Safari's WebKit passes web standards test

Posted on 27 Mar 2008 at 10:44

Safari's WebKit engine now passes the most up-to-date test of web standards compliance.

The latest WebKit builds achieved a 100/100 score on the Acid 3 test. Opera had claimed to be the first browser to register the maximum score, but it subsequently emerged that there was a flaw in the test, leaving WebKit to claim victory.

The milestone was reached by enabling support for SVG Animation, which is now publicly available in the nightly nightly.webkit.org/. WebKit can be safely used without affecting any existing Safari installation.

Nightlies also include full page zoom, which when enabled changes the way that "Make Text Bigger/Smaller" commands work. Instead of affecting just the text, the commands will zoom the entire page.

WebKit also contain some new optimisations to reduce the impact of network latency. This compensates for delays caused by scripts and images.

It also includes a hidden option to enable native text rendering on Windows systems. One criticism of Safari on Windows has been that it uses Apple's rendering technology rather than Microsoft's. The new preference switches to Windows' native GDI rendering. This option can also be enabled in the recent Safari 3.1 release, but doing so will disable advanced text features.

Author: Simon Aughton

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