Browsersphere

One of the things I’ve always been fascinated by is the low-level side of web browser development.  I used to look through Mozilla’s source code, take a look at patches that were added to Bugzilla, and try to find anyone on the web who actually did web browser development to get a sense for what it entailed.  Back in the day, getting that type of information was very much so a do-it-yourself kind of venture.  The closest I really came to getting low-level yet consumable details was when I used to follow David Hyatt’s work several years ago.

Having had those experiences in the past helps me appreciate even more the fact that the Chromium community has been publicly exposing details about the “guts” of Chromium in several tech talks posted over at the Chromium Blog.  The tech talks have been archived in video form on YouTube so that anyone interested in the details of Chromium development can find out more about what’s involved.

One video features Darin Fisher, who used to work for Mozilla, talking about The Chromium WebKit API.  In another, Pam Greene covers Chromium WebKit Layout Tests.  In another, Brett Wilson discusses Painting in Chromium.  Last but not least, Eric Seidel, who has worked on both Safari and Chrome, goes in-depth about Rendering in WebKit.

That last video is probably the most interesting to me, simply because it deals with the rendering engine and also unveils a few interesting facts.  For instance, WebKit is made up of almost 2 million lines of code and is developed by about 80 active committers, of which about half work for Google.

If you’re interested in how web browsers are tested, how HTML source gets transformed into what you see on a web page, etc., you’d be doing yourself a favor by checking out the Chromium tech talks.

Tags: Brett Wilson, Bugzilla, Chromium, Darin Fisher, David Hyatt, Developers, Development, Eric Seidel, Mozilla, Pam Greene, Source Code, Tech Talks, Testing, Videos, WebKit

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:

And here is what it looks like 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.

Tags: Acid3, Development, Firefox, Minefield, Nightly Builds, Rendering Engines, Safari, Screenshots, Testing, Unreleased, Web Standards, WebKit, Windows