WebKit's week - #7 - Anthony Ricaud

Christmas edition !

Changes of the week

Everything mentioned below should work with the latest nightly available at the moment (38826).

Web Workers (38150, 38567)

Once again, let's talk about a new specificaiton. With Web workers, you can realise complex tasks in JavaScript in another thread and so in the background. Therefore, the browser is not unresponsive and we can better use the multiple cores of the recent processors. The spec is a work in progress and changes often. You'll find more detailed explanations on the Web Tech blog of Mozilla (which implements this spec, available in Firefox 3.1β2). Some APIs are available in a Worker, but the DOM API isn't part of them. Oliver Hunt prepared a demo to show the performance gain.

WML support (38541, Bug 20393)

WML is the language intended for devices that implement the WAP protocol. WebKit doesn't support this language but it is currently being implemented. This support is not available by default in the nightlies. You'll have to compile your own copy if you want to test it.

HttpOnly Cookie (38566)

An Internet Explorer extension (added in Firefox and Opera since) will soon be supported by WebKit based browsers. This restricts the access to certain cookies. They are only available for an HTTP request and so not from JavaScript. This is an important functionality to restrict the damages of an XSS vulnerability. ~~This is not available in the nightlies because you need some updated Apple proprietary libraries (CFNetwork).~~ UPDATE (29 december) : CFNetwork has been updated since this commit so it is now testable in the nightlies, my bad.

Updated propositions (38717, 38737, 38760)

Propositions for CSS Transforms, CSS Transitions and CSS Animations have been updated. CSS Transforms have been splitted into a 2D and 3D proposition. Also, a proposition of extension to the CSS Media Queries for the previous propositions. And an extension of pointer-events to HTML elements. All these propositions are consultable on a unique location.

Underground work

In addition to all this, a lot of what I call "underground" work has been done. A lot of renamings, cleanings, fixes for recently introduced features, a smaller memory footprint, tests for conformity. There's too much commits for me to point. All this work, which is not really visible but very useful, is an occasion for me to remind you the goals of the WebKit project.

This is everything for this week. Of course, this is just a selection I've made. If you've noticed any other interesting changes, please let me know. Same thing if I got something wrong.

Commentaires

Canvas' setTransform (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-app...) was added in 39079 (part of the HTML 5 specification). :-)

"Firefox 3.1ß2" – that should be a Beta (U+03B2), not an Eszett (U+00DF). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%92 .

@krit Thanks, I won't forget that for the next round (These are only changes until 38826)

@Ms2ger Thanks, I assumed the shortcut on the Mac keyboard (Opt + s) was the Beta symbol.

Yay for HttpOnly cookies! A good day for defense in depth.... :)

thank you so much for writing this summary of the recent changes i always look forward to eat to help explain things

thank you so much for writing these blog entries to explain to the non-programmers out there like myself, what the changes that show up in the TRAC actually mean. I really do appreciate it.