WebKitGTK+ 2.0 for GNOME 3.6?

That’s the plan! But, what’s exactly WebKitGTK+ 2.0? It will be the first stable release of WebKit2 GTK+ API, leaving the current WebKit GTK+ API in a maintenance mode. WebKit2 GTK+ is not just about multi-process architecture, robustness, stability and all other great things the new WebKit2 model brings, it’s also a redesign of the current WebKitGTK API to make it even more convenient and easier to use.

In the Igalia WebKit team,  we have planned a Roadmap of the tasks we will be actively working on to release WebKitGTK+ 2.0 for GNOME 3.6. Even though unit tests play a very important role in the WebKit2 GTK+ API development, we know that real applications using the API usually reveal issues that the unit tests or test programs like MiniBrowser don’t catch. For that reason, we have set milestones consisting of porting real applications to the new API.

  • GNOME 3.4: Applications using a small part of the API. We will focus on porting Devhelp.
  • GNOME 3.5: With the first unstable releases of the 3.5 cycle we should be able to port applications using the API more extensively. We will focus on porting Yelp.
  • GNOME 3.6: We should be able to port any application using WebKitGTK+ without major regressions. We will focus on porting Epiphany.

This is, of course, a plan, if we eventually don’t manage to achieve the milestones, we will release WebKitGTK+ 1.10 for GNOME 3.6 and current plan will be postponed to GNOME 3.8. Needless to say that any help would be more than welcome 🙂

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