consisten, using Safari for a few days and then Camino, the difference is huge in my case.
Relaunching helps, but should that really be necessary? Shouldn't we expect a properly written piece of software? No-one can convince me that over 200MB of real ram is normal for just a browser, and in addition to that, having to relaunch it on a regular basis is even more silly.
In addition to that I've noticed that all applications that use webkit, gobble up ram. I've put together an automator action that quits these applications and relaunches them again. I run this via Launchbar at least twice a day, simply because I need the ram. (I have a maxed out Macbook pro with 3GB of ram!)
Reply
7-27-2007 @ 11:08AM
buzweaver said...
How about something innovative, revolutionary and industry leading, you know, the ability to SORT (ascending/descending) your favorites. What self respecting browser doesn't have this feature?
Reply
7-30-2007 @ 9:50PM
Grover said...
Camino may use less memory, but Safari is the only browser I've used that doesn't slow to a crawl if I open two windows with dozen or so tabs each. I love Camino, but any time I open a group of more than 10-120 tabs, it's a solid five minutes later before I can actually do anything in any of those pages.
Everyone complains about Safari's memory usage, but it's the only browser I've used that has no problem with this. It's the one thing I really miss about the big S.
Reply
7-30-2007 @ 9:51PM
Grover said...
Just to clarify, that was supposed to be 10-20, not 10-120.
Reply