WebGL avaliable in WebKit Nightlies
It's late news but, WebGL is available in Webkit Nightlies.
Check out http://webkit.org/blog/603/webgl-now-available-in-webkit-nightlies/
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Epiphany browser version 2.28 package in debian is webkit based. About f___ing time they made the switch! webkit epiphany browser gnome
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Webkit.NETを触ってみた - SharpLab.
まず、WebKit.NETライブラリをWebKit .NET | Get WebKit .NET at SourceForge.netからDLしてきます。その中のbinフォルダ内のファイルがライブラリを構成しています。WebKitBrowser.dllがC#から参照するラッパーです。
Webkit adds support for WebGL
via youtube.com
Web kit developers have started to add GPU-accelerated 3D via WebGL into the open source browser engine. WebGL is a JavaScript binding to Open ES 2.0
This will eliminate the need for plug-ins to implement 3D graphics. To enable WebGL manually change settings ( ENABLE_3D_CANVAS = ENABLE_3D_CANVAS in WebCore/Configurations/FeatureDefines.xcconfig)
Manual test data@ http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk/WebCore/manual-tests/webgl/
pretty cool, if you ask me.
Getting Started
Before beginning, we should make sure that we are all here for the right reasons. JavaScript is commonly only thought of as a scripting language confined the browser space and riddled with "landmines". Both statements, as we shall see throughout this series, are completely false descriptions of the language and its the intention of these posts to change your view. So that is our goal, to learn the wonders, beauty, and a little bit of magic that you can accomplish with a language that you will use or at least could be using in nearly every project with little effort.
I could go on to laud about how elegant and beautiful JavaScript is, but that really doesn't help anyone. At this point I am going to assume you have some degree of interest in the language and have been exposed to at least one other programming language. A final "clarification", in order to expedite these posts to you, I am going to limit the operating system environment to Mac OS X and Linux. If you are a reader using a Windows machine, all of the examples after installation should work perfectly. Please leave a comment with any notes on how to accomplish the same installation results in Windows if there are any differences and we will add them as part of procedures.
Without further ado, lets get JavaScripting.
Getting JavaScript
Unlike other programming texts you might be familiar with, the "configuration step" before we get to "Hello World" is going to be rather long. The length of this post is mainly because we are going to set up the full spectrum of JavaScript interpreters. For the first examples we will be going through, you will not need all of the JavaScript interpreters, so if you want to "Quick Start", just follow the instructions for Rhino. We will be using all of these interpreters as part of the series, mainly because the projects that use them take advantage of specific features each offers. I recommend pulling down all of them and playing around with each, it will be quite exciting. Each post will begin with an identifier of which JavaScript engine can be used for that particular example as well as a link to install that engine, so if you want you can install the engine only when needed.
The following are the interpreters we will be installing and using as part of this series:
- Rhino - A Java based JavaScript engine from Mozilla this is probably the most widely deployed and used non-browser JavaScript interpreter available. As such it is also the easiest to begin playing with Naked JavaScript in and the most robust base implementation. That said, the newer implementations mentioned below are pushing the envelope in terms of what JavaScript can do. They provide new features (Web Workers, etc.) that Rhino has yet to implement. If you are looking for the quickest, most risk-free start, Rhino is your best bet.
- SpiderMonkey - A C based JavaScript engine from Mozilla. This interpreter is the main JavaScript engine that has been used in Mozilla products, including Firefox, up until version 3.5 which will include a revised interpreter named TraceMonkey.
- TraceMonkey - A massive extension of SpiderMonkey that leverages the power of Trace Trees for Just In Time (JIT) native code compilation process which in turn drastically improves performance on the order of 3 to 30 times. TraceMonkey includes various improvements to the overall processing and handling of JavaScript as well as integrating the newest features including better garbage collection and various integrations from the Tamarin project, an open source ActionScript Virtual Machine built as a collaboration between Mozilla and Adobe.
- V8 - A C++ based JavaScript engine built by Google as part of the Google Chrome web browser. Google's team openly focuses on making V8 a high performance engine by applying deep virtual machine technology to the entire workflow of JavaScript interpretation and processing. Google developed V8 for a variety of reasons, but mainly because of a firm belief that high performance JavaScript engines are critical for future innovations.
- SquirrelFish Extreme - Also known as JavaScriptCore, WebKit's JavaScript engine which was one of the first "performance" contender's to Mozilla's general dominance. Apple uses WebKit and JavaScriptCore to produce Safari, their lightning fast web browser for both desktop and mobile web browsing. Mobile Safari for the iPhone brought full featured mobile web browsing to the general public and was the first time that a vender recommended the creation of pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for application development. Palm went a step further with WebKit as part of building the Palm Pre by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript throughout the entire Operating System stack and their Mojo SDK.
There are other JavaScript engines out there, but for the sake of discussions in this series, these will be the main engines that we use. The next several posts will help you with install each engine. It is recommended that in order to keep them all straight you create a directory named "javascript", without the quotes. While you can put this directory anywhere, the examples will assume the directory is off of your home directory. To create this directory enter the following commands:
mkdir ~/javascript && cd ~/javascript
And you are off to installing.
iRev Touch Test. Graphic Transformation.
A raw prototype using iRev and Web-kit tags is now on my iRev prototype page. It works with any recent web-kit browser ,aka safari (I tested with Safari 4.0 & iPhone OS) , and specially iPhone/iTouch OS 2.0 and later. It nothing to exciting, but it is a steeping stone for bigger and better things to come using iRev.
