New HTML and CSS Features in Safari 3.1

[kaiwai]

WebKit Nightly currently gets 92, so this is getting better. I find it interesting how Apple is releasing the newer WebKit builds more often. I think they are trying to become an even bigger player in the web arena (Safari being the most standards-compliant browser out there (at least, as far as I'm aware) already puts them as a big player, and the iPhone sure helps as well...).

I think we could possibly see a Safari 3.2 some time soon as well; now that would be a great thing for Apple to boast about; a browser which gets 100 on the acid3 test

Hopefully blogger will get their act together by then and fix up their website to make it standards compliant.

 

[cdinca]

Client-side database storage sounds awesome.

Could have kept iphone web developers happier if they had added that to iphone's safari.

 

[xUKHCx]

92

93 actually

okay, how do you get the webkit safari??? Is it really that much better?? Will the average person see a difference??

Just go here, download the latest version and install like most mac app and run it off you go.

Plus you get an upgrade to gold

 

[FakeWozniak]

Well assuming your remaing up-to-date with your computers (not using a 5 years or older computer) all these new features should be JUST as fast.

"JUST as fast" sounds like it means "the same speed" to me!

So you are admitting with faster processors and bigger hard drives, and the biennial $2K expense (estimated "upgrade" frequency and cost over last 15 years), I am no better off than I was back in '93! Let's see, (15 years / 2) * $2K = $15K down, and I'm where I was network wise when I could be faster!

I daydream sometimes about specifying a SINGLE UNIVERSAL alternative to what is used today (HTML + CSS + PHP + AJAX + JavaScript + JAVA + etc etc ad nausium) and it would be tighter and faster; and scale from slow machines on slow connections to fast machines on fast connections and everything in between. I'd probably start with PDF/PostScript as a paradigm and add the multimedia. PostScript is already client side language and WYSIWYG across all platforms and already supports embedded fonts, bitmaps, etc. It runs on slower (relative to 2008) processors like 68020s and i960's. Except for Adobe owning it, it's a good starting place! I suppose the devil's in the details, so I should stop wasting my dreams!

 

[CoreWeb]

okay, how do you get the webkit safari??? Is it really that much better?? Will the average person see a difference??

To the average user, it will likely be buggier, actually. It isn't so much better, as newer: it is the development version of Safari's core.

93 actually
View attachment 108435

Oops! I had just read that two minutes before! Yet, for some reason I thought it was 91 and just went up to 92. My brain's all foggy tonight...

 

[ifjake]

so i definitely said a "wooooooooooooo" out loud when i pressed the spinny thing.

i dunno i feel like there would definitely be positives to all those web technologies being separate too. i feel like if it was all one thing it would get bloated and problematic. i also don't really know crap what i'm talking about. so...

 

[elmimmo]

So... are these features in compliance with some standard (HTML, CSS, whatever)?

The CSS animations are definitely absolutely NOT.

The prefix in "-webkit-transition-" family of CSS properties should give you a hint about how standard this is.

Hyatt's justification from http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/:

:Like Microsoft our engine is also used inside many applications on our home operating system. We serve two masters: the Web and OS X (in all its forms). If people need these capabilities on OS X, we are going to provide them, regardless of whether or not they end up in any specification. That said, we are very interested in standardizing this stuff, and are preparing a proposal for the folks at the CSS WG.

Also, CSS has a well-documented means of providing safe non-conflicting extensions (using vendor-specific prefixes), so there is absolutely nothing wrong with CSS extensions. This isn’t like HTML, where you end up polluting the namespace. CSS can actually be extended safely in a way that doesn’t conflict with the standards

Yes, we plan to propose these for inclusion in the CSS spec

The bold is mine. So, let's say it is a standard way of implementing non-standard features.

I can only see people jump to the jugular should Microsoft go the same road (whether with reason or not). If you are a web designer, pleeeeease refrain from using them.

 

[BillyShears]

And this css animation is better than the cross browser script.aculo.us because?

Apart from speed and ease of use, which were already mentioned, there is also the idea that Javascript is for logic and CSS is for presentation.

So your Javascript can add a list-item to a list, but if you want it to fade in, that should be specified in CSS.

(Of course you specify the 'class' attribute in your Javascript, but attributes ideally describe the element in some meaningful way, anyway.)

 

[BillyShears]

The CSS animations are definitely absolutely NOT [standard compliant].

...

I can only see people jump to the jugular should Microsoft go the same road (whether with reason or not). If you are a web designer, pleeeeease refrain from using them.

CSS degrades gracefully. If your browser doesn't support animations, the element won't animate. WebKit users get a slightly nicer site, but other browsers get just as nice a site as they otherwise would.

