Today, Apple has officially launched Safari Technology Preview, a new version of its web browser aimed specifically at developers. Safari Technology Preview, as it’s called, resembles an ordinary Safari browser with a distinctively purple app icon in the dock. Safari Technology Preview giving developers a way to access new web technologies Apple is planning to implement in iOS and OS X, offering an early look at new developer tools, layout technologies, visual effects, and more.
“Get a sneak peek at upcoming Safari web technologies in OS X and iOS, and easily experiment with these technologies in your websites and extensions,” writes Apple.
In addition to previewing the latest advances in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, the browser includes the most recent version of the WebKit rendering engine and the latest version of the Web Inspector and Responsive Design Mode tools for modifying, debugging and optimizing websites.
JavaScript Improvements
– ECMAScript 6 support including lexical scoping, iterators, generators, arrow functions, default parameter values and many new built-in APIs
– Better standards compliant IndexedDB support with more stability
– Included the B3 JavaScript JIT compiler with low-latency, high-throughput that boosts performance
– Added the ability to usedocument.execCommand('copy')anddocument.execCommand('cut')in response to a user gesture to copy and cut text programmaticallyHTML Enhancements
– The latest implementation of the Shadow DOM specification
– Added support for Content Security Policy Level 2Web Inspector Changes
– Added memory summary and JavaScript allocations timelines
– Added a fast JavaScript sampling profiler
– Improved JavaScript profiling timeline viewBehavior Changes
– Included many web compatibility fixes and bug fixes
Safari Technology Preview can be run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser, and it’s able to be set as the default browser on a machine. It includes local data stores for history, bookmarks, cookies, and cache, and it supports syncing of browsing history and bookmarks over iCloud. Visually, the Safari Technology Preview icon is designed to resemble the Safari icon, but it is purple in color instead of blue.
The new developer preview can be downloaded right now from a newly-launched dedicated page, and while it’s available only for Safari for Mac, Apple does outline that the preview indicates new features that will be available both for the desktop browser, and soon to be available in the iOS-based version as well.
Source: Apple