Safari engineer reveals upcoming browser enhancements

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Apple Computer's Safari and WebKit team is looking to hire new members to work on the further development of the browser and in the meantime is finishing a new round of Safari enhancements that include improved JavaScript performance.



Safari and WebKit software engineer Dave Hyatt is said to be working on new form control implementations that can be styled with cascading style sheets. The changes are also expected to provide better performance on pages with a multitude of form controls, according to Safari team manager Darin Adler.



Meanwhile, Adler promises forthcoming performance improvements for JavaScript that boost scores by about 12 percent on the iBench JavaScript benchmark test.



He says his team is working on JavaScript engine changes that lead up to something they're calling tree code: a new way to interpret the JavaScript syntax tree that will be faster and more like a bytecode interpreter. "So far, one of [the] early steps gave us a 10% improvement on iBench JavaScript, so maybe we?ll see other speedups along the way," Alder wrote in a blog posting to the team's Surfin' Safari website.



In addition, WebKit -- the HTML framework that forms the foundation of Safari and is also used by Dashboard and Mail.app -- is about gain much need tab character support. "[It's] especially important in the Mail application for editing email messages with tabs," Adler wrote. "This also fixes how tab characters are handled within web pages, which is pretty important in the '', for example."



Apple recently provided developers with pre-release builds of Safari 2.0 Update 1 for Mac OS X 10.4.x and Safari 1.3 Update 6 for Mac OS X 10.3.9. It's likely the aforementioned enhancements would be included as part of these forthcoming updates, which will primarily focus on improving Safari's stability.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 50
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AppleInsider

    Apple Computer's Safari and WebKit team is looking to hire new members to work on the further development of the browser and in the meantime is finishing a new round of Safari enhancements that include improved JavaScript performance.



    I'd be happy with a simple button to disable Flash pop-up ads.
  • Reply 2 of 50
    I hope they fix the memory leak issue. After about 3 or four hours of browsing, I've always got at least a gig of ram "inactive" (as opposed to "free").
  • Reply 3 of 50
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Sladuuch

    I hope they fix the memory leak issue. After about 3 or four hours of browsing, I've always got at least a gig of ram "inactive" (as opposed to "free").



    Hey, if your computer does not need the RAM for anything else (which was apparently the case since it was labelled free) why not store all content of the webpages you have visited as cache files in your memory?
  • Reply 4 of 50
    Does it fix range issue with execCommand()?
  • Reply 5 of 50




    So do I !!
  • Reply 6 of 50
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sladuuch

    I hope they fix the memory leak issue. After about 3 or four hours of browsing, I've always got at least a gig of ram "inactive" (as opposed to "free").



    So do I !!
  • Reply 7 of 50
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by noirdesir

    Hey, if your computer does not need the RAM for anything else (which was apparently the case since it was labelled free) why not store all content of the webpages you have visited as cache files in your memory?



    Because

    A: if you open Safari and walk away for an hour then come back, it will have roughly doubled its RAM footprint with no activity

    and B: it doesnt "give up" its ram when I launch a new app.



    I really wish I had taken a screen shot when Safri was using 300MB of my 512 whilst also trying to run Photochop (before the 30 day trial expired) and iTunes
  • Reply 8 of 50
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Safari is currently using 747MB on my 512MB machine.



    And it doesn't seem to be affecting Mail, Finder, iChat, iCal, iTunes, Preview, TextEdit, Terminal, SubEthatEdit, TeXShop, Activity Monitor, BitTorrent, or VLC.



  • Reply 9 of 50
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    Because

    A: if you open Safari and walk away for an hour then come back, it will have roughly doubled its RAM footprint with no activity

    and B: it doesnt "give up" its ram when I launch a new app.



    I really wish I had taken a screen shot when Safri was using 300MB of my 512 whilst also trying to run Photochop (before the 30 day trial expired) and iTunes




    I hadn't thought of checking this. Perhaps that's why my wifes machine using 10.4.2 crashes sometimes when using Safari. She has 640MB's of RAM. I don't see this on 10.3.9.
  • Reply 10 of 50
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Yup, the numbers on my 10.3.9 machine are going up as I type. it's now 571MB, and rising. Used is 904, and free is 631 and dropping. VM is 10.56GB! I have mail open as well. Iwould have to turn that off. Maybe later.
  • Reply 11 of 50
    kolchakkolchak Posts: 1,398member
    Better performance is okay, but what I'd really love to see is more control over cookies than the simple three preference choices today. Something like FireFox's dialog box. I clean out my cookies every month or so and it's not funny how much crap sneaks in there through the course of a month of surfing. I especially love the way some sites have hit me with 20 or more cookies. Unfortunately, that includes eBay, where cookies are necessary.



