Anthony Ricaud

Après une interruption de 4 mois, je vais essayer de reprendre mes petites nouvelles. J'ai changé d'organisation pour essayer d'être plus régulier.

Changements de la semaine

Tout ce qui est mentionné ci-dessous doit normalement fonctionner dans la dernière nightly disponible (42662).

6 connections parallèles (42457, 42559)

Avec ce changement, WebKit passe de 4 à 6 connections parallèles par domaine. Le nombre de connections par domaine est important pour télécharger au plus vite les ressources des pages web. WebKit s'aligne donc sur les dernières versions de IE, Firefox et Chrome. Opera utilise 8 connections par domaine. Il faudra juste attendre une prochaine version de la librairie CFNetwork pour voir le changement effectif dans Safari.

function.displayName (42478)

JavaScript permet de créer des fonctions anonymes. Elles sont très pratiques mais la contrepartie, c'est qu'elles sont aussi anonymes dans le profiler, ce qui rend difficile l'interprétation des résultats. Grâce à ce changement, on peut désormais donner un nom aux fonctions et il sera utilisé dans le profiler.

Yarr! (42481)

Yarr! (Yet Another Regex Runtime) est un nouveau moteur de RegExp. Il est désactivé par défaut pour l'instant mais semble plus rapide que l'ancien (encore heureux) mais pas encore suffisamment. Il est d'ailleurs encore incomplet. Des nouvelles lorsqu'il sera plus avancé.

XMLHttpRequest withCredentials (42483)

Nouvelle fonctionnalité faisant partie de la spec XMLHttpRequest Level 2, l'attribut withCredentials permet de choisir si l'on souhaite envoyer les cookies et les autorisations HTTP lors d'une requête XHR sur un autre domaine. Comme pour le nombre de connexions parallèles, il faudra attendre une prochaine version de CFNetwork.

Array.reduce et Array.reduceRight (42563, 42570)

Deux nouvelles méthodes définies par ECMAScript 5. Je vous invite à lire les explications sur le centre développeur Mozilla.

SQL en lecture seule en navigation privée (42616)

En mode navigation privée (aka porn mode), les écritures ne seront plus autorisées dans les bases de données web. Plus d'insertion, modification ou suppression possible. Ainsi aucune information durant une session privée ne pourra être enregistrée.

Implémentation de l'attribut played (42619)

La nouvelle balise video contient un attribut played permettant de savoir quelles parties de la vidéo ont déjà été visionnées. Cet attribut représente les intervalles de temps qui ont été lus.

Voilà pour cette semaine. Évidemment, ce n'est qu'une sélection que j'ai faite. Si vous avez remarqué d'autres changements intéressants, n'hésitez pas à les mentionner. Idem si je me suis trompé dans une explication.

French version

Apologizes for the chaotic rhythm of publication. So here is a raw version.

Changes of the week

Everything mentioned below should work with the latest nightly available at the moment (38100).

Multiline Inputs (35739)

Before this commit, WebKit was only sending the first line of an input field. Now, a multiline text (entered with copy and paste) will keep all the text. The carriage return will be replaced by spaces. This matches other browsers behavior.

Computed styles tab collapsed (37523)

After the post on the redesigned Web Inspector, many people were asking why styles can't be edited. In fact, they were trying to edit the computed styles. As the name explains, it represents the final styles after being calculated by the browser and therefore, they are not editable. To avoid this confusion and keep an easy access to this data, this tab is now collapsed by default.

Debug without reloading the page (37622)

Wanna debug some Javascript ? You just have to enable the debugger and there you go. No reloading involved.

Time and size per resource

In order to ease the interpretation of the waterfall in the Resources panel, the time and size for each resources were added. You just have to hover the resource to get the different times (waiting and loading times) or the size of the resource.

On demand profiler (37730, 37933)

Before these commits, the profiler was always enable when the Safari's Developer menu was enabled. This affects performance, even when you weren't running a profile. Now, the profiler is disabled by default. A new activation screen is therefore necessary. A similar screen was added for the profiler too.

Geolocation API (37854)

A lot of applications could benefit from knowing the user position and offer local services. So an API is under development at the W3C : Geolocation API. There is a clear usecase with the iPhone for example. This functionality can't be tested in the nightlies at the moment.

Multi-file upload (37863)

HTML5 introduces the multiple attribute on file inputs. This allows uploading multiple files at a time. Combined with XMLHttpRequest version 2, this allows uploading files with a progression bar without external plugins.

Mozilla cursors (37902)

Two new values were added to customise cursors : -webkit-grab and -webkit-grabbing. They were already used in Mozilla. Demo of all supported cursors

Changing the accesskey shortcut (38211)

Originally, the accesskey shortcut was Ctrl. This caused collisions with the Emacs style shortcuts in Mac OS. The shorcut was changed to Ctrl+Opt. But this caused new problems with VoiceOver. So the intermediate solution is now : Ctrl+Opt without VoiceOver and Ctrl with VoiceOver.

Julien Chaffraix and I were at Paris Web 2008. Among many good moments, they were a nice browser panel with a represent of the four big engines.

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.

French version

Changes of the week

Everything mentioned below should work with the latest nightly available at the moment (35657).

CSS Animations implementation (35545, 35568, 35580, 35646)

CSS Animation is a work in progress spec written by Apple. Like its mate, CSS Transition, it allows animated effects in CSS. When transitions are just effects computed when a property is changed, animations are called explicitly to trigger a value change. There's a keyframe system to have a precise control of the animation flow. See how it works with the different examples.

Quick edition for numeric values (35561)

For CSS properties accepting numeric values, it is now possible to increase or decrease them with the keyboard. Remember the handy shortcuts changing the amount : with Alt, we jump by 0.1, with Shift or Page Up by 10, with Shift and Page Up by 100.

Profiler's Heavy view (35625)

OK, it's not an amazing novelty but it's a reason to talk about the new profiler. It allows you to get detailed information about the execution time of your JavaScript. Comparing to Firebug, results are displayed as a tree so you can look closer. Two views are available, Tree or Heavy, each one is interesting for different purposes. It's also possible to reduce noise by filtering the results to focus on some code. It reacts to console.profile and console.profileEnd, like Firebug.

Squirrelfish engine improvements (35593, 35639)

This engine was announced two months ago and since, it's always improved. I can't explain what they are doing but the figures speak for themselves : 2.6% and 2.5% progression for the SunSpider test

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.