Filed under: Internet Tools, Developer
Chrome features are coming to WebKit
Although Google's Chrome browser is currently only available to Windows users (unless you are running an Intel-based Mac and VMWare Fusion or Parallels), its WebKit underpinnings mean that Safari, and other WebKit-based browsers, can benefit from Google's code. One of the larger innovations of Google Chrome, the V8 JavaScript engine, is incredibly fast. The WebKit project has its own new JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish, used in Mobile Safari and the WebKit nightlies. Still, the code base for V8 along with the Skia graphics library are making their way into the main WebKit repository. The Skia graphics library may already be in some of the newest nightly builds.
What does this mean for Mac and Safari users? Superficially, it might mean very little for right now, however, the Safari team can choose to implement any of the Chrome features that have been added back to the repository. That's the beauty of open source.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
who? said 6:02PM on 9-08-2008
I already tipped them, but SPORE IS OUT FOR IPHONE!!!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290183295&mt=8
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Marcos said 6:22PM on 9-08-2008
"unless you are running an Intel-based Mac and VMWare Fusion or Parallels"
Wouldn't that make you a Windows user?
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Maciej Stachowiak said 6:51PM on 9-08-2008
V8 is not in the current WebKit nightlies. Please correct the post.
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Christina Warren said 6:52PM on 9-08-2008
Yeah, that was an error that shouldn't have been included. Someone else edited part of the copy and inadvertently changed the context. It has been corrected - thanks for pointing it out.
Riscky said 6:52PM on 9-08-2008
"lthough the WebKit project has its own new JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish, Mobile Safari and the WebKit nightlies are including V8 along with the Skia graphics library."
I say hogwash! Just check out the code yourself.
http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/WebCore/config.h#L150
"Currently Chromium is the only platform which uses V8 by default" Hmmm...
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Christina Warren said 6:55PM on 9-08-2008
Yeah, again, that wasn't in the original copy. It was just supposed to say V8 was being put in the main repository -- not that it was in the nightlies.
Steven said 6:53PM on 9-08-2008
You seem to have a loose definition of "Mac" pertaining to running windows. If a user does employ either VMWare or Parallels, they are running windows on their intel based Apple computer, via the Mac operating system.
So it is only available to windows users, including those with Apple computers with intel processors.
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Christina Warren said 6:57PM on 9-08-2008
Absolutely, just pointing out that Mac owners who have VMWare or Parallels can run Chrome, albeit through Windows, on their machines.
Bender Bending Rodriguez said 7:00PM on 9-08-2008
The chance for a better alternative to the already good SquirrelFish is great, but I think the real benefit here for Safari users is that Google will not be ignored. This means that all those sites coded by lazy Windows-centric developers will no longer be able to ignore WebKit as it's been doing in the past. Even gov't sites won't let access their systems unless you are using IE or FF, even though it works just fine if you use Google's Cache to get to the login page. Sure, you can change your User Agent in Safari on the desktop, but on the iPhone/Touch you can't. It's like the nerdy, artistic kid just got the biggest, most popular kid in school to be his friend.
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Cameron Zwarich said 7:42PM on 9-08-2008
Despite your revisions, this article is still incorrect. Neither V8 nor Skia are being added to the WebKit repository or included in any WebKit nightlies. Conditional support for using them as external components is starting to be added to the main WebKit tree, so that some time in the future the Chrome developers will be able to use this tree rather than their own fork. As far as I know, this work is nowhere close to being finished.
A lot of widget toolkits and graphics libraries are supported by WebKit, since it has been ported to many different systems, but none of them are "included" in WebKit. Nightlies are made for Mac OS and the Apple Windows ports, both of which use Apple's CoreGraphics library, not Skia.
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Robert Marini said 7:38PM on 9-08-2008
My understanding of Squirrelfish Extreme is that while it shares the jit compilation approach of V8, it is not the same sort of implementation. Based on the published benchmarks that I've seen of it vs V8, Squirrelfish Extreme presents a roughly 40% speed increase.
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MysteryQuest said 7:39PM on 9-08-2008
Squirrelfish extreme is available in the latest nightly WebKit builds and gives a 20 - 30%! JavaScript speedup. In some cases it is (much) faster than V8, but Google's engine is (much) faster than Squirrelfish extreme on some other tests. Hope we soon see even more improvements.
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Zaph said 4:19AM on 9-09-2008
Some more SquirrelFish Extreme benchmarks for V8 and Dromaeo:
http://www.tangerinesmash.com/writings/2008/sep/08/squirrelfish-extreme/
colouroflight said 8:15PM on 9-08-2008
You just can't get away from this crap browser, can you? Even on a blog devoted to a platform that it doesn't run on.
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Matt said 10:35PM on 9-08-2008
Google removed WebKit's HTML 5 database storage API from Chrome, but included their own non-standard database API from Google Gears: http://docforge.com/wiki/Google_Chrome
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Jesse said 10:13AM on 9-09-2008
All I know is that Safari 4 should quarantine individual tabs into their own process. This, imo, is the best feature of chrome. Flash player plugin crashes are quarantined and base RAM usage is reduced.
Safari gobbles RAM like a fat chick at an open buffet for hedonists, which is fine if its aggressively caching, but when I clear the cache I only get back a fraction of that RAM. I'm not sure if this is due to fragmentation or just the aggressive cacheing system, which by the way is really only useful for people on dial-up modems or Edge/3G.
Browsing 15 sites, resetting, and then closing the Safari window shouldn't require Safari to still sit on top of 100MB+ of my RAM. Apple, please consider placing tabs' in their own process!
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