    BTW, I've seen the memory leak, too. Which is why I quit Safari and Firefox every day or two to recover the memory. Thank heaven for URLwell.
  • Reply 12 of 50
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    What's interesting now is that I used the browser for some time after my last post, went downstairs for a snack, came back up, moved the ball on my trackball to stop the screensaver, and before I did anything, Safari crashed!



    It's all too spooky! I've rarely had crashes with 10.3.9 or under, with Safari.
  • Reply 13 of 50
    squozensquozen Posts: 66member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    Yup, the numbers on my 10.3.9 machine are going up as I type. it's now 571MB, and rising. Used is 904, and free is 631 and dropping. VM is 10.56GB! I have mail open as well. Iwould have to turn that off. Maybe later.



    You do know that the VM size quoted in Activity Monitor isn't actually how much swap space your Mac is using, right? Right now AM says my VM Size is 4.64Gb, but I really only have 512Mb of swap active (which you can check in /private/var/vm).
  • Reply 14 of 50
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    [B]Because

    A: if you open Safari and walk away for an hour then come back, it will have roughly doubled its RAM footprint with no activity



    That is not good.

    Quote:

    and B: it doesnt "give up" its ram when I launch a new app.



    That is not good either (you mean it keeps it 300MB in the 'Real Memory' column, when there are other apps brought into the foreground which could really need it?)



    I wish there would be browser that does not consume 30% of your processor cycles when you have 10+ tabs open (Actually, Safari, was still the best in this respect, compared to all Mozilla variants. And I know, it is probably all those animated images, like the smilies on this page that cause this).
  • Reply 15 of 50
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kolchak

    Better performance is okay, but what I'd really love to see is more control over cookies than the simple three preference choices today. Something like FireFox's dialog box. I clean out my cookies every month or so and it's not funny how much crap sneaks in there through the course of a month of surfing. I especially love the way some sites have hit me with 20 or more cookies. Unfortunately, that includes eBay, where cookies are necessary.



    BTW, I've seen the memory leak, too. Which is why I quit Safari and Firefox every day or two to recover the memory. Thank heaven for URLwell.




    Right, Safari is nice, but for heavy duty use, it is missing a couple of features, like a decent cookie management. (I just recently switched from Mozilla to Camino and I already miss the session cookies in Mozilla.)
  • Reply 16 of 50
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Squozen

    You do know that the VM size quoted in Activity Monitor isn't actually how much swap space your Mac is using, right? Right now AM says my VM Size is 4.64Gb, but I really only have 512Mb of swap active (which you can check in /private/var/vm).



    As long as I can remember, my VM in OS X was always around 10GB.
  • Reply 17 of 50
    thininethinine Posts: 71member
    How is this "Inside Info" when it's publicly available on the WebKit blog.
  • Reply 18 of 50
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Squozen

    You do know that the VM size quoted in Activity Monitor isn't actually how much swap space your Mac is using, right? Right now AM says my VM Size is 4.64Gb, but I really only have 512Mb of swap active (which you can check in /private/var/vm).



    The VM size is not necessarily memory that is filled. It is memory that is being held aside for the use. Meanwhile it isn't available for any other usage.



    Did you know that?
  • Reply 19 of 50
    nathan22tnathan22t Posts: 317member
    Tab Character Support....



    OH YEAH!







    seriously.
  • Reply 20 of 50
    coolfactorcoolfactor Posts: 2,239member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    Yup, the numbers on my 10.3.9 machine are going up as I type. it's now 571MB, and rising. Used is 904, and free is 631 and dropping. VM is 10.56GB! I have mail open as well. Iwould have to turn that off. Maybe later.



    The memory leak was previously attributed to the "Remember Form fields" or whatever the preference setting is called. If you disable this setting in Safari Preferences, then the memory leak is no longer. (not in front of a Mac right now, but I hope that makes sense).



    See if that helps.
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