THE WebKit development team announced SquirrelFish yesterday.
SquirrelFish is the new interpreter in the JavaScript engine and is 1.6 times faster than the one used previously. It is also part of the latest nightly builds of WebKit and is, therefore, available to everyone.
Even though installing and running the development version of WebKit is straightforward on Mac OS X (it is just a matter of downloading the .dmg file and copying the application bundle to /Applications), Windows users may find the task daunting.
But, they should not. Here is how to get WebKit running in four simple steps.
- Download and install Safari.
- Download the latest build of WebKit.
- Unzip the downloaded file and copy the contents to the Safari installation folder. (It is safe to overwrite
webkit.dlland the rest of the files.) - Execute
run-nightly-webkit.cmdonce and run Safari from the Start menu as you would normally.
UPDATE: You need to run run-nightly-webkit.cmd at least once, as in step 4.
Use the Acid3 test page to verify that your installation is successful; the test result should be 100/100.
To test the speed of SquirrelFish, you can execute the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark and compare the results with those from another browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera). But, Processed Tower Defense is probably a more fitting and fun way of testing this impressive new JavaScript engine.
Enjoy.
Eddy.
Howdy,
While googling about adding images to CheckBoxLists, I came across your reply linking to an entry of yours. That link is dead. Any chance that entry is still sround?
I’m sorry. The post was deleted by mistake.
Eddy.
Thanks… I’ll compare it with FF3. Although Safari is the worst browser i’ve ever used… ;)
carrotmadman6– The appearance of Safari (fonts, window frame, etc.) may not be consistent with the rest of Windows, but as a browser, it definitely is the most complete on that platform. Consider some of what Safari offers:
What makes you think it is the worst browser?
Eddy.
Correction required, you need to execute “run-nightly-webkit.cmd” after copying the files to properly install WebKit! :)
Acid3 Test Results:
Safari (with Webkit): 100/100
Firefox 3 RC1: 71/100
Firefox 2: 51/100
Opera 9.27: 46/100
Internet Explorer 7: 12/100
Sunspider Benchmark Results:
Firefox 3 RC1: 5944.2ms
Safari (with Webkit): 8410.6ms
Opera 9.27: 29434.0ms
Firefox 2: 54267.8ms
Internet Explorer 7: 127445.8ms
Safari isn’t the most complete browser… why would anyone want a snapback button? When I press the back button – I obviously don’t want to reload the previous page!(It should be the other way round – back button=back, snap-back=reload)
Although Safari passes the Acid3 test completely, pages look better on FF3 – even if Safari has better CSS handling, most of its CSS capabilities are never used! :(
YouTube.com crashed the first time I loaded it on Safari – but it hasn’t crashed since… ;)
Safari is far too simplistic, used for light-browsing just like a mobile browser (btw Nokias use Webkit). For anyone who has used Firefox, life would be impossible without add-ons. :)
carrotmadman6– I spotted the omission this morning. Nice catch, though :-)
Having a snapback button makes Safari… incomplete? I would think that would be a plus for it, on the contrary! Anyway… The snapback is very useful if you know when and how to use it.
Imagine that you are checking search results. What you would do is, open each link in a new tab, verify the result, and come back to the tab where your results are displayed. Well, you can do this much more quickly with snapback.
Mark the search results page as the snapback page. Open each link in the same tab and navigate as far off as you wish. When you want to come back to your search results, just press the snapback button, and you will be taken right back.
Snapback is not the same as reload. You do have a Reload button, if that is what you want to use. Apple has made clever use of the toolbar space by not having separate Reload and Stop buttons; the Stop button turns into a Reload button once the page is fully loaded.
There is no logic to this statement. Safari has better CSS handling, surely this is a good thing. If designers are liberated from the constraints of the browser and have more CSS features to play with, they will create better web sites.
Simplicity, yet with a full feature set, is what the majority of users want. For someone who has used Firefox, I prefer to confine it to the sole purpose of emulating user-agents when testing mobile web applications at work :-)
Eddy.
I loathe memory-hogging Firefox.
Now I know why Safari reloads every page when I press back – I checked my preferences & it’s 5MB by default there!
Now it’s OK, works perfectly, no reloading. :)
As for Snapback, I don’t really need one in FF with SnapLinks & CoolIris Preview addons! ;)
For pro users, even if FF is a memory hog, the uber-powerful addons make up for it.
My fav is the PicLens Addon:
http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/
carrotmadman6– When you have all these add-ons in Firefox, can you even say that you are still using “Firefox”?
Eddy.
Definitely! :)
It’s the add-ons that make Firefox so unique! :P
PS. For my previous comment, I meant the cache (or database as Safari calls it) was only 5MB.
Hi i made a Webbrowser with Visual Basic. Now all I want is to get Webkit installed and access it so I can use it instead of the IE browser in Visual Basic any idea how to do that so I can work with it? Also there is not the run-nightly-webkit.cmd to click on. All I find is an icon like a clock which is an application. What do I click on then?