Webkit - what it is, and what it isn't

4th March 2013 — 1 minute read

Paul Irish, platform evangelist for Google Chrome, breaks this down for us: Webkit for developers

tl;dr -

Not all Webkits are equal. Webkit has a plethora of different implementations, and each of them differs slightly. Not to worry, because:

The layoutTest coverage in WebKit is enormous (28,000 layoutTests at last count), not only for existing features but for any found regressions. In fact, whenever you’re exploring some new or esoteric DOM/CSS/HTML5-y feature, the layoutTests often have fantastic minimal demos of the entire web platform.
In addition, the W3C is ramping up its effort for conformance suite testing. This means we can expect both different WebKit ports and all browsers to be testing against the same suite of tests, leading to fewer quirks and a more interoperable web. For all those who have assisted this effort by going to a Test The Web Forward event… thank you!