So I've been noticing a buzz in the web dev community lately about a web browser called "WebKit. " It made some news recently when it tied with Opera as being one of the first browsers to pass the Acid 3 test.
Don't get too excited, it's just an open source version of Safari. Well, it's the rendering engine that Safari is built off of, which is apparently based on the same engine that's used by Konqueror. (Now there's a browser we haven't heard of in a while.) It seems that in order to "install" WebKit you basically have to run a script that uses an existing Safari install as its user interface. The install seems to be temporary.
Running Web Kit
- If you don't already have it installed, then download Safari and install it.
- After it's installed check out the Acid 3 test, and you'll see that Safari fails it (as of 4/24/2008).
- Download the latest build of WebKit.
- Extract the zip to your desktop.
- Double click the run-nightly-webkit.cmd script. The old MS-DOS console will open and will spit out a series of file updates.
- Safari will automatically launch, and even though it says it's Safari it's actually WebKit. Navigate to the Acid 3 test and you'll see that it passes it. Note that your original Safari install is unaffected.
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