More recently, I have been seeing questions with the tag "webkit". Such questions usually tend to be web-based questions relating to CSS, jQuery, layouts, cross-browers compatibility issues, etc...
So what is this "webkit" and how does it relate to CSS? I have also noticed a lot of -webkit-... properties in the source code for various websites. Are these two related?
Update
So from the answers so far... WebKit is a HTML/CSS web browser rendering engine for Safari/Chrome. Are there such engines for IE/Opera/Firefox and what are the differences, pros and cons of using one over the other? Can I use WebKit features in Firefox for example?
The ultimate question... Is WebKit supported by IE?
Update 2
All of the major browsers use different rendering engines. I guess this is a big reason why there are so many cross-browser compatibility issues!
So, is there some kind of project or movement to a standard rendering engine that ALL browsers will use? Will HTML5 bring an end to the cross-browser compatibility issues?
Update: So apparently, WebKit is a HTML/CSS web browser rendering engine for Safari/Chrome. Are there such engines for IE/Opera/Firefox and what are the differences, pros and cons of using one over the other? Can I use WebKit features in Firefox for example?
Every browser is backed by a rendering engine to draw the HTML/CSS web page.
IE → Trident (discontinued)
Edge → EdgeHTML (clean-up fork of Trident) (Edge switched to Blink in 2019)
Firefox → Gecko
Opera → Presto (no longer uses Presto since Feb 2013, consider Opera = Chrome, therefore Blink nowadays)
Safari → WebKit
Chrome → Blink (a fork of Webkit).
See Comparison of web browser engines for a list of comparisons in different areas.
The ultimate question... is WebKit supported by IE?
Not natively.
Addition to what #KennyTM said:
IE
Engine: Trident
CSS-prefix: -ms
Edge
Engine: EdgeHTML → Blink3
CSS-prefix: -ms
Firefox
Engine: Gecko
CSS-prefix: -moz
Opera
Engine: Presto → Blink1
CSS-prefix: -o (Presto) and -webkit (Blink)
Safari
Engine: WebKit
CSS-prefix: -webkit
Chrome
Engine: WebKit → Blink2
CSS-prefix: -webkit
1) On February 12 2013 Opera (version 15+) announces they moving away from their own engine Presto to WebKit named Blink.
2) On April 3 2013 Google (Chrome version 28+) announces they are going to use the WebKit-based Blink engine.
3) On December 6 2018 Microsoft (Microsoft Edge 79+ stable) announces they are going to use the WebKit-based Blink engine.
Webkit is a web browser rendering engine used by Safari and Chrome (among others, but these are the popular ones).
The -webkit prefix on CSS selectors are properties that only this engine is intended to process, very similar to -moz properties. Many of us are hoping this goes away, for example -webkit-border-radius will be replaced by the standard border-radius and you won't need multiple rules for the same thing for multiple browsers. This is really the result of "pre-specification" features that are intended to not interfere with the standard version when it comes about.
For your update:...no it's not related to IE really, IE at least before 9 uses a different rendering engine called Trident.
This has been answered and accepted, but if someone is still wondering why are things a bit messed up today, you'll have to read this:
http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
It gives a good idea of how gecko, webkit and other major rendering engines evolved and what led to the current state of messed up user-agent strings.
Quoting the last paragraph for TL;DR purposes:
And then Google built Chrome, and Chrome used Webkit, and it was like Safari, and wanted pages built for Safari, and so pretended to be Safari. And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and all browsers pretended to be Mozilla, and Chrome called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13, and the user agent string was a complete mess, and near useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion abounded.
-webkit- is simply a group that Chrome, Safari, Opera and iOS browsers fit into. They all have a common ancestor, so often their capabilities/limitations (when it comes to running CSS and Javascript) are confined to the group.
A developer will place -webkit- followed by some code, meaning that the code will only run on Chrome, Safari, Opera and iOS browsers. Here is a complete list:
-webkit- (Chrome, Safari, newer versions of Opera, almost all iOS browsers (including Firefox for iOS); basically, any WebKit based browser)
-moz- (Firefox)
-o- (Old, pre-WebKit, versions of Opera)
-ms- (Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge)
The ultimate question... Is WebKit supported by IE?