I am working on another that is not yet done that paints on the screen. It works sort of now, but not enough to show off yet.
Also updated the site with twitter links and a favicon.
More info @ http://www.obleoproductions.com/page5/page5.html
Someone tries to crown IE8 RC1 as best performer in the town
Dana Wollman from www.laptopmag.com tried to convince us by reviewing IE8 RC1 and commenting that it smashed both Firefox 3 and surprisingly Google Chrome. In her own words,
The last time we tested IE 8, it was often—but not always—faster than Firefox 3. This time around, it blew Firefox out of the water, along with Google Chrome
How flattering, I wonder. Firefox 3 and now Google Chrome sports two of the fastest available mainstream rendering engine on this planet, while rickety Trident continues to grow on patches rather than a complete overhaul. And then there are Minefield 3.1 and 3.2Pre (the one I'm using now), and the later likes to beat almost anything in vicinity. Javascript rendering engines, Tracemonkey and Squirelfish are going to take over the world soon. IE8 does not even stand a chance when pitted against this, so much for beating Firefox and Google Chrome.
Camino 2.0 beta 1
This was out nearly one week but I haven't got the chance to grab it. I've been a long time supporter of Camino, one of the few original Mac browsers. It first came out as Chimera before Firefox (Phoenix) even existed and I've always kept it updated all these years, foregoing the official release builds and skip straight to the latest stable beta and sometimes even the latest nightly build.
Going from 1.0 to 2.0 will have been quite a long journey unlike Firefox who shot through four major releases since 2004. Camino skipped through from 0.1 to 0.7 in under a year but took 4 years to get to 1.0, and two more years to get to the current 1.6 and will be nearly 3 years to 2.0.
This past week the Camino team pushed out 2.0 beta 1. Since I've had very little problems with Camino alpha and beta releases, I hold no qualms about replacing Camino 2.0a1 despite their warning and disclaimer about it being unstable and unsuitable or daily use especially when they have these updates spelled out in the release notes:
Camino 2.0b1
- Tab Dragging: Tabs can be rearranged by dragging and dropping.
- Tab Overview: There is now an optional toolbar icon for opening and closing Tab Overview.
- Blocking Flash Animations: A new exceptions list allows disabling "Block Flash animations" on a per-site basis.
- Gecko 1.9: Camino 2.0 Beta 1 includes changes that improve stability on Mac OS X 10.4.
- Downloading: On Mac OS X 10.5, the downloads folder in the Dock will bounce when a download finishes.
- Requires Mac OS X 10.4: Camino 2.0 Alpha 1 now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.
- Tab Overview: The tab overview feature, accessed from the Window menu, displays a thumbnail grid of all tabs in the current window.
- Recently Closed Pages: The History menu now contains a sub-menu listing the last 20 closed web pages.
- Complete Keyboard Loop: The keyboard loop in the main browser window has been completely rewritten, bringing keyboard access to the tab bar, the pop-up blocker, and the Find bar. The new keyboard loop also fixes most of the bugs that existed in the main browser window's keyboard loop.
- Full Content Zoom: This new zoom behavior adds the ability to scale up or down the entire content of a web page instead of just increasing or decreasing the text size. The default behavior of the ⌘+ and ⌘- shortcuts is now full content zoom, and increasing or decreasing text size can now be accessed with the ⌘⌥+ and ⌘⌥- shortcuts.
- Gecko 1.9: Camino now uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine. This version includes a new graphics architecture based on Quartz, which delivers better compatibility with popular plug-ins and significant improvements in Flash performance. Gecko 1.9 also has enhanced support for web standards, improved handling of fonts and languages, and improved support for author styles on form controls.
Here's where you can grab the preview release. Read through the site and don't blame anyone but yourself if you lose something while using a non-official release. My only problem with Camino now is it seems to be slower than Safari 3.1. I haven't updated Safari to 3.2. Also, I don't exactly use Safari, I use WebKit, which is the open-source non-official version of Safari.
Mixture of thoughts on Chrome
- All this browser innovation (not just Chrome, but also Snowl & Ubiquity from Mozilla) are great, but how quickly can this really move.. after all we still have IE.
- If we don't see the innovation from IE, can we bridge it somehow to allow it to gain mass market? IE plugins?
- Chrome uses WebKit. It joins, among others Safari, Chrome, Nokia, iPhone, and Android. Is this aimed at all non-WebKit engine? i.e. IE (Trident) & Firefox (Gecko)
- So, who is this aimed at?
- Safari? doubt it.
- Opera? Did WebKit gaining popularity take care of them.
- Firefox? Between WebKit (Apple, Google, Nokia) and Microsoft I can't help thinking maybe their market share is a niche?
- Internet Explorer? doubt it, too small an aim for the Google
- Microsoft? Now we're talking, bring Gears (included in Chrome) into the mix (over all the supported platforms) and you have the framework of an assault on desktop applications, Microsoft's core business.
- Facebook? If we're looking at a push from desktop world into a web application world the phrase 'WebOS' appears. Remember f8 acquisition Parakey?
- On 'WebOS', land you get to Google App Engine, Amazon AWS, OpenSocial et al. I've previously laid some thoughts on those.
- Javascript engines? Chrome uses V8, while Mozilla has SpiderMonkey & Rhine in it's toolkit. Both IE and Opera also have their own. What will it mean for Javascript?
- From Gears, what about Adobe AIR, Prism, Fluid, what will it mean for these bridging technologies?
I'll leave it there for now. Your thoughts?
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