The release of the new stable branch WebKitGTK 2.36.0, a port of the WebKit browser engine for the GTK platform, has been introduced. WebKitGTK allows you to use all the features of WebKit through a GNOME-based GObject-based API and can be used to integrate web content processing tools into any application, from use in specialized HTML/CSS parsers to building full-featured web browsers. Of the well-known projects using WebKitGTK, one can note the regular GNOME browser (Epiphany). Previously, WebKitGTK was used in the Midori browser, but after the transfer of the project to the Astian Foundation, the old version of Midori on WebKitGTK was abandoned and, by creating a branch from the Wexond browser, a fundamentally different product was created with the same name Midori, but based on the Electron and React platform.
Key changes:
- A new implementation of tools for people with disabilities has been proposed, transferred from ATK to AT-SPI DBus interfaces.
- Added support for the requestVideoFrameCallback method.
- Added support for media sessions.
- The hardware-acceleration-policy parameter, which defines the rules for applying hardware acceleration, is set to βalwaysβ.
- Added API to handle custom URI schemes.
- On the Linux platform, real-time functionality is enabled for threads that provide user interaction (event handlers, scrolling, etc.).
Based on WebKitGTK 2.36.0, the release of the GNOME Web 42 (Epiphany) browser was formed, which proposed the following changes:
- The built-in PDF viewer (PDF.js) has been updated.
- Added support for using a dark theme.
- Hardware acceleration is always enabled.
- Preparations have been made for the transition to GTK 4.
- The ability to open URIs through desktop handlers has been provided.
- Added support for the libportal 0.5 library, which provides simple asynchronously running layers for most Flatpak "portals".
- The code for managing search engines has been reworked.
Source: opennet.ru