Kind of. Check out Chrome Frame, it's a plugin for Internet Explorer that makes it use the Webkit engine. The only quirk is that you have to persuade your visitors to install the plugin.
Update
Chrome Frame is no longer maintained or supported…
WebKit is a layout engine designed to
allow web browsers to render web
pages. The WebKit engine provides a
set of classes to display web content
in windows, and implements browser
features such as following links when
clicked by the user, managing a
back-forward list, and managing a
history of pages recently visited.
WebKit was originally created as a
fork of KHTML as the layout engine for
Apple's Safari; it is portable to many
other computing platforms. It is also
used in Google's Chrome Browser.
WebKit's WebCore and JavaScriptCore
components are available under the GNU
Lesser General Public License, and the
rest of WebKit is available under a
BSD-style license.
Source Wikipedia
For further information about layout engines you can look here
Webkit is an HTML rendering engine used by Chrome and Safari.
It supports a number of custom CSS properties that are prefixed by -webkit-.
Webkit is the html/css rendering engine used in Apple's Safari browser, and in Google's Chrome.
css values prefixes with -webkit- are webkit-specific, they're usually CSS3 or other non-standardised features.
to answer update 2
w3c is the body that tries to standardize these things, they write the rules, then programmers write their rendering engine to interpret those rules. So basically w3c says DIVs should work "This way" the engine-writer then uses that rule to write their code, any bugs or mis-interpretations of the rules cause the compatibility issues.
Webkit is the rendering engine used in the popular browsers Safari and Chrome, as well as others.
A common problem I have ran into as a website designer is that alot of people use IE6+. No big deal usually, except in CSS I have to add multiple rendering syntax' to parse each request, per browser. It would be very nice if there was a universal rendering setup for CSS that IE can read as easily as Chrome/FF/Opera and webkit. The problem with IE is that if I do NOT use ALL the proper CSS styles and rendering, than my websites look and work great using every browser except IE. This can make for an unhappy, die-hard IE customer.
Example is this: Let us say I need a 1px, grey border with a border-radius of 10%. For Chrome and others, I use the webkit property. Now, for IE, I have to add seperate CSS styles using the simple old CSS values of "border: 1px solid #E5E5E5" and "border-radius: 10%". A positive outcome is not always guaranteed over all IE browser versions, but for the most part this method works fine for me and many others.
Even though this is an older post, there is also another method to rendering for older versions of Internet Explorer. -webkit while being a CSS Vendor Prefix, you can also download a few JS applications and place them in the bottom of the HTML's HEAD.
Try using Modernizr, HTML5 Shiv and Respond.js. These are amazing IE compatible polyfill scripts that use polyfills, and other resources which will help better render HTML5 elements in IE9 and Below.
To use these polyfills, simply add HTML boolean logic to place them, IF the browser is less than the desire IE version. Example code is:
<head>
<!-- HEAD Elements -->
<script src="path/to/modernizr.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<!--[if lt IE 6]>
<script src="path/to/HTMLSiv.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script src="path/to/respond.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<![endif]-->
</head>
Webkit is the rendering engine used in the popular browsers Safari and Chrome, as well as others
Every browser is backed by a rendering engine to draw the HTML/CSS web page.
IE → Trident (discontinued)
Edge → EdgeHTML (clean-up fork of Trident)
Firefox → Gecko
Opera → Presto (no longer uses Presto since Feb 2013, consider Opera = Chrome nowadays)
Safari → WebKit
Chrome → Blink (a fork of WebKit).
A good documentation about WebEngines especially webKit and its developers you can read at:
WebKit
Related
I have a small question, I am new to CSS and I have pretty stupid question. Why everybody add -webkit for Chrome and Safari, -moz for Mozzila Firefox and so on, I used just "transition:" and value and it worked on Mozzila, Chrome and Opera too. So what's the reason to add it?
Thanks.
that's for older versions of those browsers which only respond to the prefixed settings and are still installed on some computers.
Web world changes a lot, and before there was official support for CSS3 (such as the transition you are using), there were fallbacks, and shims to add these features specific to browsers.
The reason people would still use -moz & -webkit is to include support for older browsers. You should read up on the pains of doing this especially for internet explorer. So if you don't want to leave your ie9 customers behind, you should try and include appropriate CSS for them. transition isn't going to cut it for these browsers.
