WebKit
From Free net encyclopedia
WebKit is an application framework included with Mac OS X v10.3 and later (and available as a software update for v10.2.7 and later) which is the basis of Mac OS X's Safari web browser, allowing third party developers to include much of Safari's functionality in their own products with very little work.
WebKit's Objective-C API provides the capability to interact with a web server, retrieve and render web pages, download files, and manage plugins.
WebKit includes two lower-level frameworks: WebCore, an HTML parser and renderer based on KHTML, and JavaScriptCore, a JavaScript engine based on KJS.
On June 7 2005, Safari developer Dave Hyatt announced on his weblog that Apple was open sourcing WebKit (previously, only WebCore and JavaScriptCore were open source) and opening up access to the CVS tree and Bugzilla tool for it. This move coincided with WWDC 2005. (The code was moved from CVS to Subversion on January 7, 2006.)
On June 13 2005, Nokia announced that it was developing Web Browser for S60 based on WebKit.
On December 15 2005 the standard version of WebKit and the one with Scalable Vector Graphics support were unified.
On January 10 2006 the CVS tree was migrated to Subversion.
Applications using WebKit
- Adium, a multi-protocol instant messenger, uses WebKit to display messages.
- BBEdit, a text/HTML editor, uses WebKit to preview web pages.
- Colloquy, an IRC and SILC chat client, uses WebKit to display chat traffic.
- Dashboard, a mini desktop applications environment for Mac OS X.
- Growl, a global notifications system, uses WebKit for some of its displays.
- NetNewsWire, an RSS aggregator, uses WebKit to render news feeds and to browse the web.
- NewsFire, an RSS aggregator, uses WebKit to handle a bulk of UI rendering.
- Safari, the default web browser on Mac OS X.
- Shiira, a multilingual open source web browser built with Cocoa.
- skEdit, a text editor, uses WebKit for its integrated preview functionality.
- SubEthaEdit, a collaborative text editor, uses WebKit to preview web pages.
- Xcode, Apple's Integrated Development Environment, uses WebKit to display documentation.
A full list is available on Apple's OpenDarwin wiki; however, the list includes applications that use WebCore without WebKit.
External links
- The WebKit Open Source Project — Official site
- Surfin' Safari – Weblog by the WebKit development team. Replaces the original Dave Hyatt-only weblog.
- Introduction to Web Kit Objective-C Programming Guide at developer.apple.com
- GNUstep WebKit — GNUstep port of WebKit
- Nightly builds of WebKit
- NightShift — Application to automatically download nightly builds of WebKit
- S60 OSS Browser — Information about Web Browser for S60 open source software.
- Simple DirectTV scheduler