WebKit : Don’t Wait For A Safari Update
Google made a splash in 2008 when it released its new browser “Chrome”. Part of the reason why Chrome made a good first impression is that the browser is really fast and has good compatibility with Web sites in general. That’s all fine, but unfortunately Chrome is still not available for Mac. All hope is not lost though. What you may or may not know is that Chrome is based on Webkit, Apple’s HTML rendering framework used in a little application known as Safari.
When Apple first released Safari in 2003 it decided to use the open source HTML engine from the KDE project (a Linux desktop environment) as its basis. Since it’s open source, Apple had to keep it open source so what they did is that they launched an open source project of their own called WebKit.
Every now and then (mostly at major OS releases), Apple releases a new version of Safari and claims it’s “faster, more compatible,…” . If you’d like to get these benefits right now, you can do so easily by using a nightly build of Webkit. Simply visit the site and download the latest version. It won’t impact your installation of Safari so you’ll be able to go back to the “stable” version anytime you want. Webkit will use the same bookmarks as Safari and those will be synched through MobileMe if you are using that service. The transition back and forth between WebKit and Safari is transparent.
Enjoy the speed increase. While the software is technically “not stable”, I’ve never had a problem with it so you’re not taking a big risk.