Is there anyway to check if a given CSS property is supported? For example, I want to do an animation on a page using perspective-origin, but if not available I would just alter the size instead.
there are many css-hacks for browsers but for that you need to handle yourself each css property for all browsers
CSS Hacks
but if you want automatically handled all the browser for CSS3 and html5 then use Modernizr
Supported browsers
It support IE6+, Firefox 3.5+, Opera 9.6+, Safari 2+, Chrome. On mobile, support iOS's mobile Safari, Android's WebKit browser, Opera Mobile, Firefox Mobile.
Use http://caniuse.com/ website to check how your property is supported by different versions of web-browsers. You can load different styles according to client's browser version.
Also, you can emulate not-supported properties in old browsers by using CSS3PIE (http://css3pie.com/).
you can include modernizr.js which will be helpful for your issue.
you may visit the following link which was helpful when i was learning about it.
http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/126-using-modernizr/
I am a little new to CSS and CSS animations. I am tired of optimizing my webpages specifically for IE (all versions). Is there some javascript library of something of the same sort that can enable CSS -webkit syntaxes in IE?
I find it easy and good designing for webkit browsers like chrome but IE needs special focus.
Thanks in advance.
The Internet Explorer 10 supports some more CSS3 features. Did you to obmit the prefix? If this doesn't work there is nothing you can do. You may need to wait for the Internet Explorer 11.
However I would not recommend to concentrate your work for the IE. Better try to make run your app on Firefox, Safari, Opera and co.
Have also a look to the blog post Adapting your WebKit-optimized site for Internet Explorer 10 by Microsoft.
have a look at css3pie.com it can render as from IE6. Hope this helps you.
I know IE8 and below don't support rounded buttons with plain css but does ie9?
I had a more recent table showing CSS3 properties handled by IE9 but border-radius was already part of them in september: http://www.impressivewebs.com/css3-support-ie9/
Microsoft's stated aim in releasing IE9 is to support all HTML5, CSS3 and other features which for which finalised specifications have been released.
This means that there are a number of features which Firefox, Chrome, Safari and others support already which IE9 will not support.
The good news for you is that border-radius (the CSS3 feature which gives you rounded corners) is fully specified, and as a result, it is implemented in IE9.
I recommend using the site CanIUse.com to check for browser support for individual features. It has a comprehensive list of which browsers support which features.
You may also want to look up Quirksmode.org, which offers a similar service. However although I am a big fan of Quirksmode, it is getting somewhat out of date now. (but it is still a great resource for checking feature support in older versions of IE in particular)
Do I need some special DOCTYPE when I want to use CSS3 ? I have div with dashed border and I want to set border-image (only can with CSS3), but when I set border-image:url(.., nothing happens.
Some browsers may only support CSS 3 features in Standards Mode, but a standards mode triggering Doctype should be considered business as usual and not "special".
Keep in mind that CSS 3 is a collection of specifications that have not yet reached recommendation stage. They are very new and browser support is far from universal (and isn't a binary state of 'supports CSS 3 or not' — the current versions of all the major web browsers support some of CSS 3 (for different values of 'some'). Your problem could simply be that you aren't using a browser that supports border-image.
border-image currently works in Safari
and Firefox 3.1 (Alpha). The syntax to
use it is:
border-image: url(border.png) 27 27 27
27 round round;
See demonstration page
CSS3 is not available on all browsers at this time. Right now, only Chrome, Opera, and Safari support it. CSS3 commands will not work on IE; you'll have to find other work-arounds or wait until browsers catch up with the standards.
Most likely the border-image did not show up, because you didn't use the correct prefixes.
Right now, just "border-image" is not supported by major browsers, hence you need to add the prefix for the browser.
E.g.
-webkit-border-image
-moz-border-image
-o-border-image
-webkit - for WebKit-based browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari
-moz - for Firefox
-o - for Opera
You do not need a specific DOCTYPE, but border-image is only supported in some browsers. You can also use:
-webkit-border-image
-moz-border-image
-khtml-border-image
-o-border-image
to broaden the range of support for browsers. CSS3 has not been implemented as a standard across all current browsers, so using specific CSS tags is the best way to go for now.
Support is very limited and inconsistent across the browsers that do support it. Check Quirksmode (bottom of the table) to see the bad news http://www.quirksmode.org/css/background.html