QtWebKit: I'm back!

Hello world!

 

Five years have passed since the last entry in this blog, and almost 3 years since infamous "Changes in QtWebKit development" thread at webkit.org. Fortunately, we've made quite different kind of change in QtWebKit development lately, and it is much more exciting.

QtWebKit is back again!

If you were following QtWebKit development after 2013, you know that actually development have never stopped: each release was getting a bunch of bugfixes and even brand new features. However, WebKit engine itself has not been updated since Qt 5.2 release. That's why it didn't support recent changes in Web standards that happened after 2013, including: new JavaScript language standard ES2015 (also known as ES6), as well as improvements in DOM API and CSS.

However, things have changed in 2016, and now we have revived QtWebKit! Core engine code was updated to it's actual state, and as a result we (and you!) can use all improvements made by WebKit community during these 3 years without any changes in code of existing Qt applications!

QtWebKit-2.2-beta1 vs Qt-4.8-beta

Today Qt-4.8 beta was released and this post is to clarify which version of QtWebKit is included in this release.

Beta1 of QtWebKit-2.2 was released on June, 27th. Qt-4.8-Beta, released today, includes QtWebKit-2.2-beta1 plus a couple of build-fixes needed in some platforms. In other words, when testing QtWebKit from Qt-4.8-Beta, you're basically testing QtWebKit-2.2-beta1.

From the original announcement of QtWebKit-2.2-beta1:

"""
QtWebKit-2.2 was branched off trunk on May, 05th and is under stabilization since then. In total, 261 commits (207 bugs or tasks) have been added to the branch so far, most of them fixing regressions, crashes and security issues.

The WebKit project moves really fast and it's hard to highlight one specific feature of QtWebKit-2.2. In comparison to QtWebKit-2.0 (the version included in Qt-4.7 - more than one year old), there are tons of improvements, including plenty of support for new standards and many bugfixes.

Most important known issues:

• Audio and video performance is not yet ideal. We're working on improving the backends support;
• Symbian: doesn't build with RVCT-2.2 or winscw compilers (needed in some specific environments);

Details, including a list of what's been added to the branch, links to build-bots and meta-bugs, are available in our wiki: http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/QtWebKitRelease22

Any kind of test and feedback is very welcome. The development team can be contacted via mailing list (see the link to the wiki above) or via the #qtwebkit IRC channel on freenode.

"""

We've added quite a few other fixes to the 2.2 stabilization branch since the beta1 release. If you're interested in testing those, we recommend you build Qt-4.8-beta1 without QtWebKit (configure -no-webkit) and later build QtWebKit from the 2.2 branch.

The QtWebKit-2.2 release wiki has more details about the state of the release, including all weekly announcements.

Week 19 updates on QtWebKit stable branches (v2.1.x)

uring the past week QtWebKit-2.1.x had only test-related changes to help us catch potential regressions and keep the code stable in the future, during maintenance mode.


IMPORTANT: Starting with QtWebKit-2.2, these weekly reports will only be sent to the development and announcement mailing lists thus leaving this blog for specific developer discussions or sporadic, important announcements.

Release Notes for qtwebkit-2.1.x-week19 - Changes since qtwebkit-2.1.x-week18
2 bugs, 7 commits


Bugs fixed / Tasks done:

• #51894: [Qt] run-qtwebkit-tests needs timeout
• #60188: [Qt] run-qtwebkit-tests misses exec bit

Commits added or cherry-picked:

• 9d6baba: Try to make some xssAuditor tests less flakey.
• d33fca6: Revert "Try to make some xssAuditor tests less flakey."
• 7c21a8f: Skip a couple of flakey tests currently failing
• 24e5a06: Yet another try to make the bots green
• 9ac5e62: run-qtwebkit-tests should be able to kill a testsuite.
• e6168e8: The new QML tests require QML_IMPORT_PATH variable to be set in order to
• ae857ec: [Qt] run-qtwebkit-tests misses exec bit

Week 18 updates on QtWebKit stable branches (v2.1.x)

Starting next week we'll also have updates on QtWebKit-2.2.

Release Notes for qtwebkit-2.1.x-week18 - Changes since qtwebkit-2.1.x-week17
1 bugs, 3 commits

Bugs fixed / Tasks done:

• #52115: Flaky Test: fast/events/tabindex-focus-blur-all.html

Commits added or cherry-picked:

• 6b42f67: Flaky Test: fast/events/tabindex-focus-blur-all.html
  
• 0703ff9: Fix LayoutTests (Skipped list + expected results)
  
• 0e0dbbc: Fix more LayoutTests (expectation changes after 06e2e7d)

Week 17 updates on QtWebKit stable branches (v2.1.x)

Release Notes for qtwebkit-2.1.x-week17 - Changes since qtwebkit-2.1.x-week16
2 bugs, 2 commits

Bugs fixed / Tasks done:

• #46259: [Qt] QNetworkReplyHandler forces buffered output for FormData with files
  
• #56393: Without checking existence of the renderer of the element,tries to access the enclosing layer.

Commits added or cherry-picked:

• c56e63a: Fix crash when trying to access the enclosing layer without a renderer
  
• 2bb9aaf: [Qt] QNetworkReplyHandler forces buffered output for FormData with files

Week 16 updates on QtWebKit stable branches (v2.1.x)

No new cherry-picks or fixes on the qtwebkit-2.1.x branch during this week.

On related news, we're releasing our first beta of the 2.1.1 version (from the 2.1.x branch). There are a few bugs left but the final version is expected to be released very soon (as with 2.1.0, we're waiting for the final green light from the target devices).

The focus of the 2.1.1 release is HTML5 media (video/audio) on Meego/Symbian + general bugfixes. Although the targets are mobile platforms (the same of 2.1.0), tests and feedback on any environment are welcome as usual.

The project wiki has build instructions and other useful resources and discussions happen on the developer mailing list and on the #qtwebkit IRC channel on freenode.

Week 15 updates on QtWebKit stable branches (v2.1 and v2.1.x)

QtWebKit-2.1.0 has finally been released. Check the announcement for details. The focus is now on QtWebKit-2.2 (work happening on trunk) and on the next update for the 2.1.x series: QtWebKit-2.1.x.

Changes from qtwebkit-2.1.x-week14 to qtwebkit-2.1.x-week15
2 bugs, 4 commits

Bugs fixed / Tasks done:

• #43645: Use after free in notification presenter object
• #56130: [Qt] Plugin is not scrolled together with page content or jumping when content is rendered using cache (backing store).

Commits added or cherry-picked:

• 4acb6bf: Prevent use of stale notification presenter pointer in notifications by instead using
• 8ecd550: [Qt] Plugin is not scrolled together with page content or jumping
• ab07873: Skip failing tests which are not going to be fixed in the short term