Boost for browser engine
WebKit, the browser engine used by Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers, is getting an overhaul. The changes include a crucial process for protecting against random browser crashes.
The new version of WebKit, appropriately known as WebKit2, will give Safari, in particular, access to features that most other popular browsers already have.
The key change in WebKit2 is the ability to run web content and the application using it as separate processes. As web applications become more commonplace, there is a risk that applications running in a browser can crash and bring down the entire browser. WebKit2 will protect against this by separating the application process out so that if it does crash it will simply need to be restarted and not force a browser restart.
It’s not a new process and Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox already have in place similar features. Google’s Chrome also protects against application corruption using its own code, even though it is based on the WebKit engine. The WebKit developers, however, say that the Chrome code is not easily implemented in WebKit so have instead written their own process from the ground up.
The other advantage of the “split process” approach adopted by WebKit2 is that it paves the way for better performance on multi-core systems. Because the engine is being designed to split content and application processes it will also be able to process content in the background without blocking other applications running in the browser.
Apart from Safari and Chrome, WebKit is also the engine used in a number of mobile browsers including iPhone OS, Google’s Android, the Symbian S60 web browser and the Palm Pre browser.
Boost for browser engine << Discussion
Related links
Loading ...