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What is WebKit nightly builds?
- Thread starter G5Unit
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It (temporarily) replaces all the guts of Safari, everything but the outer interface. WebKit is the underlying web engine used by Safari, Help, Mail, a few other parts of OS X.
Your original Safari remains intact even if you run this, the kit is arranged so that it doesn't change the installed version of the libraries.
Your original Safari remains intact even if you run this, the kit is arranged so that it doesn't change the installed version of the libraries.
It "does" all kinds of stuff, being a newer version of the library that ships with Tiger. It gives you many of the changes that will be seen in Leopard. There are a few speed tweaks, better compatibility with sites here and there (and worse on the parts where they're still working on it), a neat litle web inspector panel that lets you examine the structure of a site, plus a bunch of other little tweaks here and there.
Mainly it's an ongoing alpha/beta test for what will end up in Leopard, though.
WebKit is the rendering engine for Safari, the same way Gecko is the rendering engine for Firefox.
The Webkit Nightly builds are, basically, just a build of Safari with a newer version of the rendering engine "under the hood." They will almost always be faster and have support for many things Safari 2 doesn't have (some CSS3 tags, SVG, etc).
It's perfectly safe to run, but I don't recommend doing any kind of web development with it. It's so far ahead of the curve that you lose touch with what people visiting your site will actually see.
The Webkit Nightly builds are, basically, just a build of Safari with a newer version of the rendering engine "under the hood." They will almost always be faster and have support for many things Safari 2 doesn't have (some CSS3 tags, SVG, etc).
It's perfectly safe to run, but I don't recommend doing any kind of web development with it. It's so far ahead of the curve that you lose touch with what people visiting your site will actually see.
How does that make it not true that there are a few speed tweaks? The illiteracy on MR never ceases to amaze me.
No, it's updated many times a day but you only need to download a newer version when you feel like it.
Not sure.
I use Webkit as my main browser; I download a new version every few weeks or so, usually when the Safari blog announces a new feature. The build I have right now is a few weeks old and rock solid, not a single crash. Advantages over regular Safari include:
Much faster Javascript engine, which makes sites like Digg tolerable.
Less "beachballing" than Safari.
Better support for rich-text editing (used in CMSes and such).
Improved, industry-leading CSS 3 support.
The Inspect Element floating palette, very cool for web designers.
It is possible to download an unstable (i.e. crash-prone) build if you download it after a new bug has been introduced. In such a case, you can try a new build a few days later.
Much faster Javascript engine, which makes sites like Digg tolerable.
Less "beachballing" than Safari.
Better support for rich-text editing (used in CMSes and such).
Improved, industry-leading CSS 3 support.
The Inspect Element floating palette, very cool for web designers.
It is possible to download an unstable (i.e. crash-prone) build if you download it after a new bug has been introduced. In such a case, you can try a new build a few days later.
go there and download it see if it will work, its small, so even if it won't work on your computer, won't be that difficult.
If you want to take out the hassle of downloading it, i use NightShift. Run it whenever i feel like and it checks the latest build, then downloads the most up to date version and installs it all for you.
Might have a scheduler i can't remeber, i'm currently on a vista machine so cant check, if not i'll email the dev to see if he can add one.
Might have a scheduler i can't remeber, i'm currently on a vista machine so cant check, if not i'll email the dev to see if he can add one.