Posts Tagged: WebKit

Web Browser Roundup – April 2013

Filed Under: News by midas — Leave a comment
April 12, 2013

It’s been a busy few weeks in the world of web browsers! There’s been some major changes in the browser landscape too! So here’s our take on what’s been happening..

  • Internet Explorer – IE11 coming later this year? / IE10 available for Windows 7 / Farewell IE8
  • Firefox – v20 now available… and a new rendering engine on the horizon?
  • Chrome – v26 out now… and ANOTHER new rendering engine on the horizon?!
  • Opera – 12.15 now available… and a change in rendering engine to.. WebKit? no wait.. Blink?
  • Safari – What will all these rendering engine changes to other browsers mean for Safari?

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 11 coming soon
Microsoft are busy working on their next update for Windows 8, currently billed as being “Windows 8.1”. It’s expected to be available in the latter half of this year. Windows 8.1 will almost be a kind of “service pack” for Windows 8, but will also contain a number of improvements and updates to apps & software. Perhaps the most exciting updating coming with Windows 8.1 will be Internet Explorer 11.

Yes, that’s right, no sooner is IE10 out of the door, and Microsoft are following it up with IE11 in a relatively short space of time (well, for them anyway!). We think this is great to see from Microsoft! In the past, updates to their flagship browser have been few and far between. Compare that with Mozilla’s current release cycle for Firefox, churning out a new version of Firefox every 6 weeks!

MIDAS will be supported in IE11 when it becomes available. It remains presently unknown as to whether IE11 will be “exclusive” to Windows 8.1, or if like IE10, it will also be made available for Windows 7 users as well.

…and yes, you did read that right – Internet Explorer 10 is available for Windows 7 right now! (and has been for over a month). If you’re a Windows 7 and Internet Explorer user, we strongly recommend that you update to IE10 get the best out of MIDAS.

Finally, if you’re still an Internet Explorer 8 user please read our “Saying farewell to Internet Explorer 8” post. Essentially, please upgrade your browser… as we won’t be supporting MIDAS in IE8 indefinitely!

MIDAS is currently supported in Internet Explorer 8+ (v10+ recommended)

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 20
Mozilla’s rapid release cycle means that we’re now up to Firefox version 20! In a tweet yesterday, the Firefox team claim that with their latest version of Firefox “you can get the web up to 7 times faster than older versions”.

Mozilla also announced last week that they were collaborating with Samsung on a new rendering engine, named “Servo”. A “rendering engine” is essentially what converts raw web page code into what you actually see on your browser screen. Mozilla’s long standing rendering engine has been “Gecko”, but according to Mozilla;

“Servo is a research project to develop a new web browser engine. Our goal is to create an architecture that takes advantage of parallelism at many levels, both on the CPU and GPU, while eliminating common sources of bugs and security vulnerabilities associated with incorrect memory management and data races. With Servo, we aim to take the kinds of fluid, richer multimedia experiences expected in today’s smart phone and tablet applications to the next level on tomorrow’s web and tomorrow’s hardware.”

“Servo” is still in its early days and according to Mozilla;

“It’s too early to say how [Servo] will be adopted going forward. No decision has been made as to whether Servo will replace Gecko. Gecko remains the ‘productised’ web engine for Mozilla.“

So it may be that Servo ends up being a rendering engine for Mozilla’s smartphone/tablet browsers, and Gecko remains for desktop Firefox editions. This could get confusing, but it’s more likely over time that Mozilla will standardize their rendering engine across all platforms.

MIDAS is currently supported in Firefox 4+ (v20+ recommended)

Google Chrome

Chrome 26
The current version of Google’s Chrome browser is v26. Ever since its first release – which was only 4 years ago! – Chrome has always used the WebKit rendering engine, most notably used by Apple’s Safari web browser. Chrome’s subsequent input into the WebKit project has really driven WebKit development forward in the last four years. WebKit is now arguably the most standards-compliant of all the rendering engines currently used by the major browsers.

However, Google recently announced that they would be developing a new rendering engine for Chrome, called “Blink”. Blink is expected to make it into builds of Chrome within just 10 weeks! Unlike Mozilla’s “Servo” engine, which is being built from the ground up, Blink is heavily based on the WebKit project.

Google have released a Blink Q&A video if you’re interested in learning more about this new rendering engine and its implementation

MIDAS is currently supported in Chrome 9+ (v26+ recommended)

Opera

Opera 12.15
Opera are having a bit of a turbulent time of late, and in some respects appear to be loosing a sense of focus and direction!
The Opera browser was first released in late 1994. This makes it the longest running browser that’s still in active development and current use today.

Apart from its longevity, what also makes Opera unique is their own “Presto” rendering engine.

Now, you may remember that back in January, we reported that Opera were making a switch from Presto to WebKit. Well, at least for their mobile browser offerings.

Then in February, it was confirmed that Opera would drop Presto for their entire range on browsers (not just mobile).

This was a move that surprised a lot of analysts, and received a mixed response from Opera’s loyal user base.

Whilst it would have been sad to see a very mature rendering engine being put out to pasture, it would have meant that with Google and Opera both contributing to WebKit (along with Safari). This would provide more continuity between browsing experiences on the three browsers. Also with three major organizations contributing to the development of WebKit, it would have become very powerful. It would certainly have Mozilla and Internet Explorer (who don’t use WebKit) quaking in their boots!

…but this was before Google announced Blink… and shortly afterwards, Opera changed their minds. Opera decided to jump on the Blink band-wagon too, after having gone all out and confirming they were moving to WebKit!!

So it’s a little confusing at the moment as to the direction that Opera are going down! ..but as things stand, here are the list of rendering engines that the five major browsers are using/will be using in the near future:

BrowserCurrent Rending EngineFuture Rendering Engine
Trident Rendering Engine Internet ExplorerTridentTrident
Gecko Rendering Engine Mozilla FirefoxGeckoServo?
Blink Rendering Engine Google ChromeWebKitBlink
Presto Rendering Engine OperaPrestoBlink?
WebKit Rendering Engine Apple SafariWebKitWebKit

MIDAS is currently supported in Opera 9+ (v12+ recommended)

Safari

Safari - The Future of WebKit
As you’ll know from our previous Web Browser Roundups – it’s been pretty quiet on the Safari development front in recent months. There’s not much happening on the face of it!

Safari’s rendering engine is WebKit, and last month it looked like both Google and Opera would begin contributing code to the WebKit project. In fact, Opera even began contributing code to WebKit.

This was before Google announced it was moving away from WebKit in favor of a new rendering engine, Blink. Then Opera followed suit and announced it was also teaming up with Google for the new Blink rendering engine.

So what will this mean for WebKit and the Safari browser that will soon be the sole user and primary contributor to the WebKit project?

Well, it remains to be seen! WebKit was successfully developed without Google’s input in the days before Chrome. It may well survive without Google’s input in the future. But with Google and Opera pooling resources into Blink, and Firefox potentially introducing a new rendering engine too, the WebKit team (and Safari) are going to be facing a tough challenge to keep up!

MIDAS is currently supported in Safari 4+ (v5+ recommended)

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Web Browser Roundup – February 2013

Filed Under: News by midas — Leave a comment
February 13, 2013

Here’s our take on all the latest web browser news for February…

  • Internet Explorer – Speculation continues over the IE10 release date for Windows 7
  • Chrome – The most actively developed browser?
  • Firefox – 18.0.2 now available.. development slowing down?
  • Safari – Are its days numbered?
  • Opera – 300 million active users and a full move to WebKit confirmed!

Internet Explorer:
Internet Explorer 10 - The Browser You Loved To Hate
At the very end of last month, Microsoft released an IE10 Update Blocker Toolkit. This led to speculation that IE10 for Windows 7 may be just around the corner!

There was some speculation that IE10 may have been pushed through Windows Update on 12th February to coincide with Microsoft’s monthly “Patch Tuesday”, when they were already planning on releasing some “critical updates” to Internet Explorer.

Whilst the critical updates for IE were included in this month’s Patch Tuesday, IE10 itself wasn’t. This isn’t entirely surprising, given that the update blocker (which prevents IE10 from being downloaded/installed via Windows Update) was only made available 13 days earlier. 13 days is hardly enough time for corporate environments (for which the blocker is aimed) to deploy the blocker throughout their IT infrastructure.

It’s instead more likely that IE10 will make a proper appearance for Windows 7 users at the end of the month, or in early March. This is based on when previous “IE blockers” were released. That’s assuming of course the IE team can be dragged away from devoting their time/energy/resources to developing endless web-based games, such as Contre Jour, to showcase how “great” Internet Explorer is. Instead, we think they really should focus instead on developing their actual web browser!

Anyway, you can read more about our predictions for when IE10 will likely be fully available in our blog post, “…and the final release date for Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 is…“

MIDAS is currently supported in Internet Explorer 8+ (v10+ recommended)

Google Chrome:
Chrome 24
Chrome continues to receive regular updates – in fact the Stable channel was updated only yesterday for Linux users to fix *another* Flash vulnerability!

These frequently discovered Flash vulnerabilities are not confined to Chrome. They can affect any browser on a computer with Flash installed. This is also why Microsoft pushed a couple of “critical updates” to Internet Explorer yesterday.

In our opinion, the sooner Flash is killed off the better! For today’s modern web browser, it serves no real purpose! Everything that Flash can do can these days be accomplished through a use of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.

You won’t find any Flash on our website, or within our scheduling web app

Anyway, back to Chrome; So far this month, there have been no fewer than 3 updates to the “Stable” channel. If you’re a normal Chrome user, you’ll automatically receive updates from the “Stable” channel. Two updates were made to the Chrome Beta for Android, two to the “Dev” channel, and one update to the “Beta” channel… and we’re only halfway through the month!

Google Chrome is arguably the most “actively” developed web browser at the present time.

MIDAS is currently supported in Chrome 9+ (v24+ recommended)

Mozilla Firefox:
Firefox 18
At the start of the month, Mozilla, released Firefox 18.0.2.

Primarily a security & stability update, 18.0.2 does have a handful of new features/improvements, most notably:

  • Faster JavaScript performance
  • Better image quality when scaling
  • Improved browser start-up time. (Chrome already has the fastest start-up times out of all the major browsers we tested a couple of months back to determine “Which Browser is Best?“)
  • Support for Retina Display on OS X 10.7 and up

In recent times, Mozilla have been releasing a “major” update to Firefox every six weeks or so. However, we wonder if this release cycle may now start to slow down whilst the Mozilla team focus more of their attention on their upcoming “Firefox OS” project.

MIDAS is currently supported in Firefox 4+ (v18+ recommended)

Safari:
Safari 5
Sadly, once again, there’s no new Safari news to report! As you’ll know from our November update, Safari development has taken back seat over at Apple in recent times. Apple instead have been seemingly more focused on their hardware offerings, than on their web browser. As we reported at the end of last year, they’ve currently ceased development on the Windows version of Safari.

And with other browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox available (and soon to become available) for iPad and iOS users, you do have to wonder whether Safari’s days are numbered? Will it be long before Apple take the decision to cease Safari development completely?!

MIDAS is currently supported in Safari 4+ (v5+ recommended)

Opera:
Opera 12.14
Last month we reported that Opera were dropping their own rendering engine, “Presto”, in favor of “WebKit” for a new mobile browser “Ice”. WebKit is the rendering engine already used by the likes of Safari and Chrome.

At the time, there was no word as to whether this move would mean that “Presto” was to also be ultimately phased out of their desktop browser offering as well.

Well, now this has been confirmed in an official Opera Press Release. The primary reason for the press release was to mark the fact that Opera now has an impressive 300 million monthly users across its various browser products. In the release CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie, also writes:

“The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need. It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine [Presto] further.”

No timescale has been given for this transition. It’s likely though to be a gradual progression over to WebKit rather than a sudden overnight switch.

In some respects it will be sad to see the “Presto” engine go. The more different browser rendering engines there are, the more competition there is to be the “best” and most up-to-date standards compliant browser. But in many other respects, this could actually be a very good move!

WebKit is actively in development by both Apple and Google, and is what powers their respective browsers. Add to this mix the extensive development expertise that the Opera team have. We do mean extensive too! Opera has been in constant development since 1994!). It will likely have Firefox (which uses its own “Gecko” engine), and Internet Explorer (which uses its own “Trident” engine) pretty worried!

Because Chrome, Safari, and soon Opera too, will use the same rendering engine, in theory web pages (and apps) should look identical in which ever of these browsers you use. This should make life easier for web developers! (In practice this isn’t quite true, as each browser has a different release cycle, so new features in the WebKit engine itself make it into one browser weeks, if not months, before another).

MIDAS is currently supported in Opera 9+ (v12+ recommended)

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