Swift – Webkit for Windows
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006I recently stumbled upon a very interesting find: the Swift web-browser. It is essentially a port of Apple’s webkit to windows. Here’s a screenshot of it right after startup:
My first impression is that it is definitely alpha, VERY alpha (it is only the 0.1 release after all). It’s also a much larger download, 15mb, compared to Firefox, 5mb, or Opera, 6mb.
Good Points
- Its page rendering is exceptionally fast, even more than Firefox
- Tabs, but that isn’t anything to incredible
Areas that need work (I won’t say bad points, after all it is only alpha)
- Crashes regularly on complex pages
- Password inputs are not supported
- Anchor links (page.htm#section) are not supported
- Acid 2 doesn’t work (probably due to the previous)
- Lack of any preferences whatsoever
Overall, I would say Swift is a great effort and it looks promising, but at the present state of development it is little more than a proof of concept, and definitely not practical for normal use.
I think it’s a great idea since there is no current way to test websites with webkit in Windows. This could possibly result in more Safari compatible websites.
That is interesting! I know that many companies, such as online banks and retailers (and nearly all the MLS listings for some reason) often don’t support Safari. It’s annoying to say the least. I would be very happy to see Safari better supported.
Anything new? I tried to get 0.2, but the download link is broken 🙁
If you want to get version 0.2 go to http://www.happyandlost.co.uk/media/misc/swift/swift_0.2.msi I don’t know why it doesn’t link there…