Webkit, for the uninformed, is the Open Source engine at the heart of Apple's Safari for Macs & Windows and Apple's Mobile Safari for the iPhone. Now for the non-Apple fan before you start ragging on a great piece of OSS bear in mind that WebKit is also at the heart of Google's Chrome and a range of other browsers and pieces of software, including a range of new mobile phones from the likes of Nokia and Samsung.
WebKit + Sparkle
The WebKit project offers nightly builds (in Mac & Windows flavours) that you can download and test against your favourite website or just to see what's new.
Lately one of the big bugbears with keeping upto date has been addressed by the integration of the Sparkle framework into the nightly builds. While this doesn't help you in the Windows space, most Mac users will be familiar with what Sparkle does but may not know the name. Sparkle is an automatic update system that checks for updates to the application or plug-in or System Preference that uses it. If there is an update the application that is hosting the Sparkle framework presents a nice dialog about any available updates. Like this one from a recent OmniFocus build:
If you think about it having something that updates nightly update itself is very handy for you the end user!WebKit + Sparkle
WebKit + CSS Animations
The WebKit project started dabbling with CSS Animations back in 2007 in the form of transistion's. This latest addition though goes well beyond that - see these advances you'll obviously need to get your hands on a nightly build, once you've done that check out the Surfin' Safari blog entry below for examples and code samples.
CSS Animation
[From Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive ยป CSS Animation]
WebKit now supports explicit animations in CSS. As a counterpart to transitions, animations provide a way to declare repeating animated effects, with keyframes, completely in CSS.
I'm not interested in debates about web standards but I am interested in all things that move us forward. Interestingly we now have a standards based browser rendering engine that has a very fast widely used scripting language combined with a extensive animation system with 3D support - tell me how do you think that will play on an iPhone which apparently already has some of these features built-in?
More importantly I wonder what Adobe thinks of all of this? Which would be faster WebKit based CSS Animations and Javascript or a Flash plug-in for the iPhone?
All fun questions, sure to be answered one way or another in the coming months!
I've been described as a lost technocrat or a wondering luddite, personally I just like everything that takes us forward.