Surfin' Safari

With 901 commits to the various branches on WebKit’s repository, last week brought highlights including the move of WTF and a new CSS property to aid usage of responsive images: image-set().

Following much discussion and preparation, including e-mail threads going back more than a year, Eric Seidel moved the WTF (Web Template Framework) code out of JavaScriptCore. It initially settled there in 2005 as the kxmlcore directory, after which it got renamed to WTF in 2006 as many more useful classes had been included there.

JavaScript files and stylesheets will now be editable by default in Web Inspector’s Resources Panel. Highlighting of SVG root elements with a custom viewbox has been fixed and Source Maps may now be defined inline.

An initial implementation of the image-set() CSS function landed in WebKit, as was proposed for the CSS Images Level 4 module last month. Mixed percentage and absolute combinations for calc() may now be used for masks, background positioning and image sizing, Hyatt is working on the new Multiple Column implementation and fieldsets won’t stretch to minimum intrinsic width anymore if an explicit width has been specified. Besides various other Flexible Box Layout changes, the flexing algorithm got updated.

The crossorigin attribute may now be specified on script elements, causing WebKit to apply the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing policy on script elements as well. Three DOM-mutating JavaScript errors have been updated to align with the DOM4 specification and WebSocket’s Sec-WebSocket-Accept may not occur multiple times anymore.

Other changes which occurred last week:

• The default WebSocket version to use for WebKit ports has been changed to RFC 6455.
• While still completely disabled by default, CSS Shaders can now be compiled for Chromium.
• The style sharing optimization can now be applied to elements with style attributes as well.
• Support for “magic” iframes within WebKit has been removed.

Last week, 751 changes landed in the WebKit repository. Highlights include landing of the Battery Status API and support for the W3C version of the Fullscreen API.

All signed and float Typed Arrays will now show up as normal arrays in Web Inspector. Taking heap snapshots should now be 12% faster and work is being done in preparation of supporting snippets in the Script Panel. A meta bug covering that work is available on WebKit’s Bugzilla.

CSS parsing now follows the specification when it unexpectedly runs into the end of a file and widths set on a column group won’t affect a column’s width anymore for fixed-layout tables. Three issues with the Flexible Box Layout implementation have been fixed, the “em” unit will be used correctly even when a :first-line pseudo-element changes the size and calc() can now mix percentages and absolute values for gradients and fonts.

The HTML5 meter and progress elements aren’t form-associated anymore, out-of-document radio buttons are now grouped when associated with a form and the form-attribute for labels had its behavior updated. The outer element is now labelable, while hidden input fields have lost that capability.

Samsung has landed an implementation for the Battery Status API, to be enabled on the EFL port. As for Speech Recognition, stubs for WebCore’s controller and the client landed, as well as the SpeechRecognitionEvent part of the API. The MediaStream’s PeerConnection implementation has been deprecated as it’s moving towards a JSEP API. Meanwhile, Nikolas Zimmermann has been busy implementing proper animVal support for SVG.

Besides support for Mozilla’s FullScreen API, WebKit now also supports the very similar W3C Fullscreen API. The primary differences lie in capital usage for the methods and behavior while exiting fullscreen.

Other changes which occurred last week:

• The HTML5 summary and detail elements have been enabled for the EFL port of WebKit.
• The Page Visibility API and Web Timing API have been enabled for the BlackBerry port.
• Dave Hyatt has started moving the Multiple Column implementation to one based on CSS Regions.
• Apple added implementation stubs for IndexedDB on JavaScriptCore, fixing the build.
• WebKit’s Commit Queue will now fast-track patches which already passed on testing EWS bots.
• Performance of the blur CSS Filter has been sped up by 2-2.5 times on Chromium.
• Andreas improved memory usage by another 800 kB when viewing the HTML5 specification.
• Performance improvements were made for innerText, outerText, innerHTML and outerHTML.
• Visual word movement can now be backed by ICU, providing a simpler implementation.
• Three accessibility improvements landed, one fixing the HTML5 footer element.

715 changes landed in WebKit’s repository last week, bringing highlights such as improved calc() support and wrapping behavior for the new Flexible Box Layout implementation.

As for Web Inspector, not all percentage signs will attempt to be substituted anymore, the Network Panel will show application/json data again and inactive properties will be checked for vendor prefixes. The button allowing you to toggle the Timeline Panel’s overview mode has been moved and the Inspector has gotten more efficient at inspecting arrays containing large (~a million) elements.

