Browser World

The State of the Browsersphere - Part 1: Safari, Bernie Zimmermann
his is part 1 in a series of posts about the current state of affairs
in the “browsersphere,” or the world of web browser development. I
originally intended to encapsulate the current goings-on in a single
blog post, but because now is such an exciting time for web browser
development (and because it has taken me so long to get off my butt and
actually post), I will be breaking them out into logical parts. The
first part involves Apple’s web browser, Safari (which they now seem to be referring to as “Safari RSS”).

Over the course of the past two months, the Safari team, headed by
David Hyatt, has made some pretty significant improvements to their
browser, all the while expanding the capabilities of WebKit so that other web-related OS X applications can reap the benefits as well.

Multiple background support has been added, as specified in CSS3. This effectively allows for the Sliding Doors effect to be achieved with one element rather than two.

In addition, two new form controls have been implemented in WebKit: checkboxes and radio buttons. After setting the -khtml-appearance property to none in his or her CSS,
a web developer gains full access to all states of the form control so
that he or she can effectively define what a checkbox or radio button
will look like when checked, hovered over, pressed, disabled, etc. This
means applying background images, borders, background colors, and
anything else he or she desires.

Finally, Safari’s support for CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders has been almost completely fleshed out with the addition of the border-image, background-clip, background-origin and border-radius properties. David Hyatt eloquently explains what these new properties do over at Surfin’ Safari.

Look for part 2 of this multipart series very soon, when I’ll cover what the folks working on the Opera web browser have been up to lately.

See also:
Part 2: Opera
Part 3: Internet Explorer
Part 4: Firefox
Part 5: The Minor Players