Multi-processing in Safari 4?

[Topher15]

Surely this is the plan?

 

[Nermal]

What exactly do you mean by "multi-processing"? I have Safari 4 on my machine and it's using 14-16 threads at present if that's what you're talking about.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Similar to Google Chrome? Please explain.

 

[southerndoc]

What exactly do you mean by "multi-processing"? I have Safari 4 on my machine and it's using 14-16 threads at present if that's what you're talking about.

How did you get Safari 4? I wouldn't mind giving it a spin.

 

[Nermal]

How did you get Safari 4? I wouldn't mind giving it a spin.

It's available on Connect for ADC members.

 

[Topher15]

Similar to Google Chrome? Please explain.

Yeah. So each tab it its own process. If a tab crashes it doesn't crash the browser. Slow loading tabs don't cause the browser to lag. And, since each tab is an individual process when you close a tab it instantly frees up memory.

http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture.html

 

[Brien]

Probably a sure thing for Safari 5, I don't know about 4. If SL is due in Q1 '09 I don't think they'll have time unless the webkit devs get busy.

 

[Tallest Skil]

If SL is due in Q1 '09...

BUT. IT'S. NOT.

Steve said June/July 2009.

 

[Brien]

You don't know that for sure. There's been plenty of 'hey, have this early' moments before.

(And if the Notebooks are out by xmas and there isn't a tablet, which I firmly believe there won't be, SL could be the one more thing of MWSF.)

 

[Nermal]

There is no way that Snow Leopard will be out in January. As far as I know, developer seeding hasn't even started yet (aside from the initial WWDC release).

 

[Tallest Skil]

You don't know that for sure. There's been plenty of 'hey, have this early' moments before.

Like Leopard? And Apple TV software 2.0? And iPhone software 2.0?

 

[Catfish_Man]

As of Safari 3.x, Safari releases are mostly decoupled from OSX releases.

However, moving to a Chrome-style process model will require pretty drastic changes to WebKit; I think it's extremely unlikely that it'll happen for Safari 4. At this point my understanding is that even the Chrome team isn't completely sure how they're going to do multi-process on OSX*, so I suspect the Safari team will be watching their results** with interest.

That said, some stuff the WebKit team is doing currently could also be helpful for multi-process browsers. The recent massive refactoring of scrolling support to avoid NSViews, for example.

*no, it's not the same as on Windows.

**particularly with regard to performance and memory usage. Going multiprocess is a lot easier if you don't mind being slow 😉