wiki:Known incompatibilities between open-source WebKit and Safari

Version 1 (modified by trac, 17 years ago) (diff)

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Versions of Safari that were released with 10.4 (Tiger) or a 10.4.x update should work correctly with locally-built versions of WebKit in nearly all ways. Ideally there would be no incompatibilities at all, but occasionally it is necessary to introduce an incompatibility so that WebKit can evolve without amassing globs of special-case backwards-compatibility code.

This page is intended to list all of the deliberate incompatibilities between using a Tiger version of Safari and a locally-built version of WebKit. If you know of any other incompatibilities, then either this page needs updating or (more likely) they are unintentional bugs. Please use bugs.webkit.org to report such bugs.

Forms auto-fill doesn't work

Forms auto-fill in Safari is entirely disabled with a locally-built version of WebKit. This was necessary in order to rewrite the form control code in WebKit to not rely on using NSViews, a project that is currently underway.

Context menu for selected text is missing three menu items

The context menu for selected text on an HTML page in Tiger Safari normally includes "Search in Spotlight", "Search in Google", "Look Up in Dictionary", and "Copy". When running on locally-built WebKit, only the "Copy" item appears, preceded by two separators. This change was necessary in order to make public API that allows clients to recognize these specific context menu items.

Automatic proxy configuration doesn't work

Safari crashes when trying to access the network if automatic proxy configuration (using a PAC file) is selected in System Preferences > Network > interface > Proxies. This is an incompatibility between the JavaScriptGlue code used by the proxy mechanism and the locally-built JavaScriptCore.