Last week in WebKit:
Battery Status API and form updates
Last week, 751 changes landed in the WebKit repository. Highlights include landing of the Battery Status API and support for the W3C version of the Fullscreen API.
All signed and float Typed Arrays will now show up as normal arrays in Web Inspector. Taking heap snapshots should now be 12% faster and work is being done in preparation of supporting snippets in the Script Panel. A meta bug covering that work is available on WebKit’s Bugzilla.
CSS parsing now follows the specification when it unexpectedly runs into the end of a file and widths set on a column group won’t affect a column’s width anymore for fixed-layout tables. Three issues with the Flexible Box Layout implementation have been fixed, the “em” unit will be used correctly even when a :first-line pseudo-element changes the size and calc() can now mix percentages and absolute values for gradients and fonts.
The HTML5 meter and progress elements aren’t form–associated anymore, out-of-document radio buttons are now grouped when associated with a form and the form-attribute for labels had its behavior updated. The outer element is now labelable, while hidden input fields have lost that capability.
Samsung has landed an implementation for the Battery Status API, to be enabled on the EFL port. As for Speech Recognition, stubs for WebCore’s controller and the client landed, as well as the SpeechRecognitionEvent part of the API. The MediaStream’s PeerConnection implementation has been deprecated as it’s moving towards a JSEP API. Meanwhile, Nikolas Zimmermann has been busy implementing proper animVal support for SVG.
Besides support for Mozilla’s FullScreen API, WebKit now also supports the very similar W3C Fullscreen API. The primary differences lie in capital usage for the methods and behavior while exiting fullscreen.
Other changes which occurred last week:
- The HTML5 summary and detail elements have been enabled for the EFL port of WebKit.
- The Page Visibility API and Web Timing API have been enabled for the BlackBerry port.
- Dave Hyatt has started moving the Multiple Column implementation to one based on CSS Regions.
- Apple added implementation stubs for IndexedDB on JavaScriptCore, fixing the build.
- WebKit’s Commit Queue will now fast-track patches which already passed on testing EWS bots.
- Performance of the blur CSS Filter has been sped up by 2-2.5 times on Chromium.
- Andreas improved memory usage by another 800 kB when viewing the HTML5 specification.
- Performance improvements were made for innerText, outerText, innerHTML and outerHTML.
- Visual word movement can now be backed by ICU, providing a simpler implementation.
- Three accessibility improvements landed, one fixing the HTML5 footer element.