We're taking a look at the new WebKit features that landed in Safari 15. You can now start converting your apps to the new Material You guidelines with the official documentation and migration guide. We learn about how Photoshop could have a web version. Safari Technology Preview 134 is now available, and Next 12 is the highlight of the software updates section.
New WebKit Features in Safari 15
Safari holds the unenvied position of having the slowest update cycle of all modern browsers. With the recent release of version 15, have you wondered what new features have landed? Disregarding the controversial redesign of the interface, here is a brief outline of the changes to the WebKit engine:
- Safari Web Extensions can now be used on iOS and iPadOS
theme-colormeta tags can now be used to customize- support for
aspect-ratio, new color functions (lab(),lch(),hwb()) and other CSS updates - a new CSS Grid Inspector tool
- support for ES6 Modules in Workers and ServiceWorkers
- WebGL2, Web Share level 2
There is a lot more detail on all these additions, therefore I invite you to check the article Jen Simmons published:
Introducing Material You
Google announced Material You back in May at the Google I/O event. Now, we have the complete specification available to us. It includes a migration guide so that you can easily convert your app, website, or theme.
Photoshop's journey to the web
Adobe recently announced that beta versions of Photoshop and Illustrator can be used online, in a web browser. Of course, these versions will not have the same functionality as the desktop versions, due to the limitations of the environment. The major achievement is the evolution of the web platform that made this thing possible. And the Chrome team has a little story for us about this journey.
Browser news
WebKit
There is more from the WebKit team this week, namely another Safari Technology Preview release. Update 134 brings over another long list of changes and here are just a few that caught my eye:
- support for font palette and implementation of the CSS Font Loading API
- CSS Cascade Layers have been updated to the latest spec change
- support for ScrollOptions’ ScrollBehavior and CSS
scroll-behaviorproperties - support for WebRTC media capabilities
The full list is available in the official release notes linked below:
Software updates and releases
- Dust.js v3.0.0 - asynchronous Javascript templating for the browser and server
- ESLint v8.1.0 - find and fix problems in your JavaScript code
- Meteor 2.5 - the JavaScript app platform
- MUI-Datatables v4.0.0 - datatables for React using Material-UI
- Next.js 12 -
- Solid v1.2.0 - a declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
- Tabulator v5.0.0 - the easy to use, fully featured, interactive table JavaScript library
- Yarn 3.1 - fast, reliable, and secure dependency management for JavaScript
Wrapping things up
That's about all I have for this update. If you enjoyed this newsletter, there are a couple of ways to support it. You can share the link to this issue on social media, and follow me on Twitter. Each one of these helps me out and I'd appreciate your consideration.
Have a great and productive time, keep yourselves safe, and I will see you again next time!