Microsoft is in a different position, given they are a convicted monopoly. When Microsoft creates its own (de facto) standard and ignore other standards that accomplish the same things, they hurt the other browsers. Apple doesn't have a monopoly, so they are not in the same position.

 

[elmimmo]

So your Javascript can add a list-item to a list, but if you want it to fade in, that should be specified in CSS.

No it should not. It's not part of any CSS specs. See above post and Hyatt's own words. Please, limit it to Webkit use in OS X apps.

Oh god, I guess it's good that one a tiny fraction of us use Safari then. It would be <layer> and <basefont> all over again…

 

[BillyShears]

No it should not. It's not part of any CSS specs. See above post and Hyatt's own words. Please, limit it to Webkit use in OS X apps.

Oh god, I guess it's good that one a tiny fraction of us use Safari then. It would be <layer> and <basefont> all over again…

Unlike HTML, CSS degrades gracefully. Adding new elements to HTML is different from adding new properties to CSS. Changing the HTML alters the structure of the document, changing the CSS only alters the presentation.

On the Surfin' Safari page you linked to, the first example specifically shows off this functionality. The DIV fades out in Safari, disappears immediately in other browsers with CSS, and always shows up in browsers that don't support CSS. Nothing wrong with that.

One of your quotes from Hyatt basically sums this up:

Also, CSS has a well-documented means of providing safe non-conflicting extensions (using vendor-specific prefixes), so there is absolutely nothing wrong with CSS extensions. This isn’t like HTML, where you end up polluting the namespace. CSS can actually be extended safely in a way that doesn’t conflict with the standards.

 

[elmimmo]

One of your quotes from Hyatt basically sums this up:

I know well the difference. The other one also points out how it was not implemented for the web (so far).

 

[stp2112]

Safari 3.1 (very happy)

Definite performance increase here, great job with the webkit, Apple! Noticeably faster page loading with content heavy sites and I have yet to find a problem with 3.1, tried everything I know and it works great.

 

[stp2112]

Camin0 (and gecko), yah still buggy

Camino is knight? I don't use FireFox, but Camino.

I have always loved Camino because it is fast and clean looking, however I have had problems with the way it plays back movies, mpg and wmv play back choppy and that is really annoying to me, Firefox does not do that although it has a really funky way of loading the movie within the browser........of course if the movies opens up in QT it is not an issue.........I use QT pro and flip4mac......

 

[BillyShears]

I know well the difference. The other one also points out how it was not implemented for the web (so far).

I assume you mean the "we serve two masters" bit. I think that is a matter of interpretation. I can see where you're coming from, but I took it as him saying: "We added this for OS X, but it also works on the web, so feel free to use it." After all, it would be trivial to disable it for websites if they really wanted to.

Regardless, what Dave Hyatt meant isn't really important. He's not the be-all-end-all of web standards, and we can discuss the issue on it's own merits without appeals to authority.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Opening PDFs in the browser now actually works without hosing your mac.

 

[deathshrub]

Haha, bug. This is really pathetic.

 

[elppa]

It's fairly obvious the WebKit team want to be first to pass acid 3, just as they were amongst the first to pass acid 2.

It's a positive state of affairs when vendors are competing to prove how compliant with standards they are, wouldn't have seen it coming 8 years ago…

 

[deejemon]

*

 

[vendettabass]

I'm using webkit at the moment, and I got 92/100!

 

[deathshrub]

Erm... nope.

I have experienced that bug. You have not. What is your point by chiming in with "ERM... NOPE?" Clearly it doesn't happen all the time, as evidenced by your screen shots, but I never made that claim. Just that it was a bug, and that it happened to me. Are you trying to invalidate that?

 

[Windowlicker]

As I'm taking my bachelor degree programme in media engineering all this sounds like very good news to me. Now it's interesting to see how other browsers will support these features in the near future (IE probably being the weekest link again).

 

[Thomas2006]

What about XHTML?

It was my understanding that XHTML was going to replace HTML because it is better. now that HTML 5 is out, where does that leave XHTML?

 

[tmoney468]

One thing to stress and something that others have mentioned is that these new HTML and CSS features are just that, features. There is nothing wrong with designing a site to use these newer features, so long as the site nicely degrades to more non-complaint browsers. It basically gives people who use standards-complaint browsers a better web experience than those who don't.

I don't really know how/to what extent firefox is going to be implementing these new features but it'll be interesting to see if they can push it forward as well.

 

[mreed911]

HTML5 link crashes Safari when clicked for me. *sigh*

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000b1d45010
Crashed Thread:  0

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin	0x1771cf06 memcopy_mmx + 532286[/QUOTE]

Um, no, this would be Flash crashing as it [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentation_fault"]segfaults[/URL].

Mike :)