Category Archives: WebKit

by carlos garcia campos

GNOME 3.4: WebKit2 and kinetic scrolling

The web at your fingertips

The GNOME Project has released GNOME 3.4, the second major release of GNOME 3. A lot of new features, UI improvements and other enhancements are included in this release, as well as important changes in the development platform. You can see all the details in the release notes.

One of the applications that has received a major revamp is Epiphany, the GNOME Web Browser, not only because of the beautiful new interface, but it also has significant improvements in performance and stability. If Epiphany is not your default browser, give it a try when you upgrade to GNOME 3.4. See Xan‘s and Diego‘s blog posts for more details of the new Web Browser.

WebKit2

GNOME 3.4 includes WebKitGTK+ 1.8.0, the first stable release that contains an initial WebKit2 GTK+ API. It’s disabled by default, though, since it’s still a preliminary version, so you need to build with –enable-webkit2 configure option. It’s already possible to try it out with Devhelp 3.4 which can be optionally built with WebKit2 using –with-webkit2 configure option. If the current API is enough to port your application, give it a try and let us know, you can use the webkit2 devhelp branch as a reference. We’ll provide a migration guide soon too.

Kinetic scrolling

GTK+ 3.4 has finally support for kinetic scrolling in GtkScrolledWindow. I’m very happy to know that the work made by Igalia during the GTK+/Meego Handset integration project has helped Carlos Garnacho to properly integrate kinetic scrolling in GTK+.

What’s next?

During the next development cycle, the Igalia WebKit team will continue to focus on making Epiphany even more awesome, with more UI improvements, and of course porting it to WebKit2.

by carlos garcia campos

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 🙂

by carlos garcia campos

Porting devhelp to WebKit2

When MiniBrowser was ported to the new WebKit2 GTK+ API, I said we had plans to create a webkit2 branch for epiphany. And we’ll do it as soon as we have enough API, but epiphany uses most of the WebKit API so this is going to take a bit. In the meantime, we have decided to focus on other applications that use a small part of the WebKit API like devhelp, yelp, liferea, etc. Yesterday I pushed a webkit2 branch into the devhelp git repository with some initial commits that allow to use devhelp with WebKit2. Even though WebKit2 is available in the latest WebKit unstable releases, there’s a bug and public headers are not installed, so you need to build WebKit from git to be able to build the devhelp webkit2 branch. The main functionality works, but there are still some features missing that we are currently working on:

  • Policy client: used by devhelp to decide what to do with unknown content and to open links in a new tab with middle click. Martin Robinson is working on Policy Client API for WebKit2, the patches are pretty good and will be pushed soon.
  • Search: We already agreed on the new API and Sergio Villar wrote the patch that will also land soon.
  • Printing: This is not only about adding API, it requires adding support for printing in the Web process too. The main problem is that we need to show the print dialog in the UI process and render pages for printing in the Web process, so we can’t use GtkPrintOperation. We have already patches to implement basic printing support and adding initial API. These patches only work for UNIX, so patches to make it work in win32 would be really appreciated.
  • Editing commands: There’s already a patch to add cut, copy and paste API, but we are discussing the possibility to move to a more generic approach for editing commands.

And here is the mandatory screenshot, although there’s nothing special since WebKit2 changes don’t affect the UI.

Devhelp using WebKit2

Devhelp using WebKit2

We will keep updating the webkit2 branch when new API lands in WebKit until there aren’t regressions. Then we’ll focus on yelp which requires two important challenges: DOM bindings and context menu API.

by carlos garcia campos

WebKit2 GTK+ MiniBrowser ported to GTK+ API!

MiniBrowser is a small web browser application for testing WebKit2. MiniBrowser for the GTK+ port has been working for some time now, but it was implemented using the C-based WebKit2 API. WebKitGTK+ 1.7.1 introduced an initial high level GTK+ API for WebKit2 more similar to the current WebKit1 GTK+ API. This week, Igalia‘s WebKit team started to port the MiniBrowser code to use the new GTK+ API.

MiniBrowser running
MiniBrowser running

This new GTK+ API is far from complete compared to the WebKit1 API, but it’s already possible to implement a small application with basic features, and we have plans to create a webkit2 branch for epiphany soon. API is already documented in the code, but the html generation is not available yet. We are already working on it so that WebKitGTK+ 1.7.2 will generate the API documentation when compiled with –enable-gtk-doc and –enable-webkit2 and it will be available on the WebKitGTK+ website too.

Thanks to the multiprocess architecture, WebKit2GTK+ solves the problem of using flash (or any other plugin using GTK+2) with GTK+3. The UI process depends unconditonally on GTK+3 and the plugin process is always built with GTK+2. And of course, flash will never crash or block your web browser. Plugins are broken in WebKitGTK+ 1.7.1 due to a bug that has already been fixed, so in order to try it out you need to either wait until 1.7.2 is released or build WebKit from current git master.

MiniBrowser showing a youtube video
MiniBrowser showing a youtube video