WebKit’s implementation of the CSS calc() function is now able to mix absolute values and percentages for lengths. The Flexible Box Module’s flex-wrap property has been taught about the “wrap” and “reverse-wrap” values, and margins won’t be double counted anymore when baseline alignment is used. Finally, multiple values are now accepted for the unicode-bidi CSS property, as an union with bidi-override and isolate is now valid.

Three changes to the JavaScript Speech API have landed, namely the SpeechRecognition(Alternative, Error, Result, ResultList) and the SpeechGrammar(List) interfaces. Support for SVG’s transform-origin attribute has been implemented, getComputedStyle’s result for the height property no longer takes intrinsic paddings into account and rendering of the <shadow> element is now implemented, defining the insertion point for older shadow sub-trees.

Other changes which occurred last week:

• Initial code paths have been added in preparation for rendering subtitle cues of the <track> element.
• CSS Property getters have been sped up by 35% for JavaScriptCore, and setters by about 8%.
• Fierce performance improvements (up to 10.9 times!) for several properties in v8 bindings.
• All of JavaScriptCore’s forwarding headers have been removed in favor of accessing WTF directly.
• The compositor will now also be enabled following animated CSS Filters.
• A WebGL extension enabling anisotropic filters has been added to WebKit.
• Support for vw/vh/vmin has been rolled out again due to performance issues.
• Jessie Berlin now is a WebKit Reviewer, congratulations!

Jessie Berlin has been writing awesome WebKit code and masterfully wrangling WebKit bots for several years now, so I am thrilled to announce that she is now a WebKit reviewer. Maybe you can be lucky enough to have her wrangle your code if you submit a patch!

Congratulations, Jessie!

755 commits landed in WebKit last week, containing highlights such as support for three new viewport-relative CSS units and work on a JavaScript Speech API.

Style declarations within Web Inspector can now be added anywhere in the declaration rather than just at the end. The DOM counter graphs aren’t experimental anymore, color pickers will be closed when either escape or enter gets pressed and timeline records will be opened when you click on a DOM counter graph. Furthermore, the Profiles panel has been enabled for Web Workers and suggestions will now be given for Watch Expressions.

WebKit now supports an intra-line character grid for Japanese text layouts. The initial value for the -webkit-flow-into CSS property has been changed to “none”, the display type for inline flexboxen is now supported and David Barton is continuing his work on improving MathML support, this time by fixing <msubsup> formatting. The :empty pseudo-selector won’t apply anymore when scripted additions occur, clipping behavior for a fieldset’s <legend> element has been fixed and the :scope pseudo-class is now supported as well.

The Shadow DOM’s ShadowRoot has been taught about the innerHTML property, and the <content> element will now behave like an unknown HTML element when it’s used outside of a Shadow DOM sub-tree. Microdata’s property collections gained the namedItem method and CSS Region’s NamedFlow object now supports the getRegionsByContentNode method. SVG’s <use> element has been integrated with the Shadow Root implementation and work is being done to stop SVG from mutating CSS styles directly.

Joe Thomas landed support for three new CSS units: vw, vh and vmin. These units allow you to define sizes based on the viewport’s width, height or smallest of the two. Following an announcement on webkit-dev, Hans landed an initial patch towards implementing the JavaScript Speech API.

Other changes which occurred last week:

• Trailing new-lines will be removed again when pasting text in a single-line text box.
• IPP optimizations have been enabled for the Web Audio API’s Biquad filter.
• Adrienne Walker is now a WebKit reviewer, congratulations!
• Cloning and transferring ArrayBuffers has been implemented for JSC per Khronos’ typed array specification.
• Lines containing right-to-left text on Facebook can be selected again.
• Very early basics of the new KURLWTFURL URL parser were landed by Benjamin.
• The XMLHttpRequest Blob response test on html5test.com will now recognize Chromium.
• Layers required for elements which potentially have to hide overflow will now be created lazily.
• Plenty of BlackBerry upstreaming has been done again last week.
• Working towards date and time input pickers, a HTML-capable popup API has been added.
• Smooth Scrolling support has been added for the WebKit GTK port.
• The WebKit2 API now features the possibility to suspend and resume timers and animations.