Anyone who has followed the support for web standards in today’s popular web browsers knows that the WebKit rendering engine has been at the forefront of that support.  Therefore, if you’re a browserphile like me, there’s a good chance you’re interested in testing out the latest and greatest WebKit build so you can see what all the fuss is about.  The following is a step-by-step list of things I had to do to get WebKit nightly builds working on my Windows computer.

  1. Download and install the Safari web browser for Windows.
  2. Download the latest WebKit nightly build for Windows.
  3. Unzip the contents of the download to a location like C:\Program Files\WebKit Nightlies.
  4. In the contents of the extracted folder, run (either from the command line or by double-clicking on the file) run-nightly-webkit.cmd.
  5. Watch as several necessary files are copied over to your Safari installation directory.
  6. If Safari launches and then crashes, fear not.  First try running the run-nightly-webkit.cmd file again.  If the crashing persists, work backward through the Windows Nightly Build Archive until you find a working build.  Remember, nightly builds are almost always considered dangerous (which is why the Firefox nightlies are called “Minefield“) so it may take some tinkering around before you find a good one.  The last good one I found at the time of writing was r34388.
  7. If Safari launches and renders the default start page, you’re in business.

If you want to verify that you’re indeed using the WebKit nightly build you downloaded and not the default Safari rendering engine included with the latest version (3.1.2 at the time of writing), an easy way to check is to head on over to the Acid3 test.

This is what the test looks like in Safari 3.1.2:

Screenshot of Acid3 in Safari 3.1.2

And here is what it looks like in WebKit nightly build r34388:

Screenshot of Acid3 Test in WebKit Nightly Build r34388

Pretty cool!

I’d be remiss not to mention Swapnonil Mukherjee’s previous post on the subject, which proved to be a pretty good guide to getting a WebKit nightly build running on my computer.

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