WebKitGTK+ 2.0.0 Released With Many New Features

After being in development for the past two years, WebKitGTK+ 2.0.0 has been released and it defaults to their new WebKit2GTK+ API.

The WebKit2 GTK+ API is centered around the upstream WebKit2 interfaces, which is a new API supporting a split-process model and other incompatible improvements over the original WebKit API.

GNOME's Epiphany web-browser as of version 3.8 was ported to using the WebKit2 GTK+ application programming interface while other applications are still being ported. The benefits come down to the multi-process architecture, better robustness and responsiveness, greater security, and other new features.

Other benefits of the WebKit2 API include an embedded HTTP authentication dialog, support for GTK+2 plug-ins like Adobe Flash, a web inspector, accelerated compositing by default, and more. Some of the future plans also include multiple web-processes support, sandboxing, and network process.

More details on WebKitGTK+ 2.0.0 can be found from the blog release announcement.