My web extension works with Chromium browsers, Firefox, Edge, but as I understand - it is impossible now just to open the same codebase with Safari browser?
Update 2021
The Safari support for WebExtensions was released in 2021 and is available from Safari 14 (shipped with macOS Big Sur). WebExtensions for Safari are published in the App Store. Documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_web_extensions
Original answer
We cannot possibly know this for sure, but Apple is currently not planning to support (a version of) the WebExtensions API. The name of the standard/specification is Browser Extension.
Apple is not part of the W3C group which attempts to make a cross browser standard: https://www.w3.org/community/browserext/participants
For more general info on the Browser Extension W3C working group, see
https://browserext.github.io/browserext
The provisional spec can be found here: https://browserext.github.io/browserext/
In macOS Big Sur, Safari will support the WebExtensions API:
New support for the WebExtensions API and migration tools allows developers to bring Chrome extensions to Safari — letting you personalize your browsing experience with new Safari extensions from your favorite developers.
Is it WebKit? Presto? Is V8 engine dedicated to Chrome alone?
WebKit and Presto are not Javascript engines, but rendering engines. Opera previously used a Javascript engine called "Carakan", but have since started transitioning from Presto and Carakan to Blink and V8.
As per wikipedia:
It remained in use until Opera 12.15, when the browser's developer Opera Software ASA began phasing Presto out of its products in favor of the WebKit layout engine and V8 JavaScript engine combined with a modified Chromium browser.
For more , you can go through Web specifications support in Opera Presto 2.12.
What does Sencha 2 only work in Webkit browsers? I understand they require the Webkit engine, but why do they do this, what does this webkit engine have which the engines in Firefox / IE doesnt have? A browser consists of a HTML engine, CSS engine and Javascript engine - just for curriosity, is it the Javascript engine which is special with Webkit in respect of Sencha ?
When Sencha Touch started development, iphone, android and blackberry were the main platforms. All of them use a webkit based browser as default.
There were reasons told at that time like css transistions and image masking weren't supported by other browsers. I guess things might have improved now.
Size is also an issue. To support more browsers, more workarounds are required which increase the size of the framework.
From a business perspective, there isn't really a demand for supporting any other browser. If ie10 becomes big with Windows 8, they might support it as people have already asked about it their forums.
Someones already trying to make it work on Firfox. Here is the link.
Here are some posts from the forum
Post1, Post2
I am writing the Dojo applications. I want to provide the browser compatibility for Firefox 3.0+, IE 7+. Should I follow any specific techniques to get the browser compatiability?
The list of supported browsers is here : http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/releasenotes/1.7.html.
One of the advantages of using a framework over plain javascript is that it deals with most compatibility issues for you.
If my app has been tested in Firefox 3, Safari 3 & IE 7 will it need additional testing for Chrome?
If there are areas that'll need further testing -- then are there any online guides I could share with my designers & developers?
At what point will Chrome be considered to have sufficient market share to be treated as a mainstream browser?
If it's working fine on Safari, it will probably work on Chrome as well. The only difference is the JavaScript engine, but I've yet to see a real world example of some legitim JavaScript code not working on Chrome.
Personally I test my stuff with Chrome because I use Chrome intensively for development. It is good practice to test your pages with at least one WebKit (or KHTML) based browser though.
Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, which is also used in Safari and some other small browsers. Overall with both Chrome and Safari gaining in market share it is definately a browser to test (you only really need to test one). It's very standards compliant and is constantly having updates to keep up with new CSS drafts.
Webkits main Site - http://webkit.org/
Browser Market Share
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers are good places to look for market share of browsers although they show very different responses on Chrome.
According to Wikipedia roughly 7.96% of poeple are using WebKit based browsers however W3C shows that in November only 5.8% did.
Theoretically, because Google Chrome uses the same engine as Safari (WebKit), you've already tested. But Google has made several changes to the engine, including rewriting the JavaScript interpreter completely. Additional testing never hurts and it wouldn't take long to confirm that everything works as expected.
Now that GMail suggests people switch from IE to Firefox and Chrome, I'm guessing we'll see IE lose more and more market share to those browsers. Chrome doesn't have much of a user-base now, but I can imagine that will change.
Better test on it. I've already run across sites that work in Safari but don't in Chrome. I have IE8b2, FF3, Safari, and Chrome all installed on my machine. Not for testing reasons, but because of the websites that I visit. Takes all 4 of those to get all the websites to show right...
if you don't have PNG24 with opacity changed from CSS, all things should be fine.
However, i always try in all modern browsers (ie6/7, ff2/3, opera 9.x, safari and chrome).
According to Wikipedia, Chrome has a 0.78% usage rate right now. Depending on your audience the actual number of users might be low, and not really require testing.
Chrome uses the WebKit engine, which as I recall is the same engine used by Safari. So in theory, if your site works for Safari it should work for Chrome, as well.
Refer to this Google's Chrome page for details.
Chrome already got a small percentage of the community. However as far as I know, Chrome follows the standards from W3C and all websites that work in IE6, IE7 and FF2 / 3 has worked perfectly for me.
So by that said, i think you should already be testing your applications in chrome as well.
Always test in these browsers nowdays:
Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
Firefox 2, 3
Chrome
Opera
Safari
